[HN Gopher] San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car...
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San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car for no lights
on
Author : bmitc
Score : 295 points
Date : 2022-04-11 07:48 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| Animats wrote:
| Cruise Automation has a terrible video for first responders.[1]
| The dialog sounds like it was written by lawyers.
|
| Summary:
|
| - Vehicles recognize lights and sirens and will pull over.
|
| - Call Cruise's control center at 888-662-7103 in case of trouble
| with a vehicle. The control center needs the name of the vehicle,
| which is painted on the car in 3 places. Or at least the
| location.
|
| - Chocking and blocking the wheels, as firefighters routinely do,
| is safe.
|
| - Other emergency procedures are the same as for a regular Chevy
| Bolt.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM3kfauMgZY
| gtirloni wrote:
| Imagine if every failure in a traditional car became news.
| datadata wrote:
| I feel this will happen at the end of the adoption curve,
| should we reach it. Media will begin to shame legacy drivers
| and accidents will become newsworthy curiosities. Sort of like
| the last known cases of a pathogen that becomes eradicated.
| martopix wrote:
| The news here isn't the headlights failure.
| bo1024 wrote:
| It's the first real autonomous testbed, and the same software
| presumably drives all their cars (up to A/B tests). Unlike in
| traditional hardware, the cause of these errors is very opaque
| and difficult to understand (at least for us and possibly the
| company as well). That makes it plausible that equally
| dangerous and simple errors still exist.
|
| Imagine if a traditional company had just released a new car
| model and someone was driving it and the front right wheel just
| fell off the car. It would be news because it indicates that
| something very basic was misunderstood by the designers and
| engineers. You probably wouldn't want to get in such a car. Now
| imagine the general reaction is "cars are complex systems, the
| other three wheels actually did quite well, we fully expect to
| update the design to keep the front right wheel on in the
| future."
| qayxc wrote:
| This is relevant, though. There are traffic laws and
| regulations in place for human drivers and this incident poses
| a conundrum: how are minor transgressions handled with
| autonomous vehicles?
|
| Who gets fined? The owner? The manufacturer? Do the rules not
| apply to machines or to a lesser degree and if so, why?
|
| Lots of interesting legal questions that are much more relevant
| in practise than hypothetical (and IMHO completely misguided)
| trolly-problem related ethical discussions.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I think it is reasonable that the owner or operating entity
| gets the fine. Then they can sue the manufacturer or service
| provider for any issues.
| zip1234 wrote:
| I would venture that manufacturers should prevent drivers
| from breaking the law when possible. For example,
| autonomous cars rolling stops and speeding should not be
| possible.
| jwr wrote:
| I am really worried by the fact that _I_ am the unwilling tester
| in the Great Driverless Car Experiment.
|
| Tradition has it that when you load-test a new bridge, you put
| the architect underneath. I feel like this, except I didn't
| design those driverless cars, somebody else did. Being an
| experienced software engineer, my trust in the software in these
| cars is pretty low. And yet they are testing them on me, because
| _I_ can be the one getting killed.
|
| I think we should set a much higher bar for allowing those cars
| on the streets, rather than "it kinda works, so let's roll with
| it".
| [deleted]
| kylecordes wrote:
| Maybe now is the time to start raising the bar on human and
| upcoming automated drivers.
|
| Both could have to pass a driving test that includes
| challenging, difficult situations. Day, night, rain, snow, fog,
| heavy traffic, missing lane lines, simulated pedestrians
| (including small children) leaping out between parked cars, and
| more.
|
| For further difficulty, both kinds of drivers could have to
| pass this within a x% margin of the fastest safe speed at which
| the maneuvers can be completed; no cheating by slowing down to
| traffic-disrupting speeds.
| akira2501 wrote:
| There's not a lot of evidence to suggest this would have a
| major impact.
|
| The majority of fatal crashes involve drugs and alcohol and
| not people with "untested skills in challenging situations."
|
| Pedestrians and motorcyclists account for a little less than
| 1/3 of all fatalities.
|
| Young men are 8x more likely to die in a car accident than
| their female counterparts.
|
| This "user-hostile" mode of thinking about driving serves no
| one.
| beambot wrote:
| I suspect that a challenging driver assessment between AVs
| and humans would be the most rapid driver of AVs possible...
| Just remember: Most drivers think they're above average.
|
| Curiously, autonomous car technology also makes it feasible
| for us to rate drivers -- it's like having a professional
| watching over your shoulder all the time. IIRC, Tesla used
| something similar to determine rollout of new FSD
| capabilities.
| nullc wrote:
| The reason to hold humans and self driving cars to a
| different standard is that humans have already "class
| qualified" under ... well ... every condition that we drive
| in... with on the order of a billion driving years of total
| experience to the limitations of human-driving and far in
| excess of 10 million years of additional driving added per
| year along with a considerable amount of study across many
| decades.
|
| Though there are systematic flaws in human drivers they're
| reasonably well known given the level of experience we have,
| there are many mitigations in place in both our cars and road
| designs, and many of these flaws are intuitively modeled by
| the other humans on the road as well as pedestrians allowing
| for real-time compensation.
|
| The driverless cars, on the other hand-- we have _radically_
| less experience with as a class and there are many reasons to
| believe that vendor to vendor (e.g. due to sensor modalities)
| or even version to version will behave less self-consistently
| than human drivers do as a class. We know of some systematic
| faults in their operation which cause them to behave in ways
| that are highly surprising to humans, and we should expect to
| find many more as we gain experience.
|
| To the extent that the properties of self driving cars have
| been formally studied at all it's been primarily by their
| creators which are obviously self interested. Some of the
| practices used in early supervised self-driving also actively
| undermined understanding their safety (e.g. executing a hand
| over to the human once the car was already in an
| nonrecoverable unsafe state and then attributing the accident
| to human driving since at the time of the collision the human
| was back in charge, but maybe only by a hundred milliseconds;
| or companies committing perjury to use the DMCA to force down
| unfavorable videos created by others)
|
| This isn't an argument that we might not benefit from more
| rigorous driver testing or even from testing ideas that
| originated from self-driving car testing... but parity
| between driverless car tests and human testing shouldn't be a
| goal, particularly not when so many orders of magnitude
| separate our human driving experience from driverless
| experience.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| The driverless car is already safer than the other people you
| share the road with everyday.
| nullc wrote:
| We can't make safe driverless cars if people frequently make
| false claims about their current safety.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| We will never have driverless cars if we hold them to a
| standard that is unobtainable while continuing to let
| regular drivers cause accidents and deaths on a daily
| basis.
| stonkdonk wrote:
| plus the "beta" testers treat it like some kind of fun game.
| they're like "whoops, almost swerved into traffic. whoops,
| almost ran into a pedestrian crossing the street."
| LocalPCGuy wrote:
| Personally, any % above "average human driving skill" reliably
| should start to see more uptake of this new technology.
| Driverless cars have and will kill people. Sometimes it will be
| due to programming errors. But on the whole, they are, in many
| cases, on par or better than human drivers. I think it's good
| to be cautious, for the industry to be cautious. But I don't
| want to see people freaking out over a single accident because
| it involved an AI when there are thousands of non-AI accidents
| every day. Be consistent in judging them, not against some
| mythical 100% success rate but against the criteria, is it
| better/safer than most drivers.
| carapace wrote:
| This.
|
| These robots are massive and fast, they are killers. Yet as
| long as they look like cars we let them run loose on public
| streets. It's kinda nuts. (Arguably car traffic as it's set up
| now is kinds nuts too, but that's a different argument.)
|
| The obvious thing to do is start with something like a golf
| cart that is limited to, say, 5mph top speed, and work your way
| up.
| WindyCityBrew wrote:
| Lol.
|
| Drunk drivers are killers. People that text and drive are
| killers. People that get kicked by their kid and turn around
| for a second to yell at them are killers.
|
| I'll take an unfatigable, indistractable, computer that
| literally has eyes in the back of its head, and on the side
| of its head, and the front, and can bounce radar under cars,
| etc over the pitiful example of a "safe (human) driver" we
| have now.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| >unfatigable, indistractable
|
| memory leaks, priority inversions, dropped packets / data.
| Lots of ways systems can act strangely.
| nullc wrote:
| Great observation.
|
| When the device is a giant robot arm or a laser cutter, there
| are huge amounts of regulation-- you may have to get
| permission from your municipality to operate it even within
| the confines of your own facility.
|
| Make it look like a car, however, ...
|
| Cars and roads _are_ kind of nuts, but they 're established
| lunacy at least.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > I am really worried by the fact that I am the unwilling
| tester..
|
| stay inside in front of FANNG. You'll be safe there ( yet still
| an unwilling tester ).
| snikeris wrote:
| This is one of the problems with technology that Ted Kaczynski
| wrote about. You can't opt out.
|
| > Even the walker's freedom is now greatly restricted. In the
| city he continually has to stop to wait for traffic lights that
| are designed mainly to serve auto traffic. In the country,
| motor traffic makes it dangerous and unpleasant to walk along
| the highway. (Note this important point that we have just
| illustrated with the case of motorized transport: When a new
| item of technology is introduced as an option that an
| individual can accept or not as he chooses, it does not
| necessarily REMAIN optional. In many cases the new technology
| changes society in such a way that people eventually find
| themselves FORCED to use it.)
|
| Your problem is the same as the walker's. The walker has opted
| out of the automobile, but still has to breathe its pollution
| and risk being hit by it.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| We're quoting the Unabomber now? Certainly you can choose
| good quotes from non-serial killers.
| nsv wrote:
| This is an example of "ad hominem", a logical fallacy where
| you attack a person's character or attributes rather than
| the point being made.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Why not? It is a good and relevant point.
| asveikau wrote:
| As someone who likes to walk in an urban environment, I'd
| say it's not good and relevant. It's rather detached from
| the actual experience of the urban walker.
|
| There's simple road design concepts that mitigate danger,
| as well.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The point is simply that that one person's choice can
| have impact on others. This is pretty basic and true if
| you like like urban walking or not.
