[HN Gopher] DMV approves Cruise and Waymo for commercial service...
___________________________________________________________________
DMV approves Cruise and Waymo for commercial service in parts of
Bay Area
Author : ra7
Score : 157 points
Date : 2021-09-30 19:12 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.dmv.ca.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.dmv.ca.gov)
| black_13 wrote:
| Auto-de-fe : Zelazney https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-da-
| Fe_(short_story)
| asdff wrote:
| Who is liable when someone gets hit with a self driving car? It
| was always a joke in college how the dream was to get hit by a
| university bus and have your tuition paid off in a huge
| settlement. I'd imagine if a waymo car made its way around the
| more desperate parts of the bay area like the tenderloin and
| liability ends up shifting to huge company with billions of
| dollars, we might end up with a Russia sort of situation in terms
| of rampant insurance fraud. Maybe waymo et al will just respond
| by never servicing these areas, which will no doubt open an
| entire can of worms in the press and among the most virtuous
| online.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| The cars themselves are studded with every kind of camera and
| sensor you can imagine, it'd be pretty hard to pull of an
| insurance scam
| notatoad wrote:
| >a russia sort of situation
|
| in russia the rampant insurance fraud ended in everybody
| getting dashcams to defend themselves. waymo and cruise have
| _way_ more than just a dashcam - if you can successfully commit
| insurance fraud while being recorded on a dozen cameras as well
| as lidar and infrared sensors, you probably deserve the
| settlement.
| asdff wrote:
| Set a mark, people will aim for it.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Who is liable when someone gets hit with a self driving
| car?_
|
| Short answer: in the U.S., it will depend on the facts and
| circumstances. Common law has many drawbacks. But organic
| adaptability is one of its advantages.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I mean, any pedestrian fatality will have a full 360 lidar
| recording of the context. I suspect fraudulent claims could be
| caught pretty easily.
| asdff wrote:
| How would you even discern fraud from the real thing? You
| could just get drunk and act drunker then stumble onto the
| road, you'd blow wet on the breathalyzer and the story is
| plausible enough that a public jury will side with you, the
| innocent guy on a night out or the guy down on his luck, over
| scary robot car company, then a precedent will be set.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Who is liable when someone gets hit with a self driving car?
|
| While this is not exclusive of other liability, probably one or
| both of:
|
| (1) The person hit, if they were breaking the law in a way
| which made it unreasonable to expect a driver to avoid hitting
| them,
|
| (2) The manufacturer of the self-driving vehicle, under normal
| defective product liability principles.
|
| The owner and/or, where different, operator of the vehicle, as
| well as other people in the chain of commerce may _also_ be
| liable, especially when (2) applies.
| amirhirsch wrote:
| Can this be used to move cargo from place to place without people
| in the car?
| Vargohoat wrote:
| Walmart already has a delivery pilot with an AV company (I
| think in AZ?). I'm not sure if it's without safety drivers yet
| though
| somehnacct3757 wrote:
| Given the hours of operation, I wonder what happens when your
| self-driving car shows up with puke in the upholstery from a
| previous rider
| joe463369 wrote:
| Open up your app. Hit 'Cancel ride', hit 'Unsanitary', wait for
| the replacement taxi. Really, it's the same problem Amazon had
| with delivering high value goods when people weren't in. If
| something goes wrong, assume the customer is telling the truth
| and try to make it right, but if they're at it, ban them from
| your service.
| bennyg wrote:
| I'm sure they have a process for "car unsafe" arrivals.
| asdff wrote:
| Ironic how by 'saving money' without the human driving the car,
| they end up probably spending a mountain more on engineers
| debugging this software constantly along with cleaning staff
| and maintenance for the entire fleet, legal staff for
| regulatory issues, and no doubt a huge insurance bill to pay.
| Sunk cost is a strong fallacy to see past I guess.
| bagels wrote:
| One driver, one car. One engineer, thousands of cars?
| cromka wrote:
| I don't think you grasp the scale of this change. You think
| that this "mountain of engineers" will equal to the
| (eventual) number of taxi drivers displaced? WORLDWIDE?
|
| Also, you think those engineers, capable of creating an
| autonomous car, somehow will find it too difficult to install
| liquid detectors all over the car and combine them with
| cameras inside to would allow for instantaneous, remote
| inspection of the car and imposing the penalties/taking the
| car offline - all of which are possible with existing
| technology?
| asdff wrote:
| All I'm saying is that when you look at other sectors with
| low cost labor, smart money like mcdonalds had the tech
| stack to replace their burger flippers with robots just
| like the auto industry in the 1970s, so there's probably a
| good reason why they still have human burger flippers
| today.
| jamez1 wrote:
| It is logical to assume self driving cars start off in low risk
| areas, prove their concept, and gradually take on more and more
| use cases. Things like retirement villages and so on, where this
| incremental approach has already had success. Skepticism is easy
| when thinking about the grand scale but this incrementalism will
| surely win out in the end.
| kvogt wrote:
| Cruise founder here. This is kind of confusing. Short version:
|
| - Cruise permit is for robo-taxi service, available to public
| (fully driverless, nobody in the car)
|
| - Waymo permit is for robo-taxi service, available to public
| (human safety driver behind the wheel at all times)
|
| - Nuro permit is for robo-delivery, available to public (no human
| passengers)
| guiomie wrote:
| will you not have a robo-taxi service with human safety driver
| at first?
| [deleted]
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| > The DMV has now approved three deployment permits.
|
| Waymo, Cruise, and who?
| tschwimmer wrote:
| Seems like Nuro.[0]
|
| [0]https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-
| services/auto...
| badkitty99 wrote:
| Get these robot cars off the road, no thank you
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| > The California DMV said in a separate release that Cruise
| driverless "vehicles are approved to operate on public roads
| between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. at a maximum speed limit of 30 miles
| per hour."
