Cruise (GM) receives permit for fully driverless cars | Hacker News Reader

Cruise (GM) receives permit for fully driverless cars

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139 pointsvotick149 comments

Driverless cars are going to be much better than driverful cars in cities since they follow the rules and behave predictably. But I do wish cities would get on board with the clear win of reducing the need for cars. SF is small enough that you could get anywhere pretty easily with an electric-assist bike if only there were sufficiently safe infrastructure. Combine that with better transit, and most people never need to use a car for daily life.

> Driverless cars are going to be much better that driverful cars in cities since they follow the rules and behave predictably

But on the other hand, city environment is very unpredictable and lots of other actors there don't follow the rules. It'll be great in long term, but transition will be really hard.

It's hard for me to imagine how it could get worse in the short term. I encounter the following from human drivers on a regular basis, and I can't imagine any reasonable software doing them:

* Notice me attempting to use a crosswalk and choose not to yield

* Drive dangerously close behind my bicycle while honking for additional intimidation

* Pass my bicycle at obviously unsafe distances

* Park in crosswalks

* Blatantly disregard lane markings

* Run stop signs

* Pittsburgh left turns

https://www.thedrive.com/tech/36649/watch-a-tesla-model-3-fa...

So let me rephrase what you just said, you want your life as a pedestrian to rely on software that is not verified by 3rd party in any way and only rely on good faith of manufacturer? Did it ever work well?

Also such manufacturer can update software literally everyday without any external regression testing?

I agree that most of what you mention won't happen but failure mode of AI cars would be much different and imho much worse as pretty impossible to predict.

Human failure models are already impossible to predict, but the impact of those failures are fairly easy to predict. Which is why there is so much pedestrian safety built into so many cities. You don’t need to know why that car is plowing full-speed into a pedestrian-filled NYC sidewalk (terrorism, medical emergency, human error, etc) because no matter what those failures are prevented the same way: giant blocks of concrete making it impossible for a car to get onto the sidewalk. Likewise with driving too fast, driving too slow, failing to stop, stopping unnecessarily, etc.

Any way an AI-driven car can fail, humans have been failing in the same way for a hundred years. Cars, by virtue of their incredibly limited mobility, can only fail in so many different ways. It’s not like a Tesla with autopilot can suddenly jump over barriers or drive sideways.

I think a Tesla where the terrorist has reprogrammed the autopilot can get through the barricades at high speeds, while a human could not. (most barricades I've seen are just fast enough apart that small maintenance trucks can get between them, but close enough that humans go slow - obviously not all are)

One example of a bad outcome is enough for you to decide that driverless cars are unacceptably dangerous? Take a look at number of collisions per mile driven and reconsider.

Collisions per mile driven? Autopilot disengages whenever there is something it cannot handle. How is that meaningful?

You could say it is "one example" if this was a human driver running over a pedestrian. If one AI car has a bug all models with same AI have it. There is 0.5M Model 3 and counting.

I just used one example as a point and it is much less important than issue of 3rd party verification. You don't know if manufacturer fixes the bug, when it is done and you never know if it regresses.

> I just used one example as a point and it is much less important than issue of 3rd party verification. You don't know if manufacturer fixes the bug, when it is done and you never know if it regresses.

No need to preemptively audit the code, accident statistics will clearly indicate unsafe behavior and economic/insurance disincentives[0] will induce continual safety improvements. Either a car will be safe enough to operate or it won't -- remember ~40,000 people are killed by American drivers every year.

[0]The 'Fight Club' equation.

If you're routinely having problems with how everyone else is acting it's probably not them.

There are many things drivers, pedestrians and cyclists do that are not in accordance with the official rules but are expected and accepted. If you don't expect and accept your local variation of whatever these exceptions are you are going to have a very bad time. There is a predictable pattern to how traffic works. Being caught up on the letter of the law will results in you poorly communicating with all the other traffic around you which increases the frequency of conflicts. They way you walk or drive in Boston is different than the way you walk or drive in SF and neither of them adheres strictly to the official rules and markings.

> If you don't expect and accept your local variation of whatever these exceptions are you are going to have a very bad time.

As it turns out I do expect this behavior and still have a very bad time. These laws are not frivolous, and violating them is extremely dangerous.

I've lived on a one-way street for over a decade now. Pre-COVID, it was unusual to go a week without seeing someone going the wrong way. It was not unusual to see this multiple times in a day.

I also bike down a two-way separated bike lane to/from work. It's separated by concrete barriers, except at intersections. I'd come across drivers trying to drive down them, again, roughly weekly.

It's predictable that I'll see a car turn the wrong way onto a one-way street, and I've learned to anticipate it, but it's not accepted.

Most drivers are okay, but there's a small number who are really bad. If you come across a hundred drivers a day, you're going to come across bad ones pretty often.