| asveikau wrote:
| No, i think this was just part of the author's delusional
| narrative that technological adoption is a form of
| violence.
|
| If it is not actually that, and if there are safety
| measures that can be taken, he doesn't care.
|
| I'm not a pro car person actually. And that's the vibe
| I'm getting from Kaczynski in this instance. Words of an
| out of touch person.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Because it justifies their actions. Would we be quoting
| him if he didn't murder innocent people?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I don't think his murders invalidate his manifesto.
| Luditeism has been very popular since the industrial
| revolution, I think it's reasonably likely we would be
| talking about Industrial Society and its Future or
| something similar if he hadn't killed people.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| _Absolutely_ his murders invalidate his manifesto. The
| ideas that he expressed in the manifesto are the same
| ideas that moved him to murder people. His opposition to
| technology is why he was bombing computer stores and the
| University of Utah Engineering Building.
|
| This is why saying "but he's a murderer" isn't an ad
| hominem. His murders are the working-out of his ideas;
| his ideas are worth rejecting just on that basis.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| That doesn't mean they are wrong in part or in whole.
|
| >His murders are the working-out of his ideas; his ideas
| are worth rejecting just on that basis.
|
| This is simply saying "if he is right, I would rather be
| wrong". It also completely ignores that arguments can be
| valid in part, but not in combination.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Most of us consider murder to be self-evidently wrong.
| The intersection of "right, and causing murder" is very
| close to empty for most definitions of "right".
|
| Your question makes me wonder what _your_ definition of
| "right" is.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Murder is typically defined as unjustifiable or wrong, so
| you would expect the set to be empty.
|
| Replace "murder" with 'killing" and most people will have
| the opposite reaction.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| >>>> I don't think his murders invalidate his manifesto.
|
| - colinmhayes (the original post I responded to).
|
| And, for your point to be relevant to this discussion,
| you would have to claim that what the Unabomber did was
| "killing" rather than "murder". If you claim that, I'd
| like to see your definitions and where you think the line
| between killing and murder is.
|
| And if that isn't your claim, it looks like you're just
| arguing in order to argue.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I have no interest in defending the actions of the
| Unabomber.
|
| I did feel that you were using that tautology of murder
| to ignore my actual point.
|
| >You: His murders are the working-out of his ideas; his
| ideas are worth rejecting just on that basis.
|
| >Me: That doesn't mean they are wrong in part or in
| whole.
|
| If the unabomber said as part of the manifesto that the
| sky is blue, would you now reject that the sky is blue?
|
| There is nothing about murder that invalidates the logic,
| truth, or accuracy of an argument, and especially not the
| individual components of an argument.
|
| It is fine and fair if you don't personally want to learn
| or engage with an argument that has lead to violence. But
| that does not mean that it is internally inconsistent, or
| devoid of accurate observations about the world (e.g. new
| technologies can impose externalities on the unwilling).
| asveikau wrote:
| I think he ultimately suffered mental illness, and it is
| reflected in both the fact that he murdered and the ideas
| in his manifesto. It's hard to separate them.
|
| There may be similar ideas expressed by those who don't
| share his pathology, but his version of it is extreme and
| fringe.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > I don't think his murders invalidate his manifesto
|
| That's not my point though, my point is that quoting his
| manifesto validates his violence. If his ideas are valid,
| there should be other sources to quote/promote.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >If his ideas are valid, there should be other sources to
| quote/promote.
|
| Why is that so sure? Do you have an equivalent quote to
| substitute?
| dogman144 wrote:
| Fwiw, at the time and after, there were quite a few
| conferences and analysis of his manifesto.
| twofornone wrote:
| The fact that someone did something terrible does not imply
| that everything they ever said or did was wrong. That's
| dangerous thinking. The Unabomber's short manifesto makes a
| number of salient points about the negative interplay
| between technology and the human condition, and offers a
| neat potential explanation for why so many people are
| unhappy despite being surrounded by modern conveniences.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| > I am really worried by the fact that I am the unwilling
| tester in the Great Driverless Car Experiment.
|
| Welcome to America, where you are an unwitting tester of many
| private ventures that have been signed off on by the American
| government on your behalf.
|
| Remember that complaining about these tests and demanding more
| control means that you are communist. Unless of course you
| don't mind waiting around to be harmed by such tests, and are
| either able to sue, or told that you had no reasonable
| expectation of safety.
| carabiner wrote:
| You didn't design the aircraft that you fly on, which are
| incredibly computerized. Also the drugs that your doctor
| prescribes. Etc.
|
| You put your faith in myriad bureaucracies and trust networks
| that you have no hope of understanding. Driverless cars are
| just one more added to the list.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Except safety has only ever been improved for either aircraft
| or drugs by people dying from exactly this kind of failure.
|
| Apparently there is ZERO learning or forethought about risks
| that can be anticipated or suggested from other technologies!
| akhmatova wrote:
| _Driverless cars are just one more added to the list_
|
| It's a qualitatively different change than any of the above
| (driven by a messianic view that AI is here and now and about
| to change everything), plus an instance of the
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
|
| apologue.
| Veserv wrote:
| The difference is that airplane software standards are by far
| the most rigorous in the world and so rigorous that most
| software developers are shocked at the level of rigor
| employed where as driverless cars have exactly _zero_
| software standards with respect to their safety or fitness
| for purpose. Comparing the processes in play is a
| outrageously fundamental category error; the systems have
| standards that are like 6 orders of magnitude apart.
|
| As a example, just look at the 737 MAX, a airplane viewed as
| a literal deathtrap and a complete indictment of airplane
| software development, which had _2_ crashes in 400,000
| flights. At a average flight distance of ~500 miles, the 737
| MAX, a airplane literally multiple orders of magnitude worse
| than any other and a complete failure of the approval
| process, only resulted in 1 fatality per 100 million person-
| miles. That is safer than the driving average of 1.1
| fatalities per 100 million person-miles. What is viewed as by
| far the most atrocious outcome in the airplane sector, a
| system literally hundreds or thousands of times more
| dangerous than the average, is above average in the car
| sector; that is how far the gap is.
|
| And this is ignoring driverless car software which is being
| developed to even lower standards than regular car software
| and which has no actual independent quality requirements. In
| contrast, far more lives are at risk with respect to
| driverless cars, so they should be developed to standards
| probably around 1000x better than airplane software which
| puts them around 0.0001% of the way there to a acceptable
| level of quality even if the software was already as reliable
| as regular car software.
| bsder wrote:
| > The difference is that airplane software standards are by
| far the most rigorous in the world and so rigorous that
| most software developers are shocked at the level of rigor
| employed
|
| _Now_ they are. This regulations are a result of several
| tragedies culminating in a big disaster:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_191
| jklinger410 wrote:
| > The difference is that airplane software standards are by
| far the most rigorous in the world and so rigorous that
| most software developers are shocked at the level of rigor
| employed...
|
| You mean the standards set by the FAA, which regularly
| defers to the private industry to regulate itself, due to
| complexity that it can't afford to keep up with? Those
| standards?
| Veserv wrote:
| Yes, those standards that produced a safety regime of 20
| years of flights without software being even implicated
| in a single fatality. Literally trillions if not
| quadrillions of passenger-miles per software-related
| fatality. Those same standards which result in a system
| like the 737 MAX rightfully being excoriated for only
| being 10% _safer_ than driving and resulted in successful
| demands for grounding of the entire fleet.
|
| As you note, unfortunately the standards as employed in
| practice have recently regressed dramatically to allow a
| system as unsafe as the 737 MAX to fly. So it seems only
| prudent to go back to the historical, far more rigorous,
| process which did result in the amazing historical safety
| regime. And, since self driving cars are a even harder
| and more dangerous technology with far more downside
| risk, they should use a standard even more rigorous than
| the historical airplane standards which are still by far
| better, from a safety perspective, than any other
| consistently applied software process, such as cars, by
| multiple orders of magnitude.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| > Literally trillions if not quadrillions of passenger-
| miles per software-related fatality.
|
| So these were all miles where people were unwilling
| testers as well. The difference being airplane auto-pilot
| is primarily focused on keeping the plane in the air, not
| dodging pedestrians. I think it does a lot of warnings
| for the pilots as well, but I'm not in the industry.
|
| It's really comparing apples to oranges, isn't it?
|
| > since self driving cars are a even harder and more
| dangerous technology with far more downside risk, they
| should use a standard even more rigorous than the
| historical airplane standards
|
| So this is on The United States Department of
| Transportation to be far more involved in regulating the
| software that governs self driving. But the question is,
| was the FAA as relaxed in governing the aerospace
| industry 60 some odd years ago as USDT is now, and did
| they just get lucky that flying planes is actually easier
| than driving cars? Or is there actually some negligence
| involved?
| olyjohn wrote:
| Flying is still the safest way to travel. So I'm not sure
| what you're complaining about with the FAA.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| The crashes revealed the FAA wasn't doing the job people
| thought they were. We achieved safety in this case by
| grounding all of the planes after crashes, which is
| hardly the ideal method.
| mostertoaster wrote:
| Yeah this is how most standards go. I use to work on
| medical devices, and the safety requirements for them
| were developed by my company and the other big players in
| the industry, and those became the FDA standards.
|
| The FDA just wants there to be standards, and the
| companies have a vested interest in making sure those
| standards ensure safe medical devices.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I'm lost by your comment.
|
| It seems that you're trying to suggest either 1) that the
| standards as mentioned necessarily aren't True Standards
| - as a blanket statement - because they're set by the
| industry or 2) that these standards aren't True Standards
| - specific to this particular discussion - because there
| is no reason to think they're necessarily more rigorous
| than the standards for driverless car software. If you're
| trying to suggest something else, please understand that
| it is unclear.
|
| I'm all for a dissenting opinion, but when it is not
| presented in an understandable way the discussion becomes
| hard to follow.
