Comment by wolverine876 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wolverine876 | Hacker News Reader

> Two months ago, Kyle Vogt, the chief executive of Cruise, choked up as he recounted how a driver had killed a 4-year-old girl in a stroller at a San Francisco intersection. “It barely made the news,” he said, pausing to collect himself. “Sorry. I get emotional.”

...

> Cruise’s board has hired the law firm Quinn Emanuel to investigate the company’s response to the incident, including its interactions with regulators, law enforcement and the media. / The board plans to evaluate the findings and any recommended changes. Exponent, a consulting firm that evaluates complex software systems, is conducting a separate review of the crash, said two people who attended a companywide meeting at Cruise on Monday.

After the first [edit: the first performative charade, about little girl in a stroller], why should we trust the second isn't also a performative charade? What independence or credibility does some hired law firm have, that the company itself does not? How about using an independent third party?

Hmm? I saw it exactly the opposite. A lot of people in the autonomous driving industry are driven by exactly what Vogt describes (little girl in the stroller etc.). See also Chris Urmson of Waymo fame's TED talk, he talks about a similar motivation[1].

Its a fallacy everyone conveniently ignores. The woman the Cruise car ran over was actually first hit by a human driver who is still at-large, not a peep about him. The press kinda just accepts this as the "cost of doing business".

The way I see it, Vogt sincerely believes autonomous cars will make things safer from the #2 killer of Children under 19 (outside of guns) by a wide margin [2] and therefore accelerated the rollout past what was safe. I see no evidence otherwise.

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_urmson_how_a_driverless_car_...

[2] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761

We have become so desensitized to human deaths due to cars even though those numbers are higher than violent acts of terrorism et al that actually kill far fewer people each year.

Many people have to be killed AT ONCE for it to be news worthy these days.

In the US on average, there's a fatality every ~85 million miles driven, and that's an average that includes motorcyclists without helmets, old unsafe unmaintained cars, the worst roads, and adverse weather conditions.

Cruise barely drove a few million miles with new modern cars, good weather, the ability to choose optimal roads and weather, and yet it already severely injured a pedestrian.

We can argue about Cruise hitting the pedestrian, but reportedly, the major injuries were caused by Cruise, after reaching a complete stop, deciding it has to clear the road, and dragging the screaming pedestrian and ending with the axle over the pedestrian.

I'm not sure why you're comparing fatality miles vs no-fatality-accident-that-cruise-didn't-cause miles (i.e. we have no idea how safe Cruise would be if there were no human drivers on the road)

That's not even close to a fair comparison. We just have to admit that there isn't a fair comparison yet and everyone's just got an axe to grind.

> I'm not sure why you're comparing fatality miles vs no-fatality-accident-that-cruise-didn't-cause miles

Because it's not that everyone ignores road fatalities, it's just that cruise hasn't driven (in terms of miles amd conditions) nowhere near to what might result in a fatality with human drivers.

Even then, in an incident they've not initiated, they've unnecessariliy made an existing bad situation far far worse.

> (i.e. we have no idea how safe Cruise would be if there were no human drivers on the road)

Self-driving cars have to exist in a world with human drivers, pedestrians, and the rest of reality. No one cares how well Cruise does in a sterile environment.

They should not only not cause incidents, they should also not make existing incidents far worse because of terrible decisions.

“ They should not only not cause incidents, they should also not make existing incidents far worse because of terrible decisions.”

Just FYI, it made this terrible decision because people were mad at cruise for stopping in the middle of the road to decide if it was safe to proceed. They were asked to change that behavior and pull over and they did, this time just dragging a human along.

So yes let’s set these absurdly high standards, while we leave children to fend for themselves against human drivers that have met non-existent standards on a continual basis.

But then let’s actually leave the autonomous cars on the road to test if they’re actually meeting them.

As you agreed, some statistic they figure out in a sterile or simulation environment doesn’t actually matter. Let’s put them back on the road..

This is the problem with self driving cars. A human has the awareness to pull over when it's appropriate and also is able to recognize they just ran over somebody and it's best to stop completely. But AVs seem to just have a dumb if/else statement to control this behavior (yes, I know it is actually more complex than that, I work in this space. But that is how they behave).

Driving is infinitely complex. It's becoming increasingly clear that the current approach to AVs not up to the challenge.

A humans awareness is not constant. It waxes and wanes, even more so with cellphones in hand.

The status quo is indefensible so setting up moving unknowable goal posts for something to replace them doesn’t make sense to me.

This particular problem can be easily solved by cameras in the under carriage to make sure there aren’t humans shoved in there by other bad drivers. I wouldn’t mind making that a requirement across the board and moving on to the next challenge the unpredictability of human drivers throws at a repeatable robotic system.