The author didn't say every driver sucked -- just that he regularly comes across drivers who suck. I'm willing to bet that most road users will assert the same experience.

Most drivers pass safely, and several times a week, one won't. Most drivers stop at red lights, and every week or so, one won't. Most drivers check their mirrors before turning, and every few hundred, one won't. Most drivers use their turn signals and...actually, that last one might be a lie.

I have to disagree though: all drivers are bad. Most think of themselves as good drivers who only make a rare mistake - but all those rare mistakes across the thousands of drivers you encounter every day means it is rare that you don't see someone do something wrong regularly.

There are a few really bad drivers who shouldn't have a license. However that isn't most of the cases of bad driving you see in a day.

You also have: - People jaywalking without looking at the street - Bicycles running stops and red lights - Dogs running onto the street - People leaving stuff on the road - Trees falling on the street - People standing in the middle of the road and talking - Kids running on the street after the ball - Things falling of other cars - Bicycles driving at night without lights - Deep potholes

World is unpredictable, and city environments are full of surprises. Machine needs to be aware of rules and follow up, but also be able to deal with rules being broken by other users. General rule "approach with caution and be ready to react" doesn't work that well with machines - problem is very very tricky. There's a reason why Waymo had self driving cars for 10 years already, but are still in very limited beta.

If driverless taxi services become cheap enough, they can help with this. Let's build parking garages outside the core neighborhoods, and then remove street parking throughout the city.

That's 20 linear feet of space on nearly all our streets for sidewalks, bikes, restaurants, green spaces, or whatever else.

Street parking can and should be removed even without driverless taxis, but I agree that the taxis reduce the amount of ammunition people have to fight the change.

>> If driverless taxi services

Given Unions and AB5 I'd like to see how driverless is embraced California

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Assembly_Bill_5_(20...

There's a lot of old people in SF who struggle to even walk to the end of a block for a bus stop. A society still needs some solution for picking Grandma up at her door and dropping her off at Thanksgiving.

Incredibly there are countries in the world which are not car centric where people have infirm grandparents.

I wonder what the impact of reduced car ownership is on increased mobility in the elderly population. It wouldn't surprise me if this was correlated.

For one obvious example, the people who legitimately need to rely on cars will spend less time sitting in traffic.

Often the elderly live with family so they are much better attended overall than most in the U.S., and wouldn't need to pick up their own prescriptions themselves in the first place.

I said "most people" won't need cars. I think you'd agree that most people do not struggle to walk short distances.

There's a very long tail here. I went car-less for a year and experienced the downsides pretty frequently. Carrying that damn stand mixer a few miles home sucked, going to events in nice clothes on warm nights wasn't great on a bike, getting groceries from far away or visiting ocean beach took way longer than it should, etc... I eventually gave up and just bought the car. Even though I didn't need it 90% of the time, many things became way easier with it.

If you only need a car for 10% of trips, why not take taxis? It would likely be cheaper and easier (no hassles with parking in the city).

Also if you only need a car for 10% of trips, renting might be cheaper than buying. I don’t own a pickup truck because I rarely need one, but when I do need one I rent one from Lowes or U-Haul.

The problem with that is the additional friction.

If I could rent a car and it arrived in front of my house, no need to own.

But if the nearest car sharing station is 15 minutes away, that just added 30 minutes to every car trip, on top of the friction that comes with such systems.

That's where self-driving cars may be able to make a huge difference.

That's exactly the point. There's a long tail where electric assist bikes and transit aren't ideal options, which is exactly the market where Cruise is trying to fit.

Personally, I did use ride shares, but there was enough need for me that the math worked out for personal ownership.

taxies are not cheap. Just a weekly grocery run for a month is more then my monthly expenses in my paid for car (gas, maintenance, and insurance). A few more other trips and a car is cheaper. That is before we get into my last taxi was driven by a smoker, and a window was broke on the car. (uber might do better now, but as all uber critics note uber fares don't pay the driver a living wage after real expenses, and thus only work out if you have the car anyway)

It can work out, it depends. How often do you need to use the taxi to not inconvenience your lifestyle? Are you the type that would have a new car or used car? more expensive. Would you do your own car maintenance? Do you life to vacation in remote places where you would have to rent a car? Do you have kids (no taxi has a car seat). How good is the local transit service? Is parking "free" with wherever you live and go (use it or not)? I'm sure there is more.

Depends where you live. For me, an Uber Pool to the nearest grocery store is about $5. I could do 40 round trips a month for the cost of insurance and a parking spot.

If you only need it for a couple of runs, compared to gas, price of the car, maintenance, registration, and most importantly insurance, I would be surprised if you didn't come out ahead being a transit weekday commuter and a ride share user for all your edge cases in every city in the U.S.