|
| (I don't mean to suggest that the argument is wrong when
| I call out the True Scotsman vibes; just that it is the
| argument I see.)
| jklinger410 wrote:
| What is the legal/regulatory difference between the
| aerospace industry regulating itself vs the auto industry
| regulating itself in regards to self driving? Besides the
| obvious that the aerospace industry has a head start.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I believe I understand your point better.
|
| From the person you're responding to:
|
| > Yes, those standards that produced a safety regime of
| 20 years of flights without software being even
| implicated in a single fatality. ...
|
| > As you note, unfortunately the standards as employed in
| practice have recently regressed dramatically to allow a
| system as unsafe as the 737 MAX to fly. ...
|
| Your point, if I'm not mistaken, being that the FAA has
| clearly allowed for less stringent regulations in recent
| years. (Please correct me if I'm wrong. You can ask
| questions but it does not seem that they lead so
| immediately to the answers you expect.)
|
| That being said, please consider that I am genuinely
| trying to understand you:
|
| > I'm all for a dissenting opinion, but when it is not
| presented in an understandable way the discussion becomes
| hard to follow.
| slg wrote:
| Furthermore, at this stage the driverless cars are unlikely
| to be creating demand. These are replacing human drivers.
| Most of us have no hand in verifying the safety of other
| drivers on the road. I happen to believe it is bonkers that
| we generally test drivers once at the age of 16 and somehow
| that earns a person driving privileges for at least 50 years
| before being retested if not their entire life.
| kylecordes wrote:
| Imagine if cars were invented today. The bar would be much
| higher, probably halfway to how pilot licensing works.
|
| (Of course this had some substantial downsides.)
| njarboe wrote:
| If cars were invented today, they would be too dangerous
| to be allowed to exist. Almost nothing has been invented
| since 1970 that can cause any harm. Safety first and all
| that.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| They'd have to be built with cow-catcher like devices to
| push all the horseshit out of their way while traveling
| down the road. It'd be a different kind of awful.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Personal computers cause all kinds of harm (in addition
| to the benefits).
| ratmice wrote:
| Aircraft is a vastly different problem at a much smaller
| scale. Where did our ground traffic controllers go?
| monadmoproblems wrote:
| Presumably, you choose whether to ride that airplane or take
| those drugs. You probably don't get to choose when someone
| else's driverless car runs you over.
| helloworld11 wrote:
| Nor do you get to choose when someone's airplane possibly
| crashes into your street from above.
| gouggoug wrote:
| There were 9 airplane crashes, worldwide, in 2021[1].
|
| It's estimated 31,720 people died in car crashes, in the
| US, in 2021[2].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Aviation_accid
| ents_an...
|
| [2] https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/nhtsa-
| estimates...
| helloworld11 wrote:
| True, but you miss my point in referring to this. You
| still don't get to choose when someone else's mistake
| might harm you. Also, we as the public in general
| routinely trust planes with millions of risky flights
| despite not knowing anything about how well or safely
| they work, or how they work at all in detail. We accept
| that accidents sometimes happen nonetheless because
| that's how it goes with human technology that we've come
| to depend on. The important thing is that precautions are
| taken as much as reasonably possible. The same standard
| can be applied to driverless cars without getting fearful
| of them simply because of their newness.
| gouggoug wrote:
| But driverless cars do not go through the same
| requirements as aviation.
|
| Before an airplane goes into circulation, it has gone
| through extremely rigorous testing. An airplane also
| always has a pilot.
|
| The same can't be said for driverless cars. They don't go
| through extreme rigorous testing, they don't have a
| driver, and they're controlled by software that is most
| likely a far cry from aviation standards.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Neither aircraft nor drug development norms look _anything
| like_ the norms of software development. I actually find a
| substantial difference in my trust level between a
| traditional car company that 's building self-driving
| capabilities (e.g. Mercedes) than a company that fashions
| itself as a software company that happens to build cars (e.g.
| Tesla) for exactly the reason of the norms and behaviors that
| each org would encourage.
| woah wrote:
| Didn't aircraft development norms lead to several planes
| plunging out of the sky with zero mechanical issues, due to
| software failure?
| gouggoug wrote:
| It's actually _failure to follow aircraft development
| norms_ that lead to the crash of multiple 737-Max
| dogman144 wrote:
| Generally agree but also knew people who worked on Boeing
| QA/SWE and the internal picture sounds dicy. I'm a bit
| disconcerted flying after learning about it.
| skylanh wrote:
| Boeing's issues were written on the wall about 2 decades
| ago when it moved it's hierarchy from an engineer-centric
| one to a Chicago accountant-centric one. That alone
| wouldn't have been an issue, but they had an immediate
| brain drain as half their HQ staff didn't follow the
| relocation.
|
| Imagine a thousand employees, half your HQ staff, that
| leave. There are several possible reasons:
|
| - they're older -> more corporate knowledge and knew the
| "magic recipes"
|
| - skill based mobility -> they're so good they can go
| anywhere, and Chicago isn't Seattle
|
| - etc
|
| https://hbr.org/2001/10/inside-boeings-big-move
|
| This was widely thought on ... what was I browsing back
| then? Reddit? as a fore-warner of bad stuff to come
|
| The fore-warning came to fruition when the issues at
| various Boeing plants started developing over the next
| ten years (insider videos talking with an employee about
| being on drugs during crucial assembly work and shift
| mates being similarly high, "get it through your station"
| attitudes) and the Dreamliner issues that were hand-waved
| away (no training, 1-hour tablet self directed training,
| certification delays, and eventually crashes).
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| > what was I browsing back then? Reddit?
|
| I remember it being discussed on SlashDot back then.
| foolinaround wrote:
| generally, you dont want to know how the sausage is being
| made... its pretty much all industries, some worse than
| the others.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| We are all unwilling testers of every new teenage driver who
| hits the road.
| kadoban wrote:
| That teenage driver goes through a training and certification
| process, and we have ways of stopping them from driving if
| they fuck up too badly. They also have liability for their
| actions.
|
| Most of those are lacking or at least inconsistent, for AI
| driving.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The vehicle manufacturer is licensed here, all safety
| operators involved are licensed, and the DMV will pull the
| operations permit or vehicle registrations if they fuck up
| too badly. This has already happened to pony.ai and Uber.
|
| More consistency would be better, but it's a California
| bureaucracy. You get what you get.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| I don't know where you live, but my "training and
| certification process" was mom driving with me for a few
| weeks, then I went to the driver testing office, drove
| around a closed course, proved I could stay on my side of
| the road, stop at a stop sign, and parallel park. Then I
| got my license without ever being tested at over 25mph.
| Even with the state of today's technology, I'd trust a
| driverless car more than I'd trust a new teen driver.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| In fact, liability has been limited in this case by
| California laws...
| aperson_hello wrote:
| That's a pretty generous interpretation of the oversight
| for the average teenage driver. Most controls are lacking
| for ALL drivers, human or not.
|
| The first footage that comes out of a felony traffic stop
| on an AI driver will be amusing!
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _That teenage driver goes through a training and
| certification process, and we have ways of stopping them
| from driving if they fuck up too badly._
|
| This is a complete aside, but not having a license doesn't
| really prevent you from getting in a car and driving it. I
| was just reminded of this when a buddy's parked car was
| struck by a drunk driver who was not legally licensed to
| drive because their license was revoked from having _many_
| prior DUI 's. Luckily they didn't kill anyone.
|
| Hopefully it will be easier to enforce shutting down unsafe
| driverless cars.
|
| I've also known teens without licenses who had to drive
| their irresponsible buddies' cars home after the licensed
| driver drove somewhere and got drunk. It's not like there's
| a biometric scanner in each car that verifies the person
| behind the wheel is a licensed driver...
| root_axis wrote:
| Kind of a moot point though. You can't really stop anyone
| from doing anything, the best we can do in a free society
| is create laws that deter undesirable behavior.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| In general, most of our cities (in the US) are very car-
| centric. Better than passing a law and hoping for the
| best while waiting to punish people, we can give people
| realistic alternatives to drunk driving to prevent it in
| the first place. Likely, these would have a second order
| effect of giving everyone realistic alternatives to
| driving too. If driving yourself isn't the norm, then
| drunk driving becomes more rare.
| root_axis wrote:
| > _we can give people realistic alternatives to drunk
| driving to prevent it in the first place_
|
| Such as?
| glandium wrote:
| In Japan, there are taxi-like services that will drive
| your own car. 2 persons come in a taxi, one of them
| drives you in your car, and the other follows with the
| taxi (and picks back the first person once destination is
| reached).
