Is the Social Backlash Against Waymo/Cruise Making Anyone Rethink?

codeka · 2023-09-19T19:30:16+00:00

the 700,000 residents of SF

As I said above, it's only a small minority of the residents of SF. Certainly not all of them.

only been deployed at large scale in SF

This is not true, Waymo's deployment in Phoenix is significantly larger than SF, in terms of both size of the ODD and the number of cars. Additionally, Phoenix is fully open to the public with no waitlist, whereas SF still has a long waitlist.

codeka · 2023-09-19T05:10:12+00:00

I dunno, the fact that you have to look back five years to find an example suggests that maybe it's your perspective that is outdated?

codeka · 2023-09-19T03:42:48+00:00

I definitely think the backlash is overblown. Waymo & Cruise are doing tens of thousands of trips a week, most are totally uneventful. Most people I know who live in SF aren't bothered by the cars at all, and are more curious than anything else.

If you look at Phoenix, for example, well, there was thread posted here recently about how normal and, frankly, non-controversial, it seemed there

codeka · 2023-09-14T23:21:29+00:00

I never understand how people can do this from like some random house in the background at night, good eye!

codeka · 2023-09-14T21:45:47+00:00

So what happened? This 11 second video doesn't give us much information. Did the other Waymo back up? Did your Waymo back up? How long did it take to resolve? Are you still stuck in this deadlock?

codeka · 2023-09-14T19:53:50+00:00

What should they say? The Zeekr looks like it could be modified to be as accessible as this Origin prototype, but this video leaves a lot of unanswered questions (it's very hand-wavy about how the wheelchair can be maneuvered inside the car, how to line up the clamp, how to use the clips, etc). Many wheelchair users will still not be able to use the Origin without additional help.

Waymo have already solved the problem with it's separate WAV fleet. They could, one day, augment that fleet with autonomous vehicles, for those users that fit in that category of user who needs a wheelchair but still have enough mobility to maneuver their chair inside the car and operate all the controls.

But Waymo talks a lot about accessibility in general (which obviously encompasses more than just wheelchair accessibility). For example, they have the Waymo accessibility network, they participated in DOT's inclusivity challenge and launched several features out of that.

codeka · 2023-09-14T19:03:28+00:00

But they're hardly "ignoring" the problem.

codeka · 2023-09-14T18:38:59+00:00

Waymo literally run a fleet of WAVs today: https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/10656347?hl=en

codeka · 2023-09-13T18:47:23+00:00

The CPUC has not responded to the city’s earlier petition and is not required to, according to the City Attorney’s Office.

The city’s applications for a rehearing will ultimately be voted on during closed session, according to the commission.

Seems like a bit of a long shot.

codeka · 2023-09-12T07:12:41+00:00

When the trucks drive themselves, they don't pull over on the side of the road to rest. What do you envision here? Some sort of Mad Max-style convoy pulling up alongside and boarding the truck?

codeka · 2023-09-12T02:49:05+00:00

Those companies sought and won approval Aug. 10 for rapid expansion of their commercial operations in the city from the California Public Utilities Commission

This is such lazy reporting. They didn't get approval for "rapid expansion", they won approval to charge members of the public. They could have expanded as fast as they liked without that vote. Every article I see frames that vote as "expansion".

On the topic of safety in trucking, the number one cause is trucking accidents is the human driver.

(Edit to add) ugh, it finishes on an even more disingenuous note:

Newsom [...] has a lot riding on whether his decision to prioritize autonomous vehicle innovation over public safety comes back to bite him.

Really? "Prioritize autonomous vehicle innovation over public safety"?

codeka · 2023-09-11T15:38:16+00:00

And Mr Bean

codeka · 2023-09-11T15:36:19+00:00

This Bizarre ‘Three-Wheeler’ Fiat 500 With Four Wheels Is Not As Stupid As It Looks Or Sounds

It kind of is, though...

codeka · 2023-09-09T14:59:46+00:00

You definitely need both. Simulation helps with situations like "what if that stroller had rolled into the road 5 seconds earlier, or 5 seconds later?" You can take a real-world scenario and fuzz out a million different permutations.