It sounds like you went without any cars - did you forego taxis etc as well?

> Driverless cars are going to be much better than driverful cars in cities since they [WILL] follow the rules and behave predictably

You missed this word. Presently they do not behave predictably and consequently sometimes do not follow the rules. That they might one day achieve these attributes is speculation.

Waymo drives very predictably. Where does your data come from?

>Driverless cars are going to be much better than driverful cars in cities since they follow the rules and behave predictably

This is a really niave take.

Sure they follow rules as well as any other computer but they're gonna be following a set of rules different than the human drivers around them. That's a recipe for a ton of minor accidents.

> but they're gonna be following a set of rules different than the human drivers around them

Hmmm... a "different set of rules than humans" aka following the actual laws that were designed for safety rather than the human rules of "whatever maximizes my personal convenience"

You can't just run over a pedestrian because they use a crosswalk when the signal is telling them to stop. That's not how society works.

These self-driving cars are going to need to be very careful around people if they operate in cities, but if they are careful enough to be safe, they'll also have to deal with groups of bored teenagers herding the cars around for fun.

Sadly, any rule that can't bend to the fact that people are people is doomed to fail.

Maybe for a short time, but soon drivers will learn that the by the book cars exist and account for it. I try to be a by the book driver myself, but I will admit to making many mistakes - even still I can think of several times where following the book sved me from an accident.

Shopping is hard without a car. You can only buy a few items at a time. This works great if you have local bodegas all over the place, but not so much if you depend on supermarkets.

You'd be surprised at how much fits in a good backpack or set of panniers. A bike trailer is also an option if you really need a lot, and as a side benefit you can carry your kids in it when you're not grocery shopping. Delivery is another reasonable option that probably causes less pollution and traffic than everybody driving their own car to the store.

You'd be surprised at how often your bike is gone when you walk out of the grocery store. If city governments want to encourage cycling then they'll have to take bike theft as seriously as auto theft and stop coddling thieves.

Your bike is not getting clipped at vons in broad daylight while you are inside for 30 mins and my vons borders many a bike chop businesses operating out of tents on the sidewalk. Overnight? Absolutely.

I shop with a backpack with can contain plenty.

Sure, this is largely true (panniers and trailers not withstanding), but most car trips aren't to the store. I suspect the majority are to/from work/school.

If we enabled more people to bike for our commutes and just use a driverless car (or a taxi/Lyft) for shopping, car ownership would be much less essential, and car rush hour would be a thing of the past.

I just hope they put a bike rack on the Cruise cars. :-)

I've stayed for extensive periods in Montreal and this wasn't an issue for me and what I assume are the more permanent residents of the city. The transit system was excellent and accommodated people carrying groceries quite easily. In cases when I had to lug something heavy, I would just grab a taxi. I've never needed a car in that city yet and the one time I did show up with a rental car for a short visit, trying to deal with parking the darn thing was a flaming headache that almost ruined the trip (Old Port fortunately had good, albeit expensive, parking.)

yeah it's a land use problem of our own creation. Cities have banned small supermarkets in residential neighbourhoods and only allowed big box stores on the outskirts.

The end result is 'food deserts' where one has to have a car to drive out to get food.

I use one of those huge blue ikea bags and I can haul a weeks worth of groceries home from Vons while riding my skateboard. Plenty of others just use their own fold up grocery carts, which is probably a lot better than the circus act I'm attempting.

Half of what keeps NYC pedestrians on the sidewalk is the fear of being run over by cars. If pedestrians know they can just safely cut in front of cars whenever they want, I fear the average speed in the city is going to drop from 12 to 6...

That sounds like a good thing. Especially with all the outdoor dining now!

You're saying it's good that the majority of people who are not in cars live in constant fear for their lives?

No, I'm saying there is a balance struck between pedestrian mobility and vehicle mobility in NY. Personally I would prefer to see almost all streets in Manhattan below 110th to be shut down to vehicle traffic, but I know I would never get my way.

Even without the fear of death, a lot of people don't want to cut in front of a car and get honked at and flipped off. But if you see that it is just an empty self driving car, with no human present to get mad at you, the calculus changes as to whether you cut it off or not. And that can have cascading consequences for average vehicle speed.

Sounds like an effective way to relaim streets and break up the pavement!

I like to think of the shuttle bus operators at my old university between classes. Just inching along as the sea of people slowly part in front and behind you. Ebb and flow.

> and behave predictably.

Not with the amount of ML, particularly DNN, involved.

I wonder what happens when these cars get in an accident. I don't even mean in the legal sense. What happens in the immediate wake of an accident? Is there a note on the car about what the other driver should do? Is there a way for someone back in the office to communicate to the other driver on the scene? Does the other driver need to wait around until some human shows up?