There is no evidence that there is a magical different approach that will work better.

> A humans awareness is not constant. It waxes and wanes, even more so with cellphones in hand.

And even with supposedly* perfectly consistent awareness, the automation still failed catastrophically.

> The status quo is indefensible so setting up moving unknowable goal posts for something to replace them doesn’t make sense to me.

AVs are not better than the status quo, making them even less defensible. A human would not have drug that poor women for 20 feet because it was compelled to execute a pull-over maneuver. Even an OCD psychopath knows better.

* None of these things run actual realtime operating systems with fixed, predictable deadlines. Compute requirements can vary wildly depending on the circumstance. When compute spikes, consistency drops. A robot can only way approximate constant awareness by massively undersubcribing the compute budget.

"AVs are not better than the status quo"

We don't have the data to claim this, this confidently, and the only way to get the data is let the experiment keep running in the real world (only place that matters).

There will obviously with holes in the awareness (literal missing cameras under the car) that's what the testing is for. If someone says they can sit in a room, in a simulation environment and come up with all potential crazy things humans can do around autonomous cars, they are lying to you.

To me, its either this, or we pull all human drivers off the road, restructure our cities and put em on public transit (wholly support this).

I re-iterate: The status quo is unacceptable and indefensible. The human driver who actually caused the accident has still not been held to account (and probably never will be).

P.S: I accept your point about the system being non-realtime. Though I think there are some critical safety systems (LIDAR/RADAR cutoffs etc.) that might have a real-time response?

> We don't have the data to claim this, this confidently, and the only way to get the data is let the experiment keep running in the real world (only place that matters).

How about we start with something simpler: have Waymo, Cruise and their likes produce a rigorous safety case[1] arguing why their vehicles are safe.

Once the safety case is in the open, we can also evaluate how well their system satisfy the claims in the safety case, and if the assumption do not hold, we can stop the experiment.

They are experimenting on humans. The usual requirement is informed consent.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_case

This is just..more paperwork, but sure, highly unlikely that these companies don't have this report built internally already. And like I said, there will be scenarios not covered by it, because we simply don't know what they are and can't think it up.

But if we're doing this, lets also make human Drivers do this, and for real parity, make sure all human drivers are kitted out with all the same cameras and logging systems we ask of from autonomous car companies, auto submitted to the DMV.

Then analyze all the reports on an annual basis to see if the human and/or autonomous agent should be allowed to continue to operate on the road.

I think people forget that driving is not a right but a privilege, I agree that both humans and autonomous agents should earn this privilege.

P.S: If the claim is that a one-time DMV driving test is enough, then that should be enough for autonomous cars as well (I'm not making that claim)

> I agree, but if we're doing this, lets also make Human Drivers do this, and for real parity, make sure all human drivers are kitted out with all the same cameras and logging systems we ask of from autonomous car companies, auto submitted to the DMV.

Human drivers are the status quo. Once you consistently show that self driving can do better there would be a point in discussing that.

The problem is that you can't because such technology simply does not exist. There is no perception technology that is reliable enough. There is no prediction technology that is reliable enough.

To me it is obvious that Cruise and Waymo (and their likes) simply cannot withstand any serious scrutiny.

> P.S: If the claim is that a one-time DMV driving test is enough, then that should be enough for autonomous cars as well (I'm not making that claim)

The DMV driving test is just one element. We also know how human develop and what skills they acquire and when.

We don't let them drive until they're 15-17 (depending on local laws) because they lack certain abilities earlier than that. For example, humans acquire object permanance at around 24 months.

The Cruise incident shows that Cruise vehicles lack object permanance. They should not be elegible even for a DMV appointment.

“Human drivers are the status quo”

And I have REAMS of data showing how the status quo is unacceptable. Humans are impetuous, impatient, emotional, inconsistent and terribly distracted. Just a slow rolling, ongoing, widespread disaster on the road.

I have zero data (not anecdotes) to show that particular autonomous companies are somehow worse. They have object permanence btw (occluded object tracking is a thing), just not for their undercarriage (for now).

So either let’s come up with an objective set of metrics on a set timeline for them to meet and get legalized or let them back on the road so we can figure out what those metrics could be.

When automobiles with human drivers were growing we just let them grow, default accept.

I will vehemently oppose any suggestion that now we must be default reject.

> We don't have the data to claim this, this confidently, and the only way to get the data is let the experiment keep running in the real world (only place that matters).

I don't have to prove it. It's incumbent on the AV evangelists to prove they are better. I signed up to be a driver on roads with other humans. I have zero interest in being part of this experiment. Especially not when it comes out of silicon valley.