|
| At night only testing at super low speed. It's a good way to get
| started, but definitely not an autonomous taxi that title
| implies.
| grandmczeb wrote:
| The speed limit for most residential and commercial streets in
| SF is 25mph - something like 97% of all street segments in SF
| have a limit of 30mph or lower.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yes but it means a Cruise would not be able to jump on 280
| and take you to SFSU or whatever.
| jonfromsf wrote:
| Thats the easy part of self driving.
| [deleted]
| m463 wrote:
| I think one interesting property about nighttime driving is
| that lots of objects and markers are high contrast. Lights of
| other cars, highway markings, what can be illuminated by
| headlights/etc
|
| (aside from folks crossing the street in non-reflective dark
| clothing)
|
| I think the worst time to drive - as a human - is right when
| the sun is coming up or going down, or under tree cover when
| you go into and out of shadow.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Some recognition tasks might be easier at night but I expect
| that's not the reason permission was granted for those hours.
| It's almost certainly because there's less other traffic (and
| fewer pedestrians) at night.
| nielsbot wrote:
| Aren't they relying on LIDAR tho? Night/day all (roughly)
| same.
| cromka wrote:
| I'd imagine they use both to improve accuracy.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > I think the worst time to drive - as a human - is right
| when the sun is coming up or going down, or under tree cover
| when you go into and out of shadow.
|
| Fatal accidents do indeed spike around these times, although
| they seem to be worse in the evenings than mornings, and more
| pronounced in southern states than northern ones.
| Retric wrote:
| 30MPH isn't super low speeds, it's plenty fast for collisions
| to be dangerous.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| For reference, a fall from about 30ft would take about 1.4
| seconds and you'd reach a velocity of 30mph.
| vkou wrote:
| For car-pedestrian, car-bicycle, and car-motorbike
| collisions, yes.
|
| For car-car collisions, not really. Yes, getting into a head-
| on 30-30 MPH collision is pretty bad, but you're more than
| likely going to walk away from it, especially if you're in
| the back seat.
| [deleted]
| google234123 wrote:
| "Pitt et al. (1990) examined about 1,000 urban crashes with
| pedestrians younger than 20 years of age taken from NHTSA's
| Pedestrian Injury Causation Study (PICS) data. They found
| that, compared to crashes with vehicle travel speeds of 10
| - 19 mph, the risk of serious injury (or death) was 2.1 for
| speeds of 20 - 29 mph, 7.2 for speeds of 30 - 39 mph, and
| 30.7 for speeds of 40 mph or more."
|
| https://one.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/research/pub/hs809012.h
| t...
| mym1990 wrote:
| Have been a statistic in all of these buckets, can
| confirm that hitting things at faster speeds causes more
| injuries heh
| appletrotter wrote:
| Really not sure how valid this 30 year old study is
| anymore!
| bagels wrote:
| I think that is a good point, as materials and pedestrian
| safety features of cars have changed. Seems unlikely the
| relationship between speed and severity would change too
| though.
| zerocrates wrote:
| Presumably from the title it's about a car hitting a
| pedestrian... I doubt there's been much significant
| innovation in that kind of safety since the 90s.
|
| Features to prevent/alert to collisions, sure, but I'd
| assume this is about hitting someone when going X speed;
| surely that's pretty similar now and then.
| darwinwhy wrote:
| In fact it's probably gotten worse with the growth in
| size of US cars. Larger cars kill pedestrians and
| cyclists at higher rates.
| renewiltord wrote:
| There were active changes to cars to reduce pedestrian
| harm. The most visible is probably the ban of pop up
| headlamps.
|
| Not taking a position on the study. Just felt like
| sharing.
| tialaramex wrote:
| I actually bounced off a car with modern safety maybe 10
| years ago or so, trashed a good jacket but I wasn't even
| shaken enough to bother getting looked over at an Urgent
| Care, I continued walking to lunch. Not a high speed
| collision of course, it was a quiet inner city street and
| I looked the wrong way (one way street, I looked where
| cars should be if it was a two way street, oops), but I
| suspect a 1970s car would have been markedly worse for a
| pedestrian.
|
| One key trick other than the pop-up headlamps going away,
| was a gap between the bodywork and harder internal
| surfaces. As I understand it that goes something like
| this:
|
| Think about a large steel panel such as a car bonnet
| (hood?), obviously it's no comfort blanket, smacking into
| that isn't a good idea, but it will bend and absorb lots
| of energy during impact. Now, think about an engine
| block, that's not going to bend at all. In a desire to
| give a more stream-lined look, older cars would mount
| that large panel almost touching the engine block and
| other large stiff elements, because why not. Well, dead
| pedestrians is why not. If you add a gap that gap absorbs
| lots of energy that otherwise is going to cause injuries
| to a pedestrian. I can't prove it, but I credit that for
| the difference between walking away with a damaged jacket
| and spending the rest of my working day in A&E being told
| I'm not dying so can't cut to the front of the queue, but
| I'm also not OK and so mustn't leave yet.
| zerocrates wrote:
| Crumple zones (or their British English equivalent if
| there is one) are a definite change from "classic"
| designs but my feeling is they were mostly in place by
| the 90s... but I could be misremembering.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| There are also changes that increase pedestrian harm,
| like the arms race in the height of front ends of SUVs[1]
| and trucks.
|
| Recent trends in vehicle purchases also increase
| pedestrian harm, as the popularity of sedans has waned in
| favor of SUVs and trucks. These days 72% of vehicle sales
| are for SUVs and trucks[2], and the trend is expected to
| continue into the future.
|
| [1] https://www.codot.gov/safety/traffic-safety-
| pulse/2019/march...
|
| [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/business/suv-
| sales-best-s...
| akira2501 wrote:
| 1/6 of fatal accidents are vehicle vs. pedestrian. I don't
| have great data on motorcycles, but speed and or alcohol
| are the most common factors in those accidents as opposed
| to other vehicles.