Interesting. You’d definitely have some crash detection. A remote human operator could be assigned to take over when the car stops to drive around some obstacle in an unexpected situation. If a crash happened (whether or not it was remote controlled), you could have speakers/cameras/microphones allow the operator to communicate with bystanders until help arrives. Police would need to be called for a major accident, while for a fender bender you can probably just send a car with some security people to pay off the other driver and get them to sign an NDA, and drive the crashed car back to base.

Remote human operation is only possible with a reliable cellular data connection. There are still dead zones in many cities, especially in tunnels.

For a product that’s still being tested and not fully rolled out, you could block it from operating in those spots, if you can reliably map where they are.

How do you protect against sudden dead spots or spots where cellular data is degraded? It only takes one power cut, grumpy person with a cellphone jammer, or error in the cellular modem to cause a lapse in usable connectivity.

Excellent question. And what if the other party, at fault or not, is not a driver? What if they are a pedestrian or a cyclist? What if they are alone, incapacitated and need medical help?

> What if they are alone, incapacitated and need medical help?

Although self-driving is a hard problem, automatically determining that the car may have had an accident and alerting humans in your control center is a much easier problem. I imagine the control center humans would be responsible for calling 911 if there was an injured human. They would probably be able to see out all the cameras in the car to help make that determination, or if the cameras are all malfunctioning you probably want to dispatch ambulances anyway.

This technology already exists. GM already has this technology: GM Onstar.

OnStar Corporation is a subsidiary of General Motors that provides subscription-based communications, in-vehicle security, emergency services, hands-free calling, turn-by-turn navigation, and remote diagnostics systems throughout the United States, Canada, China, Mexico, Europe, Brazil, and Argentina

What if the accident took out the cell tower and the car lost communication with HQ? Or more likely, the car was totaled and lost communication?

> What if the accident took out the cell tower and the car lost communication with HQ? Or more likely, the car was totaled and lost communication?

What do you do if you are HQ in charge of an expedition team going along a pre-determined route and the team suddenly and abnormally loses communication with HQ?

What do you do if a flight suddenly disappears over the ocean on air traffic control, and there happen to be some other planes and ships in the area?

What do you do if a hiker doesn't come home and they left a note saying which trail they were going on for the day?

> Although self-driving is a hard problem, automatically determining that the car may have had an accident and alerting humans in your control center is a much easier problem

I have a sneaky feeling that detecting whether a driverless car has hit a cyclist is not an easy problem. I can imagine scenarios where the contact took place towards the rear of the car (and therefore not at the primary focus of sensor attention), the cyclist goes careening off to the left or right and the car blithely goes on. I'm not saying such a scenario is impossible with a traditional car but it's a dam sight harder to ignore.

Yes, the cyclist interaction came to my mind too. At times in slow traffic you may encounter the same cyclist sharing the same road over and over either in front, on the side, or about to catch-up to your car. Those blind spots are truly ennerving at such times...

Do driverless cars have their kind of blind spots?

How about dealing with potholes? Do they also swerve around to protect suspension or just ram through?

These cars don't have blind spots. They setup the spinny lidars to get almost 360 degree coverage and also dedicated lidars that are for nearfield detection. It's very hard, if not impossible, to sneak up on these cars. There are also techniques to drive defensively/safely if there is uncertainty about the scene. For potholes, it's a function of detection. You can't rely on mapping data, because potholes aren't something that might exist at the time of mapping, so you have use lidar/radar to detect a hole, but depending on angle, if there is another car in front, time of lidars, etc. it might be difficult to detect. My speculation is that the cars just ram through it.

I think the upside of this is that if you get hit by a self-driving car, due to the way the media behaves around self-driving accidents, you can be almost sure that they will deal with it professionally and pay off all damages if it's even remotely their fault.

They might not leave a note on your windshield but they would surely acknowledge the accident and as a company, would have to cooperate with any investigations. It's not some random dude that if they hit and run off you will never see them again.

Elaine Herzberg is still dead. Not much upside in that scenario.

That's kinda unfair though. She was jaywalking in the dark far from any crosswalk on a main street. On average 16 pedestrians are killed every day in the United States. While the car could have done better, it's not really clear that she would have survived if the car was driven by a human.

Please stop spreading misinformation. It was only dark in the DVR footage provided by Uber. Actual photos show it was pretty well lit. https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/uber-self-driving-tempe...

> Further, the report says that as long as Vasquez met the minimum visual acuity for a driver's license under Arizona law, and with the lighting conditions at the scene, she "could have seen and recognized that a person was walking across the road from a distance of 1700 feet away with or without the Volvo’s headlights."

Thank you for the correction.

As long as we're correcting this story, note also that "far from any crosswalk" is also completely bogus. The place where the woman was trying to cross is where a paved path leads from a beach, and then just suddenly ends at this road. The only reason it was illegal to cross the road here is because they put up a sign. In the absence of the sign, every architectural feature of this landscape would lead a reasonable person to believe they could be here.