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Off the top of my head, public transportation, ride
| sharing, making streets more pedestrian friendly, denser
| zoning.
|
| I had a great bar that was less than a mile from where I
| used to live. I rarely went because there was no way to
| walk there. No sidewalks in the neighborhood, no traffic
| lights, no bus that stopped near it. It's a shame. It
| closed shortly after I moved away after away. In the
| paper they said they just didn't get a lot of people
| coming in.
| root_axis wrote:
| > _public transportation_
|
| A great idea that I am in support of, but it's not a
| "realistic alternative", public transportation is
| politically fraught, expensive, and slow to build in the
| U.S. I'm not saying we shouldn't continue to strive
| towards it, but it's not happening any time soon in the
| U.S.
|
| > _ride sharing_
|
| This is the status quo.
|
| > _making streets more pedestrian friendly_
|
| Same issue as public transportation - slow, expensive,
| politically fraught, but also of dubious ROI in terms of
| preventing DUIs; nobody is going to walk 5 miles home
| from the bar because of streets that are friendlier to
| pedestrians. Of course, there are other worthy reasons to
| create pedestrian friendly streets, but they don't really
| represent a realistic alternative to someone prone to
| intoxicated driving.
|
| > _denser zoning_
|
| Again, not really a realistic alternative, zoning issues
| are politically and economically contentious at a level
| that transcends concerns about drunk driving and yet the
| needle on that issue barley moves due to NIMBYism and
| entrenched special interests.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Or maybe we can hurry up with driverless cars so that we
| can take the wheel out asap for people who have DUIs.
| [deleted]
| root_axis wrote:
| Driverless cars aren't anywhere near being able to
| prevent DUIs on a statistically meaningful scale. If
| lives are what you care about you'd be better off having
| the government subsidize uber rides.
| lhorie wrote:
| Here in San Francisco you don't actually need to go through
| any training to receive a drivers license. You just need to
| pass a computer test (of mostly easily memorizable
| material) and a road test that consists mostly of turning
| left and right a few times. They don't even test highway
| driving, three point turns or parallel parking like they do
| in some other countries.
|
| Also, didn't the entire Uber fleet get grounded after the
| Tempe death, with a huge months-long NHTSA investigation?
| standardUser wrote:
| "That teenage driver goes through a training and
| certification process"
|
| Did anyone else spit out their morning coffee at this
| hilarious one-liner?
| kadoban wrote:
| Feel free to argue that licensing isn't strict enough.
| I'd agree. But AI driver certification is effectively
| nonexistent, judging by Telsa's bullshit behavior.
| Arnt wrote:
| Two human drivers passed me today in a street where passing
| me was unconditionally forbidden. In that street no car may
| pass any bicycle, ever, and there's giant signage. Are you
| suggesting that we have consistent, reliable ways to
| prevent those two from driving again?
| dont__panic wrote:
| That is certainly the idea behind traffic policing,
| license points, etc. All you need is police who enforce
| the laws that already exist.
| Arnt wrote:
| If I were to send the police a 30-second film showing
| someone overtaking me illegally, it's near certain that
| nothing would happen. Unless someone were harmed.
|
| If, however, I were to send the certification authority a
| film of a driverless car doing the same, my guess is that
| the vendor would be required to investigate and solve
| that, even if the film were just a single incident and
| noone harmed. I base that guess on the authority's past
| behaviour.
|
| Speaking as someone who's often in harm's way, I find the
| possibility of getting rid of _conscious_ rule violations
| very attractive, even if that doesn 't affect the number
| or effect of software bugs at all.
| [deleted]
| eps wrote:
| Depends on the country, but here teenagers are drilled _so_
| much during their L phase _and_ on the cars with a manual
| transmission, so they are probably the safest drivers on the
| road.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Not true at all in the US. (And no, kids don't learn the
| manual because no one uses manuals in the US)
|
| https://aaafoundation.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2017/06/aaa_fig...
|
| Teens are roughly 3x worse than a 20 year old, and 10x
| worse than a 50 year old.
| [deleted]
| yawnr wrote:
| Yeah definitely not the case in the US. The New Jersey
| driver's test consisted of a single stop sign and a
| parallel parking test.
| culopatin wrote:
| Lol in Florida I looped around a parking lot and parked
| head in. From there you're allowed to get on i95... in
| south Florida. I guess if you don't die the first time
| you get on it it's like passing a test anyway.
|
| Luckily for me I had been driving for a while and I was
| tested initially in a more rigorous country, I was just
| getting my license after I moved to the US, but it
| explains a lot of what I see in the streets.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The teenager's ability to drive safely isn't just a
| mechanical ability of driving a car or of just being aware
| of the laws/rules. Safe driving comes from years of
| experience on being able to decide how long it will take to
| stop at certain speeds in certain conditions. Being able to
| recognize their car's brakes are a little soft and might
| not stop on a dime any more. Being able to recognize that
| the driver in front of them is potentially impaired, so
| best give them some space.
|
| There are plenty of things that come with experience vs
| book learning that makes a safer driver. A freshly licensed
| teen comes with none of that. They also have the natural
| tendency of having high risk tolerance which makes decision
| making different than an older/exeprienced driver that is
| more risk averse.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Hearsay is that you have to drive more than 100 000 km in
| diverse conditions with the right mindset in order to
| become a fluent and experienced driver. With an average
| mileage, that will take most people around a decade after
| beginning to drive. Most people never seem to become
| fluent, experienced drivers, because they lack the
| practice, or the mindset, or both.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Exactly, except, I'm not sure where the 100,000km
| condition was established.
|
| I'm in North Texas, so I have a personal rule that if the
| temps are forecasted to be below freezing with any form
| of precipitation, I do not leave the house. People make
| moronic decisions on how to drive in those conditions
| because it doesn't happen enough and as a collective,
| proper ability to drive is forgotten every single time.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| That is my experience from one visit to the Arlington
| area years ago. One morning it was below freezing and
| there were some icy patches especially on bridges.
| Drivers were either creeping at 2mph or spinning out.
| There didn't seem to be anyone on the road who knew how
| to handle it.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| How do you drive on icy roads though? Creeping at 2mph
| sounds like a reasonable choice, at least you won't make
| a lot of damage when you slowly slide into an obstacle.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >How do you drive on icy roads though?
|
| It's a trick question. You don't _should_ be the
| response.
|
| For those that do, my first question is what is so damn
| important that you have to be driving in icy conditions
| in the first place? Schools are closed. Most businesses
| are closed. If my business isn't closed, I use a personal
| day. This isn't Chicago/Minneapolis where the snow lasts
| for 3 months. This is N. Texas. It's typically only cold
| enough for these conditions for a couple of days and
| typically only at night. Which actually makes it worse as
| it melts in the day, refreezes overnight, and people
| forget about the refreeze and drive as if things are
| normal.
| tremon wrote:
| _experience vs book learning_
|
| Why would you assume that a driver's education is a
| matter of book learning? Is that how you were taught?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yes it was. I am of a certain age that we had a certain
| number of classroom hours as well as a certain number of
| hours behind the wheel with an instructor as well as
| certain number of hours in a car as an observer with an
| instructor.
|
| We had book(lets) that we had to read from to learn the
| rules/laws of the road. There were quizzes/tests to be
| taken during those classes in order to pass the class.
| Once the class was passed, I then had to take a written
| exam issued by the state. That was followed by an actual
| driving test with a state official in the car.
|
| So assuming based on my personal experience. I know the
| times have changed, and you no longer have to do silly
| things like learn how to drive or be required to wear
| shoes while driving in today's world.
| ghaff wrote:
| To a first approximation, I'm skeptical that anywhere in
| the world a learning supervised driver gains sufficient
| on-road experience to to count as a skilled experienced
| driver. Clearly, different places make somewhat different
| tradeoffs with respect to licensing. However, I'll go out
| on a limb and say the majority of drivers with 5 to 10
| years experience are better drivers than newly licensed
| drivers.
| ISL wrote:
| And every drunk/elderly driver -- the car's decision to move
| after a traffic-stop felt very much the behavior of someone
| with impaired cognition.
| fho wrote:
| Anecdote: There was an old lady living nearby who despite
| being 80+ years still driving around in her 20 year old
| car. She literally ran over traffic cones and ... a child
| on a tricycle [1] and never got prosecuted.
|
| She recently passed away ... sad, but the streets around
| here are definitely safer now.
|
| (This was in Germany just for reference)
|
| [1] The child was fine it was a low speed collision ... but
| still ...
| argiopetech wrote:
| I caution against age as a sole proxy for driving
| ability. As a contradictory datum, my 80+ year old
| grandmother (in the USA) maintains a 100+ acre farm. She
| daily drives a (impeccably maintained) 2006 3/4 ton
| pickup, to include multiple yearly 10+ hour trips hauling
| a 10k+ lbs trailer. She almost always brings a passenger
| on these trips for companionship and safety. I've never
| heard any complaints, and never personally observed her
| driving unsafely.
|
| It won't be this way forever, and I'm under no illusion
| that she is the norm for her age, but I'd hazard she's a
| better drive R than most people on the road.
|
| I would like to see a move toward more frequent driver
| testing for all drivers in the USA, decreasing in
| frequency after the first few years of driving and
| increasing in frequency for older drivers. Testing after
| initial licensing is not the norm in any state I've
| inhabited, so this would probably require a significant
| uphill battle on both the individual and government
| fronts.
| ISL wrote:
| Triggering testing/education after traffic violations
| might be a middle-ground.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| This seems too reactive. I agree it is better than
| nothing, but if someone is going to have the wherewithal
| to put a law in place around this, I think the goal
| should should be more about preventing violations than
| punishment. Maybe you should have to re-take the test
| when your license expires instead of the license being a
| lifetime certification. That would be every four years in
| my state. Not sure if it is different state to state.
| Retric wrote:
| States already introduce mandatory vision tests and
| inquire about medical history with age even very Red or
| Blue states.
|
| https://www.dps.texas.gov/section/driver-license/drivers-
| age...
|
| https://www.dmv.com/md/maryland/senior-
| drivers?tg1=DVA&utm_c...
|
| Florida has vision requirements, and accepts reports of
| medical issues making driving unsafe:
| https://www.flhsmv.gov/driver-licenses-id-cards/medical-
| revi...
|
| In that context Florida's standards are lax, but still
| exist.
| brimble wrote:
| The DMV worker that administered my mom's last test
| definitely fudged things so she could renew her license.
|
| Luckily she basically never drives anyway [edit: because
| my dad who's still a decent driver drivers her around
| when she needs it because they both know she's not safe
| on the road, not because she can get by without a car],
| but I doubt that was an isolated incident. Because of how
| we've designed our cities, not being able to drive can
| represent a _huge_ loss of freedom. In the moment, it
| seems some (and I 'm guessing many) DMV workers take pity
| on the vulnerable elderly person in front of them rather
| than some hypothetical future victim of that driver.
| gknoy wrote:
| I remember doing traffic school about ~15 years ago, and
| realizing that there were several points of the law which
| I had not adequately learned when I first got my license.
| Over the years of driving, I've gotten better at some
| parts of driving (being safe, etc), but I'm _sure_ there
| are parts of the law that I have forgotten. (e.g., is it
| legal in my state to turn through a crosswalk if the
| pedestrian is past the halfway point?)