| KorematsuFredt wrote:
| If it is San Fransisco city than 30 MPH is not bad at all. I do
| not imagine other cars driving > 40mph.
| spike021 wrote:
| People have been crushed and killed just when their stopped car
| starts moving because it wasn't parked in gear or with their
| parking brake engaged.
|
| Speed being "slow" or "fast" here is unrelated.
| stooliepidgin wrote:
| Anton Yelchin
| spike021 wrote:
| Exactly who I was thinking of as a well-known example.
| toufka wrote:
| Of course speed is related to safety. See page 2 for the
| actual data:
|
| https://www.littlerock.gov/media/2484/the-relation-
| between-s...
| spike021 wrote:
| My point, however, was that the parent poster didn't seem
| to think so.
| sfblah wrote:
| I signed up for the waitlist to use this in San Francisco. Anyone
| here work at Waymo and know when/if I might get approved? I'm
| curious to try it out.
| stooliepidgin wrote:
| Driverless cars with passengers operating on the streets with
| pedestrians, insane taxi drivers, and the prototypical BMW cell-
| phone-shouting suit with a buzz-cut who just drive around
| everyone like they're not there. How could this possibly go
| wrong?
| zabzonk wrote:
| How mad would you have to be to get into one of these?
| raldi wrote:
| This is what people once said about elevators, airplanes,
| bicycles...
|
| How mad would you have to be to keep riding in human-driven
| taxis after the data shows AVs to be safer?
| asdff wrote:
| Honestly for the early ones those people were right.
| raldi wrote:
| If, after a year of testing, autonomous taxis prove to be
| exactly half as dangerous as human-driven taxis, would you
| ride in one?
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| At 30mph max in the back seat with the belt on? Not that mad I
| reckon.
| zabzonk wrote:
| As opposed to having one with a human driver?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _As opposed to having one with a human driver?_
|
| Given some of my recent Uber drivers in the Bay Area, I
| reckon a blender would be a safer ride.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I dunno? I guess I'd have to look at the statistics. My
| sense is that the Waymo vehicles at least are statistically
| safer than a human driver at these speeds, although not as
| competent. (I.e. they are less likely to cause an accident,
| but more likely to encounter a situation they can't handle
| and get stuck.)
| asdff wrote:
| I'd love to see these vehicles handle situations where
| pedestrians or debris are all over the road. Like in
| front of a busy bar, construction area, or homeless camp.
| To the best of my knowledge the environments they've been
| test driving in have been pretty controlled and orderly
| and they still manage to find people to run over.
| EchoAce wrote:
| Wait, I see them everywhere in SF and in completely
| random places too...
| young_unixer wrote:
| For reference: 30 mph [?] 48.2 km/h
| mike_d wrote:
| "In order to receive a deployment permit, manufacturers must [...
| Develop] a Law Enforcement Interaction Plan that provides
| information to law enforcement and other first responders on how
| to interact with the autonomous vehicles."
|
| So they get to write the rules on how law enforcement interacts
| with their vehicles? Can I do that too?
| slownews45 wrote:
| Yes - you may be able to.
|
| This involves automatically pulling over and stopping the
| vehicle when a cop is behind the car and flashes their lights.
| The vehicle will also roll down its windows so the cops can
| access the interior of the vehicle and have easy access to
| passengers.
|
| This also links in rider support automatically to communicate
| directly to law enforcement / rider support can also provide
| various commands to vehicle then.
|
| They can also open a door, which triggers a an autonomos
| driving cutout. They can also contact these folks directly to
| gain access (ie, remote unlock etc).
|
| To retrofit your vehicle so that law enforcement has this type
| of direct access may take some effort, but I doubt you'd have
| much objection - there currently is a real issue with drive
| offs and law enforcements ability to respond to those under
| vehicle chase rules. If you can set up your vehicle to override
| your drive-off efforts that will probably be welcomed,
| especially if it pulls over, stops, can unlock doors to provide
| LEO access to your person etc.
|
| Separately, rider support can give permission for a vehicle
| search as the owner of the vehicle, so you'd want to register
| vehicle with a service that would give consent automatically
| and then provide instructions on where to find registration and
| insurance in vehicle. Waymo I beleive does it on the visors.
|
| I'm not sure you fully grasp the implications of Law
| Enforcement Interaction Protocol efforts. In the future, the
| car may be able to drive you to a "safe" location for a car
| search and your arrest.
| mike_d wrote:
| Which should be codified into law based on police
| requirements with an eye as to what is legal.
|
| Police procedures should not be developed by way of an
| agreement between the state and a private company, who is in
| a position to error on the side of cooperation because they
| need a license. It is similar to the state granting a
| locksmith a license to practice under the condition that law
| enforcement be provided with copies to every key just in case
| they need them.
|
| There are some serious Fourth Amendment considerations when
| traveling in a vehicle for hire without a driver. Is a Waymo
| closer to a private automobile with implied consent, or is it
| similar to a bus where you can deny consent to a search? Is
| the provider (or virtual driver) in a position to consent to
| a search of your property? Is the virtual assistant that
| opened the doors and consented to a search now in a position
| to be charged with transporting narcotics for distrubtion?
| Who's license gets dinged if the passenger has no seatbelt?