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4365905,-111.9426898,3a,75y,...

Arizona has quite a few of these no pedestrian crossing signs, combined with the extreme length between intersections/legal crosswalks, it is very hostile to humans.

It’s also the fourth state in pedestrian fatalities per 100k pop. Coincidence?

It's pretty abhorrent that jaywalking is even considered a factor in the eyes of the law. What if you were senile or a child or blind or mentally unwell or intoxicated or running on little sleep, and just took a stumble onto the road? Suddenly your slaughter doesn't matter because you weren't walking on some white paint at the time? I think this needs to be changed.

Yeah it's all good intentions and PR talk until you see how the lawyers respond after an incident. IMHO Uber incident shows that it is extremely unlikely for any human to face criminal charges after a deadly incident with self driving car.

Sure, but that's a problem of the legal system.

Uber was still reachable by authorities, and did show up in court.

All I am saying is that self-driving companies aren't going to pull off a hit-and-run and dodge the fact that an accident did happen. So one doesn't really need to worry about how a self-driving car deals with the note-on-windshield part. More than likely their HQ would be aware of the accident remotely and have legal responsibility to call 911 immediately if necessary. And in the event that a car's algorithm pulled off a hit-and-run on minor property damage, the company would still be easily reachable by authorities and respond to a court summons.

Wouldn't they, as a company, be incentivized to fight desperately to avoid potentially setting a costly precendent?

Absolutely. See Uber's actual response to their deadly incident -- absolving themselves of liability and blaming the backup driver.

Depends. They have incentives to not allow costly precedents. However they also have incentive to ensure that when this goes mainstream there are precedents in their favor.

If they believe the "accident" is either a one-off (meaning they will fix the bug and a whole class never happens again) they will probably pay off quick just because their image is better for that.

If they decide the accident was their fault, not avoidable with better software, AND despite that they are still significantly safer than humans they probably pay out, adjust their price models to insurance against their faults. In this case they may fight, but it will be for "reasonable" settlements (whatever they decide that is, but probably based on similar human caused accidents)

My guess is they think one of the two are the case for everything by now, so the other possibilities don't need to be listed.

Of course the above is my guess. You can be sure those who know are not talking.

> I think the upside of this is that if you get hit by a self-driving car, due to the way the media behaves around self-driving accidents, you can be almost sure that they will deal with it professionally and pay off all damages if it's even remotely their fault.

Tesla and Uber have shown that this is not the case. Tesla tries to throw the driver under the bus or, if that fails, the victim, and Uber has acted especially despicably after their fatal crash.

Perhaps "traditional" car manufacturers with less of a cult behind them will take the PR route, but the behaviour of current companies involved in self-driving vehicles isn't very encouraging.

It isn't really fair to throw Tesla, Uber, and Cruise/GM in the same bucket in terms of liability. Tesla is level 2 automation, Uber is level 3, and Cruise is at least level 4. They all will have different capabilities and different expectations for any potential human driver so the breakdown of liability between the human and the car should vary.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/technology-innovation/automated-vehicl...

Do you have a citation for Cruise being at Level 4? I’m very skeptical of that. Friends of mine at Cruise have privately told me they’re still working towards Level 4.

I think the NHTSA documentation is also insufficiently precise.

I don't have any citations beyond what is in that medium post which should be enough to indicate it is level 4. Level 3 requires a driver to be available to take immediate control of the vehicle. The simple act of sending a car out on a road without a driver shows the car is level 4 (or the company is wildly irresponsible to try it and the state is wildly irresponsible for granting the permit, but hopefully we can rule these out).

I suppose, but the parent post claimed that media attention would drive companies to do the right thing for publicity reasons. The past behaviour of car companies around any accident involving their assistive technologies doesn't really show them caring about the potential negative damage. If the did, they'd had paid out already, regardless of blame.

My point is that the media attention involving crashes won't make companies take responsibility or pay to keep the bad news away, they act like all existing car companies and shift blame onto anyone but themselves instead.

Hah, watch them argue you agreed to binding arbitration by driving on the same road as their car.

That will just happen in the first cases. Then death will normalized and rationalized on being the pedestrians fault. At least that’s how it happened when the automobile was introduced.

I guess the same thing that happens when a pole falls down on your car? You report it to the authorities. You take pictures for the insurance, and file your claims?

Now that would be an interesting job... working in a call center, talking to the police remotely about an accident that took place in a state you aren't even in.

How's my driving? Ring 555 5555 if I hit you.

ex-Cruise here. Cruise has an incident response team that trains for this. For a team that hasn't had any real-world accidents yet, they seemed pretty competent. They'll show up ASAP and take care of things.