|
| I feel like if driver licensing required re-
| certification, everyone would hate that, but it would
| have the added value of making sure to reinforce that
| people knew what the law _was_. Maybe it'd be less
| painful if our insurance already subsidized the cost. I
| feel bad even advocating for such a thing.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _I 'm _sure_ there are parts of the law that I have
| forgotten._
|
| Or perhaps since laws have changed or new laws were made
| that you were unaware of (through no fault of your own -
| these things are hard to keep track of!). I agree people
| would hate it, but I think there's value in, like you say
| giving people a refresher about the law.
|
| I also think there's value in reminding people that
| driving is not an inalienable right and also inviting a
| person to re-evaluate their situation every so often to
| think if they still really need a car.
| yardie wrote:
| There was recently an accident in Miami Beach. Elderly
| woman driving a Bentley reversed into a terrace
| restaurant. Killing 1 and injury 6, including a 3yo [0].
| No charges filed because being senile driver (and voter)
| is not against the law.
|
| [0]
| https://www.local10.com/news/local/2022/02/25/recalling-
| trag...
| diogenescynic wrote:
| I think elderly drivers are probably more dangerous than
| teenagers. Lately whenever I've seen a really reckless
| driver, it's been someone very elderly and who looked totally
| overwhelmed by the experience of driving. I've seen old
| people struggling to keep up with traffic, driving in bike
| lanes or just on the side of the road thinking it was a
| second lane... There should be more frequently driver exams
| (and car exams) in the US.
| chasd00 wrote:
| One of the more surreal things i've seen is in Naples FL
| where you have elderly behind the wheel of Lamborghinis,
| Aston Martin, Ferraris and lots of other very very powerful
| sports cars. Vallet needs to give them extra help getting
| in and out but then off they go. A simple muscle twitch
| blipping the gas peddle on those cars would put them so far
| out of control it would be funny if it weren't life
| threatening.
| Kye wrote:
| A teenager is worried about: getting killed, killing someone
| else, hurting someone, wrecking their parents' car, losing
| their permit. I don't trust engineers working on the models
| that drive these cars to teach a computer the difference
| between a human and an open road. A teenager can discern
| these with no effort. I trust a teenager to care about not
| hitting me and try their best, _and_ to choose a ditch over
| hitting someone when the decision time comes.
| culopatin wrote:
| They might be worried but suck at risk evaluation so bad
| that the worry doesn't really help.
| dgfitz wrote:
| *A teenager is worried about only about themselves and
| their immediate happiness
| mhh__ wrote:
| I think you'd be immediately unhappy if you crashed your
| parents car
| tremon wrote:
| In the typical teenager's mind, that would be _after_ ,
| not _if_
| mhh__ wrote:
| We are discussing a hypothetical teenager who doesn't
| exist, who knows?
|
| Besides, I had thousands of HN karma (the most important
| metric of maturity of course) when I was a teenager not
| very long ago.
| pempem wrote:
| Was it an "if" in yours when you were a teenager? There
| are lots of strong statistical differences that are
| visible in the teenage population and trickle their way
| into insurance tables.
|
| Basically we could do a better job engendering concern
| from teenagers, its not some kind of inherent mental lack
| of capability.
| tremon wrote:
| My point was that worrying about hypothetical outcomes is
| not usually at the forefront of a teenager's mind. Sure,
| they will regret wrecking their parents' car, but that
| doesn't mean that they will avoid actions that _might_
| wreck said car.
| bo1024 wrote:
| To add to your point: it doesn't bother me so much that the
| AI system doesn't share these priorities. What I worry
| about is that the companies designing them are not
| incentivized to.
| ricochet11 wrote:
| surely a company is absolutely incentivized to share
| these priorities?
|
| every accident is a hit to their profits and pr.
| pempem wrote:
| I think Tesla has shown this fairly clearly to be untrue.
|
| It takes a hit if there isnt' a very solid
| marketing/pr/charismatic leader to distract
| boudin wrote:
| A teenage driver can lose its licence. What happens with an
| AI in this case? Can Cruise lose its licence ?
| striking wrote:
| Yes.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Who gets a license, though? Cruise, the company? The
| currently deployed algorithm? Each car w/ the software?
| xadhominemx wrote:
| > Can Cruise lose its licence ?
|
| Of course
| wyldfire wrote:
| Aside: I'm happy to see that teenage drivers today have a lot
| more required training than I did when I got my license. At
| least in this US state, and likely most of them.
|
| I'm also really happy about the continued advances in auto
| safety technology.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| US driving test standards are still a joke compared to
| overseas.
| causi wrote:
| The US has lower per-kilometer vehicle fatalities than
| South Korea, Mexico, the Czech Republic, and Belgium, and
| is similar to Japan and New Zealand.
| ThatGeoGuy wrote:
| It's difficult to make an apples-to-apples comparison
| with this statistic because the US has more sprawl.
|
| Like sure, per-kilometre fatalities may be down, but that
| says nothing of:
|
| 1. The number of non-fatal crashes
|
| 2. How much of this incorporates driving on large
| highways
|
| 3. When not on a highway, the degree of traffic in which
| fatal crashes can't occur (can't get in a high-speed
| accident in high traffic in New York, for example)
|
| Needless to say, the roads of Japan and New Zealand are
| so different from the US that it isn't exactly clear that
| this statistic is really informing us of much, really.
| yc-kraln wrote:
| There is no such thing as "US" driving test standards.
| Each state has its own requirements. Some are quite weak,
| and some are very vigorous: For instance, Maryland
| driving licenses are accepted 1:1 as equivalent to the
| German driving license, you can exchange them without an
| exam or test. NY and CA... do not simply transfer.
| selectodude wrote:
| That doesn't mean much because most states, including
| Texas, also have full reciprocity with Germany. There
| doesn't really seem to be any rhyme or reason to what
| states they deem "equivalent".
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| When I got my license I was advised to do it in nearby
| Kentucky, since they didnt have a driving portion of the
| test at all, all you had to do was a written quiz
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| In Texas, I got my license through a self-teaching avenue
| where my parents just had to sign off on a form that they
| taught me. IIRC the form had fields where they log the
| times they took me driving.
|
| All of my friends were doing these driver's ed classes
| after school and a bit jealous that I got my license
| without a single test.
| dtparr wrote:
| When was that? KY requires a road test now. Also, it
| requires you to prove KY residency. I'm surprised people
| were able to get KY licenses without being residents
| before.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| I don't think any US state requires you to take several
| full-day courses after getting your license, for snow and
| ice handling, as is required in Switzerland for example.
| Also the road tests I've seen are a joke compared to both
| the Swiss and South African tests, both of which I've
| gone through. Requirements to check your mirrors every 10
| seconds. Check your blind spot before indicating, then
| again, before merging. Reverse alley docking and parallel
| parking in tight spaces. Emergency braking from a fixed
| speed within a certain distance.
|
| Of course, after years of practice this is how you should
| be driving. But almost nobody who doesn't explicitly
| practice for the test can actually pass.
|
| Whether a license is accepted reciprocally is more a
| political decision than based on test stringency.
| tbihl wrote:
| The interesting thing is that Maryland drivers are among
| the worst I've seen over a wider spectrum of factors.
| Sober California drivers seem pretty safe. Virginia
| drivers are miserable on interstates because they pass
| one another at 1-3mph differentials (I assume this is a
| response to the reputed harsh soeeding enforcement there)
| and are victims of often-wrong signage, but are otherwise
| uninteresting. South Carolina drivers cause dangerous
| situations by trying to give away their right of way.
| Maryland drivers aggressively fight back agaibst merges,
| change lanes erratically, and crash in a quarter inch of
| snow at shocking rates, despite the fact that their salt
| trucks have higher mass-flow-rates than their snow
| storms. The only drivers who stand out vs Maryland are in
| big military areas where there's a significant minority
| of people driving 20mph faster than traffic and merging
| erratically while doing so.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Maybe the stricter tests are a result of the bad driving,
| and not vice versa.
| quartz wrote:
| I think it's more a Baltimore / DC area issue than a
| Maryland one. Baltimore consistently ranks dead last in
| best driver reports with DC right behind:
| https://www.allstate.com/americas-best-drivers/index.htm
|
| The commuting structure of those cities is just awful and
| begging for road rage.
| argiopetech wrote:
| Having just left VA after a year in residence, VA drivers
| pass at 1-3mph deltas because they're already doing
| 15mph+ over the speed limit. Perhaps enforcement is
| different in southern VA, but I'd estimate only seeing
| speed traps/vehicles pulled over once every 3-4 weeks.
|
| Maryland (and, to a lesser degree, New Jersey) drivers
| are legitimately terrible whenever you find them.
| KSPAtlas wrote:
| I mean, have you seen German drivers?
| fallingknife wrote:
| Has that training had any noticable impact accident
| statistics? Seems like just more bureaucracy to me.
| ghaff wrote:
| My recollection of learning to drive many years ago was
| that I took driver's ed, drive my parents around a bit,
| but then didn't drive much/own a car until after grad
| school. And therefore, didn't really have much driving
| experience until later. (And didn't really learn to drive
| a stick until many years later when I bought a car with
| one.)
|
| I guess I'm skeptical that having some more classroom
| time and a more rigorous testing improves young person
| driving a lot--much less makes much of _any_ difference
| to how people with a few years of driving under their
| belt drive.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I think the tests are just the colors under which
| bureaucratic red tape just happens to sail. Anything that
| creates barriers to entry will result in people being
| older before they get their licenses and that is where
| the bulk of the benefit comes from.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Is there any evidence that young drivers are dangerous
| due to age rather than inexperience?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Teenagers aren't known for not putting themselves in
| dangerous situations.
|
| I don't think teenagers are any less safe than an person
| with equivalently little experience in normal traffic
| situations but they are definitively more likely to be
| less conservative when they do decide to push the limits.
| There's a difference between navigating a complex
| intersection and knowing how fast you can/should go on an
| empty highway.