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Do you really think this is helpful (much less a charitable)
| interpretation?
|
| This is asking the manufacturers for a user manual, like how to
| disable auto-piloting etc.
| mindslight wrote:
| At a time when it seems that police are unwilling to
| interface with regular human drivers, to the point they
| suggest that drivers need to preemptively place both their
| hands on the wheel so officers don't become spooked, it's
| reasonable to ask why companies get to specify deliberate
| procedures. As in, why isn't the attack first and ask
| questions later standard good enough for them too?
| wutbrodo wrote:
| > to the point they suggest that drivers need to place both
| their hands on the wheel so officers don't become spooked,
| it's reasonable to ask why companies get deliberate
| procedures.
|
| I don't understand. Isn't "place both hands on the wheel,
| show me your license", etc precisely a "deliberate
| procedure"? It sounds like your complaint is that police
| are too procedural instead of engaging on a human level,
| but then you complain that theyre not _more_ procedural
| with humans?
| mindslight wrote:
| I'm talking about who is setting the procedures, not
| simply their existence.
|
| With autonomous vehicles, they're asking how to interface
| with them politely. Like if they signal one to stop and
| it's not stopping, here is a phone number to call where
| someone can gracefully shut it down. As opposed to just
| deploying spike strips or ramming as is their default.
|
| Whereas human drivers don't get the luxury of specifying
| any such protocols. And rather than reform their own
| procedures, police are attempting to compensate by
| creating protocols drivers are supposed to know and
| follow before an officer is even at the car.
|
| As a motorist I'd love to be able to choose a protocol
| that police would follow when pulling me over. Perhaps:
| call this phone number first rather than just walking up
| to me and risking yourself getting spooked and me getting
| killed.
| modeless wrote:
| Information, not rules.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| Has there been any attempts to make hybrid autonomous train-cars?
| Like some sort of enclosed road/track highway or a caravan? Seems
| like a more safe goal versus the chaos that is urban
| environments.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Electric trolleys existed in many cities in the past.
| asdff wrote:
| There are already automatic subway systems. You could make BRT
| autonomous pretty easily too since it runs on its own separated
| grade in a fixed route. You could throw down some sensors in
| the road surface and call it a day like the technology used in
| the new disneyland star wars ride.
| apendleton wrote:
| As another responder said, lots of subways are autonomous, but
| if you're thinking of a car- _sized_ thing on a train guideway,
| these have been proposed but only a small number of actually
| been built:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit
| gumby wrote:
| The point release says they have issued three permits. Which is
| the third?
| czr wrote:
| nuro https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-
| services/auto...
| gumby wrote:
| Thanks. I see them driving around the neighborhood but
| haven't noticed anyone in the back seat, driver only.
| Animats wrote:
| Nuro has little self-driving delivery vehicles. But someone
| has to come out to them and take the stuff out, so they're
| not all that useful.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Hm. Not sure I would say that... there really isn't a one-
| size fits all unloading mechanism across trucking/delivery
| and there will be a human involved in that process till we
| really really standardized.
|
| The value is now cutting the labor number by 1/3rd. Need a
| loader and unloader, no more driver. In food delivery this
| essentially removes your labor cost since the restaurant
| and consumer are the loader/unloader.
| philovivero wrote:
| Zero comments?
|
| When the robotic overlords take over, it will not be to
| thunderous applause nor loud protestations, but rather quietly
| beneath the surface silence of billions of people distracted by
| something more interesting or enticing.
| reidjs wrote:
| It's self driving cars, not autonomous governments. Considering
| how distracted and impaired the average driver is, this might
| be a godsend.
| Falling3 wrote:
| You think no comments within 20 minutes of posting is enough to
| make that kind of claim over?
| yalogin wrote:
| > Verifying the technology is capable of detecting and responding
| to roadway situations in compliance with the California Vehicle
| Code, and a description of how the vehicle meets the definition
| of an SAE Level 3, 4 or 5 autonomous technology.
|
| How does the company prove this? Are there detailed criteria
| listed somewhere that these companies should then prove to meet?
| AFAIK, its all self reported. I mean, if the company is confident
| it can do it, I guess it's a good thing, but is it enough?
| sykseh wrote:
| Johnnycab: Hello I'm Johnnycab, where can I take you tonight?
| Doug Quaid: Drive, drive! Johnnycab: Would you please repeat the
| destination? Doug Quaid: Anywhere, just go, GO! Doug Quaid: SHIT,
| SHIT!!! Doug Quaid: SHIT, SHIT! Johnnycab: Im not familiar with
| that address, would you please repeat the destination?
| tlb wrote:
| Having to verbally specify your destination address was always
| a lousy UX. Uber's UX where you enter it in an app is much
| better and allows using your address book, upcoming calendar
| entry, or searching by name.
| obilgic wrote:
| > https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1442706542839701510
|
| And Tesla is rolling out FSD beta to cars based on drivers'
| safety score.
| esturk wrote:
| Marketplace actually had a segment this morning on this and why
| it's misleading. https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-
| tech/teslas-fu...
| adfrhgeaq5hy wrote:
| Have you watched the footage of the current "beta"? It's a
| scam. It runs into stationary objects. It drives into oncoming
| traffic. It runs red lights, makes illegal turns, drives
| straight toward other cars, and can't stay on the road. And
| that's footage _recorded and edited by Tesla 's biggest fans_.
|
| "Full Self Driving" does not exist. Every indication is that it
| never will.
|
| I still can't believe no one's gone to prison over this.
| Tesla's "self driving" features are probably the biggest fraud
| in history with a body count to match.
| dzader wrote:
| lol
| colinmhayes wrote:
| People are terrible at driving. Releasing a half baked
| product to get data needed to improve it makes complete sense
| and deserves to be encouraged, even if people die. Because it
| the end it's likely that many lives will be saved.
| adfrhgeaq5hy wrote:
| You don't get to smash a 4,000 pound explosive into a
| preschool because you want to gather data.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| If that data saves more lives it seems like a positive to
| me.
| adfrhgeaq5hy wrote:
| If you ever find yourself in a position of power, please
| write these thoughts down. The prosecutor will find them
| helpful.
|
| We aren't dealing with hypothetical scenarios here. We
| are dealing with a real company that is really killing
| people in cold blood. People do not have the right to
| kill others because they guesstimate it's worth it. On
| planet Earth, not planet PH101, that's called murder.
|
| And that's being charitable. I don't believe for a second
| that Tesla's victims are sacrifices for the greater good.
