San Francisco’s robotaxi experiment is getting out of hand | Hacker News Reader

San Francisco’s robotaxi experiment is getting out of hand

vox.com

19 pointsdotcoma18 comments

We just need better regulation. Why is it not clearly defined and communicated how, say, a firefighter can take control of a vehicle without having to call the company or break the window to do so? Also, how is it not required that x number of remote operators are ready to take over a car at any second when a car encounters an uncommon situation that makes the car pause or otherwise cause traffic problems?

Writing optimal regulation requires hard work and talking to experts, leaving behind cult-like religious ideological echo-chambers. Regulation will be written in such a way that it will neuter the entire industry unless we have good oversight.

We’re not at all at risk of self-driving cars being neutered forever. It makes more sense to start broadly, restrictively and aggressively regulating at this junction and slowly back it off as tolerated.

In the above example with firefighters, it would be simple enough to say “autonomous vehicles must have some way to be overridden and controlled by emergency services in <60s or less”. The specifics can be figured out by the companies. Once we have a better understanding of who is doing it well and how that works well, it can be expanded to a more detailed standard. We don’t need perfect to be the enemy of good, just just need to start regulating and be proactive about modifying it.

"Starting broadly", it's so over man. We're done. Repealing regulations is doubly harder than instilling them.

> Regulation will be written in such a way that it will neuter the entire industry unless we have good oversight.

We're only in this position because self driving car companies are failing to regulate themselves. It's not that far-fetched for large corporations to come together and participate in self-regulation so the government doesn't have to. Look at the MPAA or really any number of trade organizations out there today.

If cruise fucks it up, that's on them and not us. SF is more lax than most cities in allowing this sort of stuff in the first place, but there are no guarantees, especially if people start dying.

Christ, enough with the goddamn Regulation-as-a-Service solution. What we need is companies to not intentionally be a public nuisance, just to make a quick buck.

The purpose of regulation and regulatory enforcement is to make what would be lucrative nuisance behavior highly unprofitable for the offender.

For example, in the cases of shoplifting or selling fentanyl on the street, lack of enforcement-coupled-regulation leads to a wholly predictable rise in shoplifting and fentanyl street vending.

To say otherwise is just another kind of public nuisance for personal gain.

> What we need is companies to not intentionally be a public nuisance, just to make a quick buck

Unless you think companies will make this switch themselves (they will not), this is exactly what regulation is for. It's almost like you said:

"Christ, enough Regulation. What we need is regulation."

No I'm sick of the "What we need is better regulation" solution that's excreted as the first idea from this community. Except when it applies to whatever niche field they happen to work in, then it's "GET OUTTA MY WAY GOVUHMENT, I'm HERE TO INNOVATE"

How has regulation worked at fixing the rest of San Franciscos problems? If only we could pass a regulation that required them to work... That will solve the problem

I was in SF last weekend for the first time in years and honestly, the city seemed to be doing great. Less homeless and parks cleaner than I remember, transportation fast and easy to pay for as ever.. I'm sure there are huge problems still in SF, but by in large I can still understand why so many people still choose to live there.

The conversation about robotaxi and self driving cars reminds me the advent of Uber. One one hand there is a company with shady practices that breaks every relationship they can in every market, on another - a bunch of rent seekers and their political being afraid they business model is threatened.

In the end, it's the public that bears the costs.

For every instance of bad robotaxi driving given, I feel like I see humans do the same kinds of things almost every time I go out in my car.

I haven't ever seen cars from the same model all suddenly stop in the middle of the road for 15 minutes and refuse to move.

I see that pretty often with white Teslas at the airport

I saw a WayMo suddenly stop in the middle of a 5 lane one way street before reaching a complicated red light with marked turn only lanes, pause there, then back up all the way to a nearby alley entrance, then move forward again to the leftmost lane where it stopped at the red and then continued on when the light changed. Really can't understand what happened. It might be a complete navigation reset, but then it should still do sensible maneuvers to go around the block or something. Data on this weirdness must be collected, but of course they aren't sharing it as hey look what my crazy thing did. Seems like the whole experiment needs review and more rules. The goals are great, but the methods really matter a lot.

Sigh, more drama from San Francisco. Theft and homelessness are fine, but if perchance something makes it more difficult for you to drive, it is suddenly a catastrophe.

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