After the first few lawsuits, the company will quickly fine a way to push the liability off from themselves in fine print.

Uber already successfully did this in Arizona, where one of their self-driving cars killed a pedestrian, but the only person charged was the safety driver: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/09/arizona-prosecutes-uber...

That woman’s job was specifically to monitor the road in case the software did not work. That’s why she’s culpable.

Yet she was put in a situation where she had to regularly take her eyes off the road to enter data as part of her job.

Uber is culpable for designing the job such that the risk of accidents significantly increased.

Except she wasn’t doing that either. She was watching Netflix on her phone.

Uber should have just put two people in the car and taken their phones for the duration of the shift. Totally foreseeable in hindsight which is awful considering someone died.

Most companies don't hire a second supervisor to watch their drivers. I don't think that's a reasonable standard for criminal negligence.

I do think civil liability is appropriate, and uber Settled for $9.7 Million. (it looks like the family is also suing the city and state.) https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe/2019/03/19/...

She wasn't looking at the road because she was entering data about the drive into the uber app, at uber's request.

Also, even if she wasn't doing it at uber's request, this is such a predictable event. The driver was paid close to minimum wage... Regardless of how you feel about this, it's definitely the case that people who are paid minimum wage will typically give minimum effort. This was totally forseeable. The people in charge of making this decision at uber were either negligent or willfully ignorant, but there's no excuse to hire someone for near-minimum wage for this job if you truly care about safety.

Surely she could have parked to do that.

How do you know she didn't have to record something every 30 seconds? What if Uber told her not to? Maybe she had to enter in readings from the dashboard? How about if the data needed to be entered within 10 seconds of a light flashing? Etc...

Don't let the facts get in the way of the outrage machine!

She was watching The Voice on Hulu.

We know she didn't have to record something every 30 seconds or enter reading from the dashboard or enter something within 10 seconds of a light flashing.

She wasn't "entering data about the drive into the uber app, at uber's request". She was streaming the The Voice on Hulu.

Is this some weird type of disinformation campaign against uber? I don't like uber but it's weird seeing a made up story like this. Only other place I have seen these is in some worker organizing efforts (which I generally support - but the made up stuff can just circulate like crazy).

Except nobody with a sane mind would consider this an acceptable safety system. It's widely known humans are not capable of performing this job. Period. Everywhere else, where there's a need for long stretches of uninterrupted human focus, you have systems on top of systems ensuring this happens.

In swimming pools, you have lifeguards with <30 minutes shifts, overlapping coverage zones, and managers hovering behind them to ensure they do pay attention. On trains, you have dead-man switches that stop the train if the driver isn't paying attention. The military gives pilots amphetamines if they need to stay awake for long hours. Etc.

You just cannot expect a person to stay focused monitoring something for more than couple minutes. You need to have systems to help them and mitigate the unavoidable lapse in focus. At the very least, they should've taken away her phone and made her narrate what she sees on record, while making her aware it will be reviewed and compared against video recordings afterwards.

They set her up to fail, so it's wise to ask what her role really was. Convenient scapegoat, organizational surge circuit breaker, ablative armor - it's a plausible explanation.

You just cannot expect a person to stay focused monitoring something for more than couple minutes.

It seems reasonable to expect someone to at least not be watching Hulu when they are supposed to be a safety driver. This wasn't a case of "the task was just too hard for a human".

e.g. see https://internetofbusiness.com/uber-safety-driver-watching-v...

The lidar saw Herzberg 6 seconds before impact, and there are news stories detailing email evidence that Meyhofer and others at UberATG intentionally made the perception system filter sparse lidar returns at the time (likely because they were having difficulty with trees). Today, Meyhofer and others have vested tens of millions in stock following the Softbank investment. While the safety driver was a factor in the crash, there is a gross amount of greed that was also a factor.

Has Uber improved since then? I attended an UberATG recruiting event where they showed a disengagement where they almost hit a little girl after she got off a school bus. (They were showing this because they re-created the scene on their test track and wanted to show they learned something). But in the perception video of the event they showed, you can clearly see there being lidar returns reflected off the school bus mirror, the system clustering them into an object, and the Uber car slowing down for this ghost object. The girl was saved by this false positive, probably not by the safety driver hitting the brakes. Uber does some interesting SDC research, but I would not feel safe being within 100 meters of any of their cars.

Also ex-Cruise here. Yes there have been accidents, and there are accidents every month or so-- just check the public DMV reports. A lot are minor, like other cars knocking the radars off the front of the car back when Cruise cars had radars that stuck out awkwardly. Some were worse though-- I've seen one where airbags deployed in the other car (other car was going very fast and rear-ended the AV). Cruise has not had an UberATG / Elain Herzberg -magnitude accident, though.