| Tesla's technology is a dead end and the motivation is
| pumping the stock price.
| gibolt wrote:
| The difference is scalability. Tesla can manufacture full
| equipped vehicles faster and for much cheaper. There are also
| already 1.5mil vehicles that could be turned on. They do not
| rely on HD maps.
|
| Even if they arrive 1-2 years later than Waymo/Cruise, they can
| quickly dominate the driverless market.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| > Even if they arrive 1-2 years later than Waymo/Cruise
|
| It's tough to anchor Tesla's arrival based on the rest of the
| industry's progress. Cruise and Waymo are heavily dependent
| on Lidar; Tesla is solving a fairly different technological
| problem.
| ra7 wrote:
| > Tesla can manufacture full equipped vehicles faster and for
| much cheaper. There are also already 1.5mil vehicles that
| could be turned on.
|
| This sounds like premature optimization. The real unsolved
| problem here is autonomous technology (software and
| hardware), not manufacturing equipped vehicles. No point
| having millions of vehicles if your self driving technology
| doesn't actually work.
|
| > They do not rely on HD maps.
|
| Precisely why FSD doesn't work and is still level 2. The AV
| players have shown fully autonomous driving needs HD maps and
| (inconspicuously) the only one not to graduate out of level 2
| self driving is the one that's not using HD maps -- Tesla.
| Creating/maintaining HD maps isn't nearly as hard as you
| think it is, but the benefits are incredible for safe
| driving.
| [deleted]
| serioussecurity wrote:
| Tesla is 5 years behind and has no plans to begin work on a
| number of the key challenges they're facing.
| cheeze wrote:
| What does this mean? Hasn't Tesla been selling FSD beta for
| like 5 years now?
|
| I don't really trust anything Elon says anymore. I feel like
| he's not followed through on commitments about FSD far too many
| times. I'd personally never buy a TSLA until they get things
| much more in order (build quality/fit and finish, and actually
| deliver FSD)
| jsight wrote:
| This version is much more advanced than their previous
| versions, but I generally agree with you. Its nowhere close
| to being able to get you through most drives without
| assistance.
| dcow wrote:
| For the vast majority of people Tesla's vehicles are a
| practical, real, available, easy, modern, electric, car
| experience that are _a near drop in replacement_ for ICE
| vehicles because you can road trip with them. There are zero
| competing offerings _available today_ that have the range of
| a Tesla and an extensive associated integrated hi-amperage
| charging network. The only gripe is that FSD hasn 't been
| delivered on the projected timelines (and may never be). I
| suspect you wouldn't buy a Tesla based on moonshot FSD claims
| anyway, so what's holding you back? The Elon hate train?
| rsj_hn wrote:
| The reason why "the vast majority of people" are not
| considering purchasing an electric vehicle have to do with
| uncertainty about the charging experience and long term
| maintenance and repair costs. It has nothing to do with
| FSD.
|
| Once the costs of ownership are well understood, that
| uncertainly will be resolved and the cars can be priced
| correctly. That will take time -- if I buy a 10 year old
| corolla with 100K miles I will know (after the usual
| mechanic inspection) what my expected maintenance costs
| will be, on average, for the next 5 years of ownership.
|
| You can't really say that for an out-of-warantee Tesla
| because there isn't a large group of independent mechanics
| that can service it and because there is a lot of
| uncertainty about the battery life and service costs. Over
| time, if Teslas remain popular, and if the company doesn't
| DRM them out of existence, such networks will develop and
| we will accumulate actuarial data on repair costs that will
| reduce risk.
|
| Until then, this market will remain primarily one of price
| insensitive or risk-insensitive customers -- e.g. wealthier
| people and possibly government or other large corporate
| fleet sales. That is exactly what you would expect for new
| technologies. But for most people, a car is a major
| proportion of their networth, one they need to get to work,
| and so they are going to be risk averse (which is exactly
| what they should be).
|
| My next car will most likely be a 10 year old Lexus or
| Acura product. Even if it's a different manufacturer it
| will be an ICE vehicle and not an electric vehicle.
| Purchasing an out of warranty Tesla isn't remotely close to
| a viable option as it's not possible for me to price it.
| But used car prices drive new car prices because most
| purchasers are not planning on driving the car until it has
| zero value, they are counting on the used car market to pay
| for half of their car purchasing costs. Really for new
| technologies, Tesla should focus on leasing their cars if
| they want to reach out beyond the price insensitive market.
| dcow wrote:
| I'm suggesting that people _are_ buying Teslas. I
| honestly can 't go on a 5-10 min drive these days without
| seeing one or two (more and more every week it seems
| like) and I don't live in some particularly affluent
| upper-middle-class area. Buying them just makes sense to
| a lot of people for various reasons. Most aren't worried
| about FSD and the track record so far for Tesla total
| cost of ownership seems to lean in Tesla's favor. The
| motor in a Tesla literally has one moving part... they
| don't need regular maintenance like an ICE engine with
| lubricants and sparkers and belts and fluids and
| transmissions. Even the brakes don't wear the same way
| because induction is breaking the car 99% of the time.
| The only big question for me is when does the battery
| lose so much charge that it affects the range quality of
| life and if that were to happen does the price of
| replacing it make sense (I am generally pretty optimistic
| that battery prices will have dropped in 8 years) or does
| it become a shorter range around town car (kept or sold
| as such) and we get a new one with fresh range. Even at
| half the range it's still directly competitive with all
| other EVs out there today, so that's a thing too.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| What percent of car owners drive Teslas? There are ~300
| million vehicles on the roads in the US. Pre chip
| shortage, ~17 million new cars sold each year. Of those,
| electric vehicles are what, 2% of the new car market and
| ~0.6% of the total market (used car market is twice as
| large as the new car market)? That is not "the vast
| majority of people".