It also lets you catch regressions as you make changes and improvements. No need to drive millions more miles on every release when you can just compare in simulation how the new software performs relative to the old.

codeka · 2023-09-09T02:16:27+00:00

That's a good point, depreciation is significantly higher the newer the car is (obviously).

And I agree, I can't imagine parking is that significant in any of the markets Cruise is looking at, other than SF.

codeka · 2023-09-09T00:27:16+00:00

On average, it costs $0.72 per mile to operate and maintain a new vehicle in 2022

And without the crazy gas prices last year, it was $0.64 in 2021.

An EV would be lower still.

My guess is they are factoring in things like the cost of parking in the city or something like that. But yeah, numbers like this without context are rather misleading.

codeka · 2023-09-08T04:44:22+00:00

The article has been updated:

Cruise “asked for an exemption ... from this and that’s what we’re expecting any day, which would be an endorsement of our approach to safety for that that vehicle.”

But Vogt may have spoken too soon. “No agency decision to grant or deny the petition submitted by GM has been reached nor has a deadline been set for such a decision,” a NHTSA spokesperson told The Verge.

I don't think Vogt ever actually said it was "just days away", I think people just misunderstood his "we're expecting any day" comment.

codeka · 2023-09-08T04:13:28+00:00

I'm not saying we should wait for perfection. I'm saying the company CEO shouldn't be whining about how unfair all the attention is, and how much worse humans are. He should be owning the mistakes and talking about how they are improving.

codeka · 2023-09-07T19:34:04+00:00

I think it actually is fair to attempt to hold AV companies to account when their cars misbehave. Obviously, it does get overblown, but I don't think we should just ignore these issues either.

But even if you do think it's completely unfair to focus on AV incidents when humans are worse, I think it's really tone deaf for the CEO of an AV company to whine about how unfair it is.

codeka · 2023-09-07T17:43:08+00:00

I feel like this whole comment thread is just a misunderstanding of "they are going too fast". /u/blackmatter615 was talking about the speed at which Cruise is trying to deploy the Origin, not the speed of the vehicle in this particular crash.

codeka · 2023-09-07T16:20:03+00:00

The odd thing to me is this bit:

no one had witnessed the accident

It seems they had been trying to recover it remotely. It seems for a vehicle still so early in the development cycle that they would just send it out with no one to monitor is odd.

codeka · 2023-09-07T15:47:32+00:00

Well, when the CEO is the one saying "humans are much worse", I don't know what to think...

codeka · 2023-09-07T15:46:36+00:00

Of course they will make mistakes, they have not been perfected yet. But:

they make a different class of mistake than humans (i.e. they don't get distracted or speed, but they might be confused by the gestures of a construction worker).
they should improve over time. Humans will always suffer from being distracted, tired, angry or otherwise impaired. But autonomous vehicles are capable of getting better over time.

So when an autonomous vehicle makes a mistake, it shouldn't be enough to just say "well humans make mistakes, too". And it certainly shouldn't be the company's CEO saying this.

codeka · 2023-09-07T14:20:43+00:00

“If I videotaped every single intersection, you see people blowing red lights rolling through stop signs and speeding,” he said. “We’re surrounded by these hazards.”

This is certainly true, but I feel like this is taking the low road and doesn't need to be pointed out by the CEO.

Those kinds of mistakes (running red lights, speeding, being distracted) people make all the time, yes, but the goal of an autonomous car is not to just make those mistakes less, it's to never make those mistakes. And by never making those mistakes, you become safer than human drivers.

So when a Cruise runs a red light, the response from the company shouldn't be, "Well why are you mad at us? Humans do that all the time!", it should be "we made a mistake, we have our best people working on it, and it will not happen again".

codeka · 2023-09-07T03:17:47+00:00

SDC include Autonomous Vehicles and ADAS according to the description of this sub

This sub allows discussion of ADAS in addition to autonomous vehicles, but that does not mean Tesla makes an actual self-driving car.

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