| agentdrtran wrote:
| A human being is not a software or engineering project
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| > I am really worried by the fact that I am the unwilling
| tester in the Great Driverless Car Experiment.
|
| You're basically an non-consenting tester for every piece of
| innovation that society every has/ever will come up with, in
| one way or another. It's an unavoidable feature of living on
| the same planet as 8 billion other people. Perhaps the safety
| of this technology does need to improve, or perhaps not. But
| there's no level of improvement that would ever be able to
| satisfy this outrage you've expressed at something new existing
| in the same place as you.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| > You're basically an non-consenting tester for every piece
| of innovation that society every has/ever will come up with,
| in one way or another. It's an unavoidable feature of living
| on the same planet as 8 billion other people. Perhaps the
| safety of this technology does need to improve, or perhaps
| not. But there's no level of improvement that would ever be
| able to satisfy this outrage you've expressed at something
| new existing in the same place as you.
|
| Why do you say it's unavoidable? Regulations could certainly
| keep these tests off of public roads.
| beams_of_light wrote:
| And they did, until they didn't. This is not a brand new,
| unproven technology. It's been developing for over a
| decade. The car didn't hurt anyone or crash into anything -
| it simply did not have its lights on. The behavior to drive
| to a safer place for the traffic stop was intentional, per
| Cruise. This is something human drivers do as well. When
| being pulled over, it's common to pull into a parking lot
| or other nearby place that isn't in the driving path, for
| the officer's safety and convenience, in addition to
| allowing traffic to continue to flow without obstruction.
| [deleted]
| Fernicia wrote:
| They are speaking more broadly. Every day you walk past
| buildings with novel construction features, planes fly
| overhead without your permission, the ingredients to the
| food you eat change without your knowledge or consent.
|
| It's a simple fact of life that you test things without
| explicitly consenting. The driverless cars are no
| different.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Food ingredients are posted on the package. If the
| contents differ the manufacturer is liable.
| LocalPCGuy wrote:
| What about those pesky horseless carriages? Definitely
| should have had regulations to keep them off the roads.
| /sarcasm
| dntrkv wrote:
| Let's say autonomous cars, once fully implemented, are even
| 10% safer than existing drivers. And testing in real-world
| conditions, speeds up the implementation by even just a
| year. We would need about 3k deaths at the hands of the
| autonomous drivers before the trade off was no longer worth
| it. This is only considering the US. And based on very
| conservative estimates of 10% improvement and a reduction
| of only a year savings in time to deploy. The more likely
| scenario will put that number in the 10s of thousands in my
| opinion.
|
| Personally, I would much rather we slowly develop and
| deploy these cars in the wild rather than continue testing
| in some controlled environments. At least this way we can
| monitor progress and judge their readiness as a society.
| Plus, the sooner they happen, the better for everyone.
| frgtpsswrdlame wrote:
| You're trying to do math in a scenario where you have no
| real numbers. Of course you can pull some stuff out of
| your butt (+10%, 1 year) to say it's going to save lives
| but unless you can justify those numbers it's
| meaningless.
| dntrkv wrote:
| No fucking way? I thought my math was rock-solid!
|
| The point is not the exact numbers. It's to demonstrate
| that even if we do suffer accidents and deaths from
| testing self-driving cars on the road, the end result
| will be many more saved lives (just based on the fact of
| how many people die from traffic accidents today) Of
| course this hinges on many other factors to be true, but
| that's the case with all kinds of technological advances.
| [deleted]
| calyth2018 wrote:
| You're not wrong.
| conductr wrote:
| My wife's 96 year old grandfather still has a driver's license
| because he passes some ridiculous vision test with 1 of his
| eyes. He can't read a newspaper or see a television well enough
| to enjoy sports (previously his favorite thing). He says he's
| memorized the vision test at his doctor's office and when asked
| the doctor refuses to file a report (or whatever procedural
| thing is required to remove his driving abilities). He totaled
| his car(s) every ~6 months for the past ~5 years. Luckily for
| other drivers, always doing something like hitting a concrete
| light pole base in a large parking lot. Although him and wife
| have been hospitalized each time as 1) age 2) sometimes happens
| at >35MPH.
|
| All to say, the roads being safe as a core assumption is
| completely false. I'd gladly share the road with beta AI versus
| other drivers like this. Being an occupant in beta AI is
| completely optional.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| If you're in California, you can file a report with the DMV
| since you presumably know both his license plate and his
| name.
| brimble wrote:
| A huge percentage of elderly drivers shouldn't be on the
| road. We (the US) seem, as a society, to have decided to just
| live with that rather than trying to make it easier to live
| here without a car.
| duped wrote:
| It's more that they vote more than young people and no
| politician is going to change the driving standards in
| their state only to be antagonized by the AARP.
| jaywalk wrote:
| > Tradition has it that when you load-test a new bridge, you
| put the architect underneath.
|
| Do you have any more info on this? It's a fascinating fact.
| [deleted]
| wang_li wrote:
| >I think we should set a much higher bar for allowing those
| cars on the streets, rather than "it kinda works, so let's roll
| with it".
|
| Indeed. The minimum before any self driving car can be put on
| the road is that the developers, managers, executives, and
| major investors and their immediate families have to spend 8
| hours running back and forth across a track on which 40 self
| driving cars per mile of track are running laps at a minimum of
| 50 MPH. Additionally there need to be things like rains of
| nails on the road, suddenly floods of water, packs of dogs,
| tumbling tumbleweeds, and other hazards. If at any point the
| average speed drops below 50 MPH or if the cars hit anyone or
| hit each other, the car can't go on public roads.
| fallingknife wrote:
| You could say the same for regular cars when they first arrived
| on the road. Saying there should be a higher bar is useless
| unless you are able to say exactly what that bar should be.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Let's start with setting the bar at "the driverless car only
| operating at night should have its lights on". And since
| Cruise so effortlessly limbod right under that one, we should
| probably ask for a root-cause analysis here and stop their
| operation immediately until then. God forbid they start
| disabling the brakes like Uber "because they cause
| disengagements".
| MereInterest wrote:
| People did say exactly the same for regular cars. The result
| was a massive advertising campaign to establish the concept
| of jaywalking, and to make the street the sole domain of the
| car.
|
| I can easily imagine a similar campaign to label pedestrians
| as irresponsible for walking outside without an ultrasonic
| emitter, or a lidar reflector, or whatever integrates with
| the self-driving system. Whatever shifts the responsibility
| away from the car and onto the deceased.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| You say "advertising campaign" as if it were some
| conspiracy by the world's big auto manufacturers
|
| 1. Do you have any sources?
|
| 2. You don't think that roads _should_ be a car only
| domain? What do you think roads are for?
| firstcommentyo wrote:
| > 2. You don't think that roads should be a car only
| domain? What do you think roads are for?
|
| For example for my messanger on my horse so he doesn't
| get stuck in the mutt on it's voyage to the next city.
| ... or maybe my zenturie to support my legion?
|
| What makes you think (or suggest) that roads where
| invented for cars?
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| I never said they were _invented_ for cars. My question
| was why don 't they think roads, as they are in 2022,
| shouldn't be a car only domain? This argument of "well
| their original purpose was for..." is logically
| incoherent in a multitude of ways. There are thousands of
| things that we use a bit different than originally as
| intended due to the advancement of modern tech
| Steltek wrote:
| > 2. You don't think that roads should be a car only
| domain? What do you think roads are for?
|
| You've clearly never had a UPS driver scream "Use the
| bike lane!" at you after parking his truck in that same
| bike lane. Drivers have bizarre reflexes for how to use
| roads.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| Well, no I must admit I never have experienced that. Not
| really sure I understand how it pertains to my question
| you responded to.
| jeromegv wrote:
| 1. https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-
| history The forgotten history of how automakers invented
| the crime of "jaywalking" (books and more sources are
| quoted in that article)
|
| 2. Roads existed before cars. This is an extremely
| American view to think that roads should be exclusively
| for cars. Roads should be for PEOPLE, regardless of which
| mode of transport they are using.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| As for point 2.
|
| Okay, but now cars do exist. Do you think it's reasonable
| for cars capable of traveling 40mph should be stuck
| behind pedestrians at walking speed? Our modern
| transportation infrastructure exists for a reason, and
| that reason is speed/effeciency. Most areas with heavy
| pedestrian traffic have sidewalks. If I'm going 60mph
| down the highway then the presumption that I should be
| subjected to pedestrians casually strolling across is
| absurd.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Already today, cars do not travel at 40mph in those areas
| with heavy pedestrian traffic--the typical speed limit on
| a city street is 25mph, and even that is probably above
| typical speeds. If you want cars to travel more quickly,
| you need to resort to highways that completely cut off
| pedestrian access, which has seriously deleterious
| effects on the neighborhoods it travels through.
|
| If you try to compromise, you end up with stroads...
| which turn out to be just as bad as highways for
| pedestrians in practice, thanks in no small part to
| people like you who believe that all of the compromises
| of street design and urban planning should be borne not
| by vehicular drivers but by pedestrians.
|
| (I'll add a side note here: a lot of efficiency depends
| on what you're trying to make efficient. Many people--
| including you, apparently--define efficiency as moving
| _cars_ with as high throughput as possible. If you
| instead want to move _people_ with high throughput,
| usually step one is to ditch cars, since single-occupant
| vehicles occupy vastly more space than any other form of
| transportation.)