|
| Where I live I see FJ cruisers, Porsches, and Bentleys
| every day, but I understand that my area is not typical.
| It's a wealthy area in which offroading is very popular.
| I also see Teslas and BMWs (more Mercedes than BMW and
| more BMW than Tesla).
|
| I also understand that those cars tend to be more
| memorable, so it's foolish to pretend that FJ Cruisers,
| Porsches, or Bentleys are suitable for _the vast majority
| of the public_ just because they seem suitable for many
| people in _my area_. In the same way, perhaps you should
| recalibrate your expectations as well when extrapolating
| based on what you see in _your_ area.
|
| Now what prevents a Porsche or Bentley from being
| suitable is that these are for niche performance or price
| insensitive markets. But what prevents something like the
| Tesla from being suitable is the charging network and
| repairability uncertainty. With a Bentley, you know you
| will pay through the nose for repairs which is why
| Bentleys depreciate so massively. But with Toyotas you
| know their reputation for durability, which is why used
| FJ Cruisers cost more than used Bentleys. But how much
| should a used Tesla go for? I honestly don't know -- and
| neither does anyone else right now. Unless you have a lot
| of money to play around with, that's too much of a risk.
| You don't spend 15-20% of your household net worth on
| something that you can't price.
| m463 wrote:
| The "safety score" is a really really creepy thing. Not only
| that they are using it for this, but that they're collecting
| this data in the first place.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Uh, they only collect if you literally approve it on a full
| page popup that explains what the safety score is and how
| data is shared.
|
| Just to clarify your position, you want to hand over beta car
| driving software to people that do not first pass a test for
| safe driving?
| basisword wrote:
| Nobody can drive a car without passing a test demonstrating
| they can drive safely. If passing the government approved
| driving test doesn't make someone good enough to use your
| software it probably shouldn't be allowed on the road.
| EastOfTruth wrote:
| Tesla is getting some real competition
| brianwawok wrote:
| You can buy the Waymo software as a consumer, and put it in
| your own car right now?
| EastOfTruth wrote:
| no but I can't do that with Tesla software either .... I
| can with comma.ai though....
| adfrhgeaq5hy wrote:
| I'll sell you a self-driving car. Please be advised that it
| will drive into walls, fail to brake for stationary
| obstacles, drive straight off the road, and is in fact a
| Saturn with a brick on the gas pedal. I didn't say it was a
| _good_ self-driving car.
|
| Tesla doesn't have competition because they aren't in the
| game at all. They do not make self-driving cars and
| probably never will.
| EastOfTruth wrote:
| eventually, you won't have to buy a car... there will be
| self-driving cars everywhere waiting for you to hop on.
| modeless wrote:
| Huh, Cruise got a permit for "between 10 PM and 6 AM" up to 30
| MPH, while Waymo got no time limit and 65 MPH. Presumably
| Cruise's permit is actually for the 6 AM to 10 PM time period and
| not the 10 PM to 6 AM one!
| mindslight wrote:
| Why presumably? 10PM-6AM is a much easier time to drive around.
| And it's not like they'd be going for daylight hours the other
| way.
| modeless wrote:
| Well, because this is a permit for commercial service, not
| testing. They already have a testing permit. A commercial
| service that only operates in the middle of the night would
| not be very successful.
| [deleted]
| toast0 wrote:
| A commercial service in the middle of the night would be a
| great complement to scheduled public transit which tapers
| off in the evening.
| modeless wrote:
| Public transit tapers off because demand drops off. There
| will be a spike around closing time for bars but it seems
| unlikely that you'd want to launch a whole commercial
| service just based on that.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Presumably, they want to launch a commercial service to
| get some real-world data and a foot in the door; the
| intent is to expand both time and geography.
| bradlys wrote:
| > Public transit tapers off because demand drops off.
| There will be a spike around closing time for bars but it
| seems unlikely that you'd want to launch a whole
| commercial service just based on that.
|
| Public transit is also based on an order of magnitude
| larger transport. You're talking about buses that are
| made to move 50-100 people or trains made to move
| hundreds... not a car that will be moving 1-3. The reason
| many routes get cut down isn't because there's no demand
| at all - it's because the demand is below the threshold
| to run the service profitably. If you can cut down on the
| cost to run the service by cutting the driver out, making
| the vehicle cheaper to run the route, and so forth... the
| route will come back.
|
| I think this service will do fine. This is one the issues
| that SF has in a large part. Very hard to get around at
| night because public transit is dead before midnight.
| simfree wrote:
| Busses rarely run at a profit, if your metro service is
| very lucky user fares cover half the cost of bus service
| (lookup farebox recovery ratio), hence some US bus
| systems going fare free since it makes a minimal
| difference financially.
| bradlys wrote:
| > Busses rarely run at a profit
|
| Semantics. Profit, net zero, sustainable with tax
| dollars, etc.
|
| Doesn't matter. You get the idea dude. It's about routes
| not being worthwhile because the damn transport option is
| too costly for just a few people. Autonomous car is gonna
| be more effective for these scenarios.
| loeg wrote:
| Sure, but they still care about cost and utility.
| toast0 wrote:
| Rather than profitability, perhaps the right metric is
| utilization.
|
| Even if you don't care about the revenue, having only a
| handful of people on the bus per run in the evening makes
| it hard to justify the cost of operating the line. Having
| other options to get home is great.
| Vargohoat wrote:
| > it seems unlikely that you'd want to launch a whole
| commercial service just based on that.
|
| You're thinking about this the wrong way. There's immense
| value in getting _any_ commercial service out there, not
| just in PR but in a full end-to-end test of all the
| ops/logistical/product/etc that come from having to deal
| with customers in reality. A good chunk of a decade and
| billions of dollars have been poured into the research
| behind these services. I doubt anyone at Cruise or Waymo
| cares or even expects these limited services to be
| profitable, but that's entirely missing the point.