The cars have a handbook for safety drivers and the case is handled like almost any other accident. This system was put in place following the first accident that occurred near the SF courthouse years ago (safety drivers were hired following that crash).

What happens if there's no safety driver? Remote assistance is there, and the city is not a large place if you have to recover a wayward robot. I am not a lawyer; there will probably be some regulation eventually.

> The pandemic has seen the killing of Americans on our roads accelerate to the fastest rate in 15 years. Less traffic caused people to drive like idiots. More speeding, drinking and drugs. Fewer seatbelts.

I found this fact to be extremely surprising. Based on looking at daily traffic patterns, I would have assumed that there are fewer deaths on the road this year than previous years.

There's definelty been less deaths since driving has gone way down. Hes just saying the death rates are higher.

Just to be clear, this means there's fewer accidents but the ones the do happen are more fatal?

I would guess the accidents per mile driven could be up also, and if people are really reckless the deaths per mile driven and per accident could have risen

More deaths per mile driven.

It means fewer people are on the road and driving less, but the ones that are, are more likely to die.

For example:

You drive tipsy 1x/month after a party and commute every day. Your death rate is X.

During corona, you don’t commute, but still drive tipsy 1x/month. Your death rate is way higher. Maybe even 10X.

Crucially, your death rate per month remains unchanged.

PS: part of the effect is also lack of practice. You think your reflexes and skills are the same as when you drove daily. They are rusty.

This part kills a lot of middle age motorcyclists jumping back on the bike after 20 years.

The nature of vehicles is changing as well in a not great way. Trucks and SUVs are dramatically more dangerous to pedestrians than cars.

Really? I don't see how that is so. Because an average car still weighs 3000 pounds. And 3000 moving pounds versus 200 moving pounds is still more than 10 times difference in energy.

I have always felt that the way humans share space with any kind of vehicle is perilous from a physics standpoint, relative to other risks in daily life. I actually think there will be a new type of city where they are separated by physical boundaries, levels and/or bridges etc.

It's about the height of the bonnet. An SUV is taller and pedestrians are more likely to go under the vehicle, or (I'd have to check) hit their heads in the collision.

The degree to which mass death and disability by car is tolerated and assumed into the background is astonishing when one really thinks about it. https://jakeseliger.com/2019/12/16/maybe-cars-are-just-reall...

Why is this appearing as personal writing on Medium rather than as a press release from General Motors?

What do you mean by "personal"? It's on the Cruise blog.

I think OP was surprised that this was on medium.com/cruise/ rather than blog.cruise.com or blog.gm.com or some such.

It's a strange shift in branding that has occurred over the last 10 years of social media, where once companies were very cautious on branding and required everything to be on their own domains, but are now comfortable making announcements on platforms that are not self hosted (e.g medium, but also Twitter, FB etc)

> I think OP was surprised that this was on medium.com/cruise/ rather than blog.cruise.com or blog.gm.com or some such.

It’s probably easier to use medium than to go through all the red tape & endless delays involved in getting a blog set up at most enterprises.

To add: Medium used to have a custom domain option but has since disabled new blogs from using it - although just recently they said they're working on bringing it back.

https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003053487-Custo...

What about to use WordPress.com rather than Medium? I'm annoying to read on Medium.

It's a little strange that they didn't even mention in passing plans or even thoughts about single-passenger vehicles.

Because their sort of car-pool thing with no wheel or place for a driver is going to make people think twice at least with Covid right now. Maybe that's why Kyle's video is at the bottom and not mentioned in the article.

I feel like a big issue holding back small pod transport is the fact that vehicles are generally all designed for many passengers and 3000 pounds. And I think a big part of that is safety. The likelihood of death for a really small single passenger vehicle is just much greater with all of these massive cars on the road (generally with only one occupant).

In my mind there is room (especially in places like Texas) for new types of smart cities. And you can build them from the outset with autonomous single-passenger small pods in mind. In my scenario the regular vehicles would need to be parked away in a commuter hub and the transportation in the city would be fully automated. This will save a lot of energy with very small single passenger vehicles as compared to the 5+ passenger vehicles normally taken by individuals around town. And in this city there is no danger of the small pods running into a larger vehicle driven by a human since it's not permitted.

I am actually thinking some of these companies may be doing a redesign where the shared space of the pool cars are broken up into little airtight compartments. Personally I would prefer that even if there wasn't a pandemic.