For an industry that claims to be all about safety and fixing how dangerous driving is, I expected them to be taking inspiration from Boeing and the commercial airlines. The remarkable, steadily improving safety record of the Airline industry should have been the paragon. Instead, they've copied the move-fast-and-break things playbook from the silicon valley tech bros. Which makes all of these claims hard to take seriously.

I didn’t sign up to walk and bike with human drivers either (in fact I fight it daily) but here we are.

Cruise took 8 years before putting its truly driverless car on the road. “Move fast and break things” is a laughable idea here.

I will happily accept the safety record of flying, slowly achieved over a century of actually flying in the real world

When I have talked to Cruise engineers, they use the phrase "Move fast and break things" regularly. They have said to my face that that is their culture. They are proud of it. That kind of culture is not how you get an aerospace-like safety record.

> A human would not have drug that poor women for 20 feet because it was compelled to execute a pull-over maneuver.

I know someone who was drug for several feet by a human driver who didn't realize he was under her car. He was very fortunate to survive.

I'm skeptical about AVs, and this was definitely a bad look for them, but your response gives far too much credit to people.

" A human would not have drug that poor women for 20 feet because "

Yea, it would probably be a lot more [1]. This is from...just last week. Its a pretty constant occurence. Its only in the paper of record because it happened in New York.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/26/nyregion/nypd-tow-truck-b...

"Mr. Hayes said that after the collision, the child’s mother chased the tow truck down the street, screaming that the driver had killed her baby."

> So yes let’s set these absurdly high standards, while we leave children to fend for themselves against human drivers that have met non-existent standards on a continual basis.

Looks like Cruise was well aware they are not even close to the average human driver when it comes to handling kids.

They didn't bother to tell us about that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38170848

> A lot of people in the autonomous driving industry are driven by exactly what Vogt describes (little girl in the stroller etc.). See also Chris Urmson of Waymo fame's TED talk, he talks about a similar motivation[1].

To me, that's evidence that it's performative. First, it's a talking point; it looks, smells, walks and talks just like typical corporate/industry framing and messaging, with even a 'think of the children!' line, and the redirection (from the safety of autonomous cars, the topic, to whatabout something else). Second, its repetition by Urmson is further evidence - that's how talking points work. Third, the public's reptition of it, in surprising detail, such as in your comment, is also what we'd expect. Finally, throw in some tears, 'I get emotional' lines, etc. (per the NYT article), and I don't know how it can be missed.

Could it all be legit? Anything is possible - including fully autonomous cars!

Whether the corporate honchos are "sincere" or not is wholly irrelevant to me (and frankly unknowable).

"Think of the children" is usually a vapid misdirect, except of course in the objective measurable leading cause of death right? So in terms of issues where "something must be done", this should be objectively pretty high.

Either we drastically reduce the number of cars on the road and restructure American society around public transit (I wholly support this), or we take the humans out of the equation by making things autonomous. Or some combination of both.

I dont care if this happens under some grand socialist program if we so hate corporations/industries, but it needs to happen yesterday.

The rest is just status quo protection which is unacceptable.

The culture of Silicon Valley dictates that any performative charade be taken completely sincerely. It is just what it is. People like Holmes and SBF naturally arising from this from the obvious incentives are just the cost of doing business is this cultural environment.

Independent third parties don't work for free and if you pay them (by your logic) they're no longer independent. The best you can probably hope for is a government investigation.

There are ways to do it. Non-profits don't need payment, always, and their mission isn't profit. For example, companies have worked with environmental non-profits on internal climate change and other issues.

> performative charade

How is it performative?

Is it not sad that a 4-year-old girl in a stroller got killed by a car? That it barely made the news?

Or is that just not sad and is normal these days?

It was a pretty huge news story actually (in SF). Kyle has a strong penchant for hyperbole.

Lots of sad things happen. Why is a sophisticated public communicator taking the time to tell this very self-serving story, tear up about it, etc.? It's not incidental; he prepared it.

Spare me your trolling.

Sorry you are so desensitized.

People like to say self driving cars are safer than human drivers - but the human drivers that tend to do the most unsafe antics seem to be the humans that are least likely to make use of self driving cars.

Seeing that they're the one who, if there were more alternatives (like those generated by low-cost taxi services enabled by autonomy) would be less likely to have licenses, I don't think this follows at all...

Cruise is trying to save itself from getting shut down by GM. I guess it would look slightly better for optics if the GM board hired them instead of Cruise’s board. But it’s the same money, and it’s GM’s decision at the end.

Can you explain what you mean by “after the first”?

Presumably they meant that the first paragraph they quoted looked to them like a "performative charade".

Yes. I'll clarify.

What would it have looked like if it had been sincere?

The first thing? He wouldn't have mentioned it at all. He would discuss the benefits and costs, without this now cliche talking-point framing that they repeat incessently. See my other comment for some quick explanation of talking points.

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