| oblio wrote:
| > great compliment
|
| Great complement. Otherwise your comment becomes very
| confusing :-)
| Vargohoat wrote:
| > A commercial service that only operates in the middle of
| the night would not be very successful.
|
| I doubt they're going straight for the meatiest market. A
| commercial service of any sort would be a huge coup for a
| self-driving car co (as the Tempe launch was for Waymo). In
| SF's case, it also provides a foothold in a market that's
| actually economically sustainable. Once the technology
| reaches the point where more complex and crowded scenes can
| be handled safely, expanding is relatively trivial compared
| to spinning up from scratch.
| mindslight wrote:
| I see where you're coming from. Although it could still be
| a type of scale-up testing or congestion control. What
| would be the point of not permitting overnight service
| though?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _commercial service that only operates in the middle of
| the night would not be very successful_
|
| 10pm to 6am covers late evening to last call.
| bberenberg wrote:
| Waymo has a safety driver, Cruise does not.
| bagels wrote:
| They have recently been operating without one.
| flappysolutions wrote:
| They've been operating without safety drivers in Phoenix,
| but not in SF. AFAIK, every Waymo car in SF has had a
| safety driver in it. Cruise has been testing driverless
| rides the past few months in that timeframe/speed limit.
| modeless wrote:
| This release does not indicate a requirement for Waymo to
| have a safety driver. I don't think there is such a
| requirement.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Why does night seem less likely? I'd expect many of the sensors
| work equally well or better (no sun interference) at night, and
| there will be a lot fewer other cars to crash into/cause a
| traffic jam when the car shuts down and has to be recovered.
| colpabar wrote:
| > _Cruise in March submitted the applications for driverless
| operations, whereas Waymo in January applied for autonomous
| vehicle deployment with safety drivers behind the wheel._
|
| Wow, driverless actually means no driver here. But how does that
| work? What if it makes a mistake? Is there some fallback pilot
| somewhere that can take over and control it remotely?
| tacomonstrous wrote:
| According to the DMV press release (submitted elsewhere on HN),
| this is incorrect:
|
| >Waymo is authorized to use a fleet of light-duty autonomous
| vehicles for commercial services within parts of San Francisco
| and San Mateo counties. The vehicles are approved to operate on
| public roads with a speed limit of no more than 65 mph and can
| also operate in rain and light fog. Waymo has had state
| authority to test autonomous vehicles on public roads with a
| safety driver since 2014 and received a driverless testing
| permit in October 2018.
| [deleted]
| icyfox wrote:
| Waymo has a similar approach in Phoenix. Passengers can't
| directly intervene but can call tech support and they'll
| dispatch roadside assistance to override the car and drive it
| to safety. Will be interesting to see if Cruise copies this
| same model.
| kreeben wrote:
| >> can't directly intervene but can call tech support
|
| "Hi, yeah, car's gone berserk, we're approaching a river, all
| doors are locked, can't get out, need assistance."
|
| "Hi, thank you for calling. Please hold (your breath)."
| raldi wrote:
| What would be your plan if a taxi driver went berserk and
| did that?
|
| What makes you believe the autonomous car is more likely
| than a human driver to do that?
| mountainboy wrote:
| 1. not get in the car in the first place. unless proven
| out by 10+ years of human guinea pigs not getting killed.
|
| 2. life experience, software expertise, common sense.
| thenewwazoo wrote:
| Lots of people used to feel this way about automated
| elevators.
|
| https://medium.com/swlh/what-do-self-driving-cars-and-
| elevat...
| tialaramex wrote:
| Right, it's eerily similar. People say this about
| automated railways too. And as with the elevator on your
| hundredth trip you are not thinking "Oh no, this is
| automated, it might kill me", because _of course_ it 's
| automated, you're thinking about whether Jim meant to
| complement you or it was intended as an insult last
| night, and did you bolt the back door?
| ggreer wrote:
| I've tried to find the original source of that claim and
| come up missing. All of the online articles either don't
| reference a source or they eventually link to an out of
| print book.[1]
|
| At this point I'm pretty sure it's not true. If past
| public sentiment was so against automatic elevators,
| there would be at least one newspaper clipping or
| digitized article.
|
| 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25585122
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Wait, when in the history of taxis were there 10+ years
| of humans not being killed by taxi drivers?
|
| Certainly not any _recent_ (consecutive) 10-year period.
| dhosek wrote:
| It's pretty rare though. It's far more likely that the
| taxi driver will be killed by a passenger.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Isn't Waymo also starting the same service in parts of San
| Francisco?
| asah wrote:
| with safety drivers = not the same
| shkkmo wrote:
| Nope, they announced driveless bay area testing several
| weeks back. A recent press release confirms this. [0]
|
| Waymo is allowed to test at all hours, in rain and light
| fog, within a limited geographic area.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28710098
| andrewnc wrote:
| Anecdata here, but every waymo car I've seen here in SF
| for the past several weeks (probably 30+ cars) has had a
| safety driver.
| godelski wrote:
| Didn't they have "chase" cars in the beginning? Maybe I'm
| thinking of a different company. Cars that would follow
| around the driverless cars and could respond immediately if
| something happened.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Waymo also has remote driving navigators/coaches who don't
| directly steer the car, but can tell it where to go
| navigation-wise.
| dobs_bob wrote:
| How long does it take the "safety driver" to react at 65mph?
| wutbrodo wrote:
| Per TFA, they're limited to 30 MPH and will not have safety
| drivers.
|
| And obviously the launch is conditioned on regulators' belief
| that the system can handle reacting, to a degree of safety
| that's similar to human drivers: otherwise they wouldn't get
| the permit. The reaction time of safety drivers is not what
| this approval pivots on.
|
| Though obviously the interesting question is: how did the
| company and the regulators get to this level of confidence in
| the system's safety
| matttb wrote:
| They are referring to the multiple parts in 'TFA' talking
| about Waymo using safety drivers and a 65mph limit.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| Ah, thanks for clarifying. That makes way more sense.