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| Alright, but 25mph is still significantly faster than
| walking speed. I do think that mass transportation would
| be nice and we could use a better public trans infra in
| the US, but that doesn't make the fact that waking is
| still much less efficient that driving. Even with cars
| taking up much more space, a bunch of cars traveling at
| 25 mph are able to carry a many more people through a
| distance X in a period of time T than the equivalent
| walking would be able to. The alternative that everyone
| seems to be forgetting is having roads for cars and
| sidewalks for people, which already exists in the vast
| majority of areas with a high potentiality for pedestrian
| traffic.
| enneff wrote:
| The alternative to car-centric streets is mixed use
| emphasising bikes, pedestrians, and public transport.
| Steltek wrote:
| LOL, cars don't go anywhere near 25mph in Boston. They'll
| average 15mph, if they're lucky. Even with ~70% of the
| right of way allocated to cars, there's still too many of
| them for the road to handle. I don't know what
| "efficiency" you think cars have over other modes but I'm
| not seeing it on my commute. More often than not, my bike
| is stuck behind cars (because the bike lane disappeared)
| rather than they're stuck behind me.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| 15mph is still faster than walking speed. I'm not saying
| cars are the most optimally efficient mode of
| transportation, just that they are much more efficient
| that walking.
| Steltek wrote:
| That's a completely useless comparison that applies
| almost no where in the world? You need to compare driving
| vs pervasive transit and bike networks. I doubt New
| Yorkers or Amsterdammers would accept your efficient car
| hypothesis.
|
| In the few places with high 100% walking commutes, I
| don't see cars being more efficient either. Do you want
| every college student to drive from their dorm to class?
| How about poor countries without the money to maintain
| good road networks?
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| Are you joking? That applies in the _vast majority_ of
| the world, the exceptions you named are just that,
| exceptions that are exceptionally rare.
|
| This entire discussion started as whether pedestrians
| should/shouldn't be on roads. No, they shouldn't. They
| should be on a sidewalk, best of both worlds.
| MereInterest wrote:
| Speed, yes, but efficiency is questionable. Efficiency
| depends both on how fast you're traveling, but also on
| how far you need to travel in order to reach a
| destination. With minimum parking requirements, the space
| required for a shop increases drastically. If there's one
| shop every 50 feet, you can efficiently visit them at low
| speeds. If there's one shop every quarter mile, walking
| past a row of shops is impossible. The car traveling 40
| mph can go at a faster speed than a pedestrian, but it
| also requires the shops to be spaced out such that the
| car can park. Optimizing for speed reduces efficiency.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| Not necessarily. This assessment forgets things like
| sidewalks. I don't think anyone is going to visit shops
| on main street and every time they leave a shop drives 5
| feet further down the road only to park and visit another
| one. In tightly clustered areas it's most common to park
| and then walk via a sidewalk to other destinations on the
| area.
| Cockbrand wrote:
| 1: e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaywalking#Origin_o
| f_the_term
|
| 2: Roads are also for bicyclists, motorcyclists, and even
| pedestrians. It's true though that car drivers often
| think that roads are a car only domain and behave
| aggressively towards the other mentioned groups
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| 2. No, sidewalks and bike lanes are for pedestrians and
| bicyclists. Bike lanes are less common than sidewalks so
| I think it's reasonable to include them on low-
| speed/highly congested stretches of road, but to assume
| they should have a full access to, e.g. and interstate or
| highway is ridiculous and would hinder literally
| thousands of people.
| kube-system wrote:
| Sidewalks and bike lanes are not contiguous. Pedestrians
| and cyclists are not only permitted, but have the right
| of way, on nearly all roads other than controlled access
| highways and tunnels, even where sidewalks and bike lanes
| exist.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| Yes but this conversation was about jaywalking and what
| roads are intended for. No one (I think) is arguing that
| a bike crossing the rode to go from one bike lane to
| another is wrong, but that it isn't the intended purpose
| of roads. Pedestrians do have the right away, but that
| doesn't make jaywalking illegal, it just makes it so
| drivers are (rightfully) held accountable for running
| over pedestrians trying to cross the street. It doesn't
| give a pedestrian the right to walk down the middle of
| the street at a leisurely pace
| Cockbrand wrote:
| OK, let's all take a deep breath here - we might just
| have a different understanding of the word "road". My
| definition of "road" is not restricted to interstates and
| highways, but it includes any larger road, err, street.
| Of course, nobody wants pedestrians or cyclists on
| highways. It looks like we agree there.
|
| But I refuse the popular notion that roads (as in larger
| streets, or any street between villages/towns/cities)
| should be for cars only. The usual examples of
| Copenhagen, Amsterdam or recently Paris show that shared
| roads lead to a higher quality of living. I personally
| appreciate this, and I'd prefer a world where this
| sharing would be more common.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| But why should shared roads be preferred over sidewalks?
| I see quite a few potential disadvantages but no real
| advantages whatsoever.
| enneff wrote:
| There's an entirety different worldview that you are
| missing here. Check out this great YouTube channel which
| goes into a lot of detail about how our cities and towns
| could be better designed.
| https://youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes
| MereInterest wrote:
| For 1, this is well established history that I didn't
| feel was necessary to provide sources for. That said, the
| vox article linked to by jeromegv does a good job of
| describing the transition.
|
| For 2, I'd make a distinction between paths built for
| long-distance travel (roads) and paths built for
| connecting to destinations (streets). The two have
| fundamentally different goals that cannot be safely
| achieved at the same time. To allow for high-speed
| travel, a road should be as predictable as possible, with
| limited entrances and exits and barriers to prevent
| people and animals from wandering onto the road, and
| should be restricted to vehicles that can maintain a high
| speed. To allow streets to connect to destinations; such
| as homes, shops, and workplaces; there should be many
| entrances and exits to the street. The destinations
| should be packed as tightly as possible, so that they can
| be reached with a minimal distance traveled. It's not
| just that these goals require tradeoffs, but that they
| are fundamentally antithetical to each other.
|
| The best way to satisfy these two goals is by having
| separate designs for streets and roads. The roads are
| pathed around pedestrian areas, and allow branching off
| into them at limited locations. The streets are mixed
| use, with rougher surfaces (e.g. brick/cobblestone) to
| prevent high-speed travel. This doesn't exclude motor
| vehicles from using roads altogether, allowing for use
| cases such as delivering food to cornershops or dropping
| off somebody with limited mobility, but does steer
| motorized traffic off of the streets and onto the roads
| wherever possible.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| 1. Fair enough, but sources should almost always be
| provided. I hadn't heard that particular piece of
| historical trivia and I don't think it's necessarily
| common knowledge.
|
| As for the later, why is that any better than just
| sidewalks and crosswalks, which the majority of areas
| with heavy pedestrian traffic already have? It'd be
| incredibly eco-unfriendly, expensive, and impractical to
| have two different types of roads for cars and
| pedestrians when we already have a solution that works
| just fine - sidewalks.
| MereInterest wrote:
| I do provide sources when something is difficult to find,
| uncommon, or uses numeric values beyond ballpark
| estimations. Demanding sources for every statement
| contributes to Brandolini's Law [0], which states "The
| amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of
| magnitude larger than is needed to produce it." In the
| spirit of restoring symmetry, I invite you to provide
| sources for the following statements made in this thread.
|
| * "Most areas with heavy pedestrian traffic have
| sidewalks." I am uncertain on this one, as heavy
| pedestrian traffic is more frequent on mixed-use streets.
| Sidewalks are only used in places with car-centric
| design, which discourages walking.
|
| * "Even with cars taking up much more space, a bunch of
| cars traveling at 25 mph are able to carry a many more
| people through a distance X in a period of time T than
| the equivalent walking would be able to." I am uncertain
| on this, because cars require very large amounts of space
| both for the physical size of the car, the spacing
| between cars, and the spacing between groups of cars at
| an intersection.
|
| * "It'd be incredibly eco-unfriendly, expensive, and
| impractical to have two different types of roads" I'd be
| interested in a source for this, as I've generally heard
| that separating out usage improves the efficiency of
| each. Cars go faster because there are fewer stops
| requires. Pedestrians die less often because there are
| fewer cars nearby.
|
| * "Bike lanes are less common than sidewalks" This is
| correct by my experience, but I've only lived in places
| with car-centric city planning. Can you provide a source?
|
| I'm interested in continuing this conversation, but not
| if it is a conversation between sourced comments and
| unsourced assertions.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
| InCityDreams wrote:
| 1) lights on when required. 2) ...
| xutopia wrote:
| They've been driving for a while now. Can't you go with data
| from their existing rides to form an opinion? All you're going
| with is fear right now. Those cars are already better than the
| majority of drivers.
| dogman144 wrote:
| This is the most challenging transition with tech in terms of
| the outcomes and the difficulty defining just what this trend
| is.
|
| Cybernetics is* ~insertion of a governance layer into our
| social contract that we didn't agree to relinquish our agency
| to... It just sort of happened, and we deal with the outcomes.
| The more disconcerting aspect to me is the latter. Suddenly, QR
| codes everywhere, good luck getting around without a smart
| phone, if that driverless car sideswipes you and doesn't stop,
| call someone I guess?
|
| If this area/trend interests you, there is a lot of reading
| available from the weird (CCRU, early Nick Land) to the fairly
| mechanical/academic (MIT, Norbert Wiener), to the openly
| behavioral governance-themed (Stanford Persuasive Technology
| Lab, B.J. Fogg), to adversarial-to-tech (The Cybernetic
| Hypothesis).
|
| * so-so definition of the space, but its the best I can sum it
| up.
| tryitnow wrote:
| I agree with your basic idea, but I don't think there's really
| any way around this - at some point these systems will have to
| be tested in a real world environment.
|
| I guess the question is: how much higher should the bar be set?
| And if we set it substantially higher then how much longer will
| it take to improve the performance and safety of these systems?
| rafale wrote:
| I didn't know they load test bridges. Wouldn't that put
| unnecessary wear on the structure and age it prematurely?
| jaywalk wrote:
| What? No, not at all. The bridge has to be able to handle the
| max load, otherwise it's not safe. If the load test causes
| any issues with the bridge, that is a massive red flag.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| The max load test is to verify it can support the max rated
| load before safety margin so they aren't testing it to the
| point right before it fails.
| svet_0 wrote:
| Autonomous cars are already safer than human drivers. Not as
| featureful or accurate, but safer.
| tbihl wrote:
| This is not exactly irrelevant, but there is some
| indeterminate weighting factor that you would have to apply
| for the bad taste of algorithms killing people vs people
| killing people.