There is actually so much to bear when it comes to relationship. No matter how good you are to them it doesn’t mean that they will treat you the same way. It's so sad to discover my woman whom I thought could be a back up but it seems I have been deceiving myself for months. I need to desperately know what she's been up to lately so I had to reach out to webhubghost (@) gmailcom who got so many truthful and amazing reviews on the internet to remotely get into her mobile phone. He got that done in a twinkle of an eye, the service was delivered perfectly I was able to see her whatsapp messages, call logs, text messages which was quite amazing and I figured she lied to me about all the money i sent to her and her mails were the worst I could ever imagine

It is incredibly courageous for Cruise to test this in SF. Perhaps the less crowded streets in SF is a good opportunity, but there are some tough street intersections to navigate. One example is the Townsend and 8th street roundabout near the Zynga office. It is a hodgepodge of cars, bikes, scooters, pedestrians all entering the roundabout at the same time. If there are any Cruise folks here, I am super interested in hearing their thoughts on handling an intersection like that. Also, SF has massively expanded biking infrastructure with quick builds throughout. These are incredibly well striped road, but you have to pay attention when the bike lane merges, especially while making right turns. I want to learn more on how Cruise can handle that

> Fewer seatbelts

Oh yeah that's totally my response to a quiet road, "hey kids, not much traffic, pop those boring old belts". Come to that how much of the USA actually allows people to not wear belts ? Surely not much ?

I would guess that it is more like parents tell the kids to buckle up, but they will leave the driveway and get to the end of the street before they check that the kids bucked up.

"navigating one of the most difficult driving cities in the world." .....cue laughter from anywhere, India

What does the vehicle energy source have to do with whether the vehicle is driverless or not? Why does this article seemingly conflate driverless technology with clean energy technology? Congrats to Cruise — more driverless vehicles & greener vehicles are a great thing, but I could have done without the activism.

The securities market.

Both are good. They're doing both. Might as well talk about both.

It's a marketing piece. They're not conflating technologies; they're enumerating their value proposition.

Is automating recharge easier than refill? What about the hundreds of extra watts of power consumed by the self driving brain (cpu gpu tpu)?

For some reasons investor type people tends to associate Lithium rechargeable battery with automation. Probably an inference from the fact that SDC stack prefers hybrids with linear acceleration, or could be another Kool Aid ingestion.

I think it's because both of those things (battery EVs and driverless cars) are assumed to be "the future of cars", so they've been conflated together as future trends for automotive technology. You probably have Tesla to blame for that, as the company is pursuing both, and everyone is looking at Tesla.

The technologies are orthogonal, but I do think it does make sense to pursue both of these things together. EVs are much more energy efficient. They will cost less energy to run. The choice to go to EVs also makes sense if you think about robotaxis, as EVs will require much less maintenance, they have much fewer moving parts.

You also have the environmental argument to consider. Gasoline-powered Uber rides are not environmentally friendly. The general assumption is that robotaxis will decrease the price-per-ride to the point where there will be a big shift towards less people owning cars, and probably also less people using mass transit. That will mean less people taking buses and more people in cars. If all of your robotaxis are EVs, this is less of a concern.

Alternative title: GM receives a permit to use the general public as unsuspecting guinea pigs in their potentially lethal experiments.

Lawd have mercy

Why is this allowed on public roadways and not confined to a lab until reasonable levels of safety (either via developmental process or time-in-service) can be demonstrated and verified by a regulatory agency? FAA wouldn't let fly a self-proclaimed 'safe' and fully autonomous aircraft around national airspace without such assurance. Why is this different?

Because what happened is exactly what you said?

Did it? Which agency audited and approved the development process? What was the basis for conformance (to what minimum standards are these vehicle systems said to meet)? What standards are used to demonstrate development and test compliance to that basis?

The article mentions they got a permit from the California DMV, so if you want answers to those questions I would start with the agency that issued the permit.

They got approved by California DMV. The procedure to get such an approval is section 227.38 of [1].

There is no audit or anything of the sort. It's just a form to fill where the company must certify that their car is good enough and they have certain processes in place to take remote control of the vehicle if needed, and to deal with an eventual accident.

> "The manufacturer certifies that the autonomous vehicles are capable of operating without the presence of a driver inside the vehicle and that the autonomous technology meets the description of a level 4 or level 5 automated driving system under SAE International's Taxonomy and Definitions for Terms Related to Driving Automation Systems for On-Road Motor Vehicles, standard J3016 (SEP2016), which is hereby incorporated by reference."

Basically anyone can get approved, as long as they can prove they can deal with the consequences (sufficient insurance coverage etc.).

It reminds me a little bit of the FAA letting Boeing certify the 737 Max themselves.

[1]: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/uploads/2020/06/Adopted-Regula...

Thanks for the context. So basically there is no audit or certification, just an assertion from the company.

FAA do let experimental aircraft fly

Over dense populated cities?

After enough flight testing, done solely by the aircraft builder/owner.

with extremely limited operation capability...because its experimental. Like, not where it has large risk of hurting others. Thats what I dont get about this experimental nonsense on public roads

Probably for the same reason that people who've never driven before are allowed to drive on public roads. The added danger isn't that high

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