|
| BTW, you seem to have been reading TFA as some sort of
| snark. It's a pretty well-established bit of internet
| jargon that's (at least in my experience) more winking than
| aggressive at this pt.
| unchocked wrote:
| Between the noise of self-driving singularlists, and that of
| self-driving impossibilists, it's great to see plodding,
| sequential progress like this.
| Animats wrote:
| Yes. I've been saying that for a few years, as Waymo's
| disconnect rate improved by a factor of 2 every 18 months or
| so. This is a hard engineering problem. Now that the "fake it
| til you make it" clowns have dropped out, there's real
| progress.
| ddp26 wrote:
| The _reported_ disengage rate has improved a lot, but Waymo
| only reports disengagements it classifies as "related to
| safety", based on proprietary analysis and counterfactual
| simulations it does not share.
| kstrauser wrote:
| What's the "disconnect rate"?
| exporectomy wrote:
| Disengagement rate.
| klodolph wrote:
| I believe it's how often the system requires human
| intervention... e.g., once per 1,000 miles, or once per 250
| hours, or something like that.
| oblio wrote:
| I think most reasonable people aren't against self-driving,
| they don't consider it impossible.
|
| They're generally against "create a self-driving startup in
| 2021, IPO by 2024 at the latest". That's just snake oil
| salesmanship.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| Also against the "move fast and crush into things, and
| people" attitude some of them have.
| smegcicle wrote:
| that's one way to both increase and decrease the homeless
| population
| gfodor wrote:
| Robocars shuttling around actual people in SF at night in 2021
| seems like it should surprise a lot of people who have been
| skeptics. The road to full, global, universal autonomy will
| probably take decades if we are going to use that as the
| standard, but the standard of being certain that autonomy will
| eat the world seems to be getting very close to being met.
| mountainboy wrote:
| until the first pedestrian gets killed...
| summerlight wrote:
| Tesla already did it. No one seems to care?
| notatoad wrote:
| I don't remember in incident where a Tesla killed a
| pedestrian?
|
| I know Uber did, and now they don't have a self-driving car
| program anymore. not necessarily causation, but it can't
| have helped.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> not necessarily causation, but it can 't have helped_
|
| I do think it was causal: when the official report came
| out it was clear that their system was completely
| inappropriate for autonomous driving.
| https://www.jefftk.com/p/uber-self-driving-crash
| jlmorton wrote:
| Because we don't know if it did it. All we know is that a
| Tesla was involved with a fatal crash involving a person
| changing their tire on the Long Island Expressway. [1]
|
| There's been no confirmation whether Autopilot was enabled.
|
| [1] https://apnews.com/article/technology-
| business-6127ae797c528...
| summerlight wrote:
| Just in case you're not aware of, Tesla has a long
| history of fatal cases driven by Autopilot[1] with the
| first case below: This entire incident
| occurred without any actual input or action taken by the
| driver of the Tesla vehicle, except that the driver had
| his hands on the steering wheel as measured by Tesla's
| Autosteer system. Indeed, the Tesla Model X was equipped
| with an Event Data Recorder (EDR) which is intended to
| enable Tesla to collect data and record information from
| its vehicles and also provides information on various
| processes of the vehicle's functioning systems when a
| crash occurs. The information regarding vehicle speed as
| extracted from the Tesla Model X provides proof of the
| foregoing facts[2]
|
| [1] https://www.tesladeaths.com/ [2]
| https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/04/Te...
| peter422 wrote:
| >10 pedestrians are killed each year by human drivers in SF,
| and almost exclusively they are the drivers fault (not only
| by definition, but also based on an impartial assessment of
| the situations).
|
| People will not care, and I also do not think these automated
| cars are going to kill any pedestrians anyways.
| DamnYuppie wrote:
| Agreed most people will not care. The legacy auto
| manufacturers and their mainstream media lap dogs will jump
| all over it. There will be an outpouring of fabricated
| outrage. It is all so predictable I want to puke.
| jjulius wrote:
| Take a deep breathe, you're going to be OK.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| The legacy manufacturers are pretty invested in the self-
| driving space at this point though, no? Cruise itself is
| owned by Honda and GM, among others. I believe waymo has
| similar investors.
|
| I think we'll see a situation more like nicotine vapes.
| Instead of trying to crush the industry, big cigarette
| manufacturers just bought them.
| amznthrwaway wrote:
| You "want to puke" because of a response to a problem,
| where you're simply imagining both the problem _and_ the
| response?
|
| Calm down.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| > People will not care
|
| I don't believe that.
|
| One pregnant woman gets hi, and she and her unborn child
| die, and there will be so much anger and pressure on the
| politcians, everything will get outlawed.
|
| Human drivers are individuals... John Doe killed someone,
| blame John Doe. Autonomous car kills someone, blame all
| autonomous cars!
| vmception wrote:
| Consensus is a gradient, and representative consensus is
| multiple gradients.
| oblio wrote:
| Techies are a very narrow band in any of these gradients.
|
| Regular people are very wide bands, and there's a reason
| horror sci-fi movies where robots kill humankind are
| extremely popular.
| gfodor wrote:
| You're both right and wrong at the same time. The media
| gets to decide, as always, what we're collectively
| outraged about. Or to be more specific, the people who
| control the media. So if you want to predict if people
| are going to care when someone gets killed by a robocar,
| it depends on who stands to make or lose money if they do
| or don't.
| bagels wrote:
| People will care a disproportionate amount, I think.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| If you're setting the over-under at 0.5, I'll take the
| over...
| akira2501 wrote:
| It's very easy to just distribute waste using these systems.
| I'm still not convinced by the single-vehicle on-demand for
| single-rider model.
|
| There's got to be a way to make public transportation stop
| being the least attractive option in low to medium density
| urban settings.
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