|
| Not that I'm an impartial judge... At the end of the
| autonomous car rainbow waits more parking, more driving, and
| fences to keep people out of streets.
| [deleted]
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| This is almost certainly a data artifact, despite how often
| it gets repeated by optimists
| tedmiston wrote:
| Previous articles mention that the cars provided rides to
| Cruise employees before the general public.
| surgi wrote:
| I find the explanation offered by Cruise amusing: the car
| supposedly "figured out" that it is in a dangerous spot to be
| pulled over and "tried to move to a better one" (extremely
| complex behavior), while the actual reason for the car being
| pulled over was not having its headlights on (seemingly a
| relatively simple bug).
| jeffbee wrote:
| Perhaps the lights are not even inside the loop of the Cruise
| hardware and software. They may rely on the automatic lights
| that GM provides from the factory. Do they even have visible
| light optical cameras in their system?
| ironmagma wrote:
| Why amusing? Sounds about right from what I know about Cruise
| cars. (Source/disclaimer: I worked at Cruise many moons ago.)
| cdot2 wrote:
| If a person did this they'd probably be in some serious trouble
| DennisP wrote:
| Not necessarily, if you make your intentions clear, e.g. by
| slowing down and putting your hazards on.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| iso1210 wrote:
| Depends on your skin color
| sseagull wrote:
| Well, most of the time. If the cop feels like it, they can
| make you have a very bad time.
|
| https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/7645474002
|
| "An Arkansas woman says she had no safe place to pull over
| in July 2020 when a state trooper tried to stop her for
| speeding, so she turned on her hazard lights and slowed
| down. Moments later, the officer rammed her vehicle,
| causing it to flip over and injuring the woman"
| AviationAtom wrote:
| Assuming you aren't driving far, the police will
| generally understand, and appreciate your regard for
| their safety. I have seen people choose to pull over in
| the worst of spots, where I am almost certain the police
| would have appreciated them moving to a safer spot.
|
| As for the Arkansas lady, did you watch the video? IIRC,
| she went quite a ways before he PIT'd her. I would agree
| he shouldn't have done the PIT on her so soon, but it
| wasn't the case of her going a few hundred feet more.
| Vladimof wrote:
| de-amped URL: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/
| 2021/06/10/arkans...
|
| I thought that Google was supposed to stop the AMP
| project? can't they automatically redirect old AMP URLs
| to the correct real URL?
| dylan604 wrote:
| clearly, it's not an engrained G service that lots and
| lots of people depend on, as that's the typical decision
| Googs waits for before pulling the plug
| Vladimof wrote:
| There are LOTS of AMP links floating around... most
| people don't even know that they depend on it...
| dylan604 wrote:
| sorry, i guess i should have ended my original post with
| /s
| Vladimof wrote:
| that's ok... I'm just glad that (as far as I know) all
| APM URLs are easy to identify visually... they will
| probably change that in version 2
| dylan604 wrote:
| As a teenager, I was pulled over for speeding. I slowed
| down, used the indicators to signal before changing
| lanes, then nearly came to a complete stop before
| realizing I was on the shoulder of a bridge. I suddenly
| realized that somewhere in driver's ed or a defensive
| driving course it was strongly suggested that stopping on
| a bridge is not allowed. I decided to continue pulling
| forward until a "safe" spot off the bridge.
|
| When the officer arrived at the window, he did question
| why I didn't stop at the original spot. After explaining,
| he said he appreciated the thought. I still received the
| ticket.
|
| Point of the story? Not every LEO is an asshole.
| virgilp wrote:
| I think I saw that video - don't get me wrong, the
| officer was definitely an asshole; but I can see why he
| was annoyed, there was in fact plenty of space &time for
| her to pull over.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Remind us how what the police officer did wasn't
| vehicular assault and potentially homicide.
|
| Remind us how physical injury is a reasonable response to
| a traffic violation.
| virgilp wrote:
| I don't want to defend him, what he did was *wrong*. He
| should absolutely face consequences for gross over-
| reaction. I never said his response was reasonable given
| the circumstances.
|
| But the way the story was presented was extremely biased.
| I believe the US cops are trained to actually use the
| "pit" maneuver to stop offenders who otherwise refuse to
| stop. In this case, he should've known better - but one
| can totally see how an asshole cop would interpret the
| situation as "lady is refusing to stop, I need to compel
| her to do so".
|
| I guess what I'm saying is that it wasn't a totally
| random act of unprovoked cop violence.
| pie42000 wrote:
| Ah yes, "one time in Arkansas" is now applicable to the
| situation at large. You'd think the HN crowd would be
| intelligent enough to not do this. This is akin to saying
| "this website doesn't load on the Nintendo DS web browser
| therefore..."
| Archelaos wrote:
| In my country this would be an illegal disproportionate
| action. Did the state trooper get away with this? If not,
| wouldn't it be time to change the law?
| bhelkey wrote:
| > Did the state trooper get away with this?
|
| Yes, he did [1].
|
| > If not, wouldn't it be time to change the law?
|
| 'The [Arkansas State Police], as part of the settlement
| agreement, has agreed to change its Use of Force policy
| as it relates to PIT maneuvers and institute an
| "objective standard" required to justify the maneuver's
| use versus the previous "subjective standard."'[1].
|
| I would argue that a more across the board set of changes
| is required.
|
| [1] https://www.kark.com/news/working4you/arkansas-state-
| police-...
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Haha of course he got away with it
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| Remove "most of the time". This narrative that police are
| boogeymen who will subject you to their emotional whims
| is so overplayed its not even funny any more. There may
| be 1 in 100 truly awful police men and women out there,
| just as their are truly awful people in every known
| profession. People share a viral, highly edited video on
| tiktok to make themselves look like the victim only for
| the entire world to pile on and go "wow yep police bad".
|
| There's a lot that could be improved in our judicial
| system, but you're not going to identify the areas that
| need improvement by sharing anecdotes of "Well this one
| time in Arkansas..."
| sseagull wrote:
| I generally am in agreement. However there's a
| complication in my mind.
|
| My dad was a police officer and I grew up around police.
| It's there's one thing to know about police, it is that
| they are human, and subject to all the emotions,
| inconsistencies, and foibles as other humans.
|
| However, they are given an extraordinary amount of power,
| with very little accountability. Think about what it
| would take for a regular person (maybe even you) to lose
| their job. Yet here is an example of an officer, behaving
| very aggressively, against department policy, causing a
| major accident and injuring a pregnant woman.
|
| As far as I can tell, he still has his job (although he
| was "disciplined", and the lawsuit was picked up by the
| taxpayers).
|
| https://apnews.com/article/lawsuits-arkansas-legal-
| settlemen...
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| Alright but again, the anecdote of "This one time in
| Arkansas" can't reasonably be used as a justification for
| stating "All police are bad and out of control all over
| the country"
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| > Alright but again, the anecdote of "This one time in
| Arkansas" can't reasonably be used as a justification for
| stating "All police are bad and out of control all over
| the country"
|
| In this post
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30987681 you wrote:
|
| > ...There may be 1 in 100 truly awful police men and
| women out there, just as their are truly awful people in
| every known profession.
|
| Your complaint about others' anecdotes would hold more
| weight if you weren't just making up statistics.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| I think it's extremely clear that I'm not trying to
| portray that exact number as a fact and more as a general
| portrayment of "most police officers are good, just as
| most people are good"
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| > I think it's extremely clear that I'm not trying to
| portray that exact number as a fact and more as a general
| portrayment of "most police officers are good, just as
| most people are good"
|
| That sounds about as useful as the anecdotes in this
| thread. Police aren't a random sample of the population
| after all. Even if it's true that most people are good,
| that doesn't imply most police are.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| Alright sure, I guess so. Neither of us have any hard
| data to back up our opinion so I guess it turns into a
| debate of feelings, which will lead neither of us
| anywhere.
|
| What I do know is that as of May 2021 there were 665,380
| police officer employed in the US, and trying to
| generalize all of them in any way based on a few highly
| edited videos is absolutely not a valid approach given
| the standard practices in data science and statistics.
| Given that the US generalized crime rate is 47.70 per
| 100,000 it's reasonable to argue that unless there is
| evidence showing otherwise, police officers also fit
| roughly into that same distribution and therefore would
| be "mostly good" (as defined by law), as most people are.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes333051.htm
| js2 wrote:
| Look up the per-capita number of deaths caused by U.S law
| enforcement officers vs other countries.
|
| Then look up the per-capita number of people put in
| hospitals by U.S. law enforcement officers vs other
| countries.
|
| Then look up the consequences U.S. law enforcement
| officers face when they harm or kill. Also look up their
| relative training.
|
| Finally look up most dangerous professions and see where
| law enforcement ranks to get an idea of whether their
| lives are truly in such danger as to justify their
| actions.
|
| After looking at this data (and I apologize for not
| providing citations directly but I'm on mobile), it's
| hard to avoid forming the opinion that U.S. law
| enforcement is undertrained, unjustifiably aggressive,
| protective of bad officers, and unaccountable to the
| communities it serves.
|
| Anecdotally, I've had more than my fair share of
| interactions with officers and about 20% of them have
| been hotheaded jerks.
|
| Oh, I forgot one: look at the domestic abuse numbers for
| law enforcement officers too.
|
| Edit: here's at least one citation:
|
| https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/how-police-compare-
| differen...
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| That is not a valid citation, it immediately starts off
| by illustrating it's own political prejudice. The fact
| that they don't link directly to their sources is also
| questionable. They say they use Source:
| https://www.prisonpolicy.org/data/ (among others) but I
| don't see any data for some of the numbers they're
| projecting.
|
| It's also not quite fair to analyze this data without
| also taking into account the prevalence of violent crime
| in general at each country in question. Of course a
| country with more violent crime will result in more
| violent policing.
|
| I'm not saying that it doesn't make any valid points, but
| you can literally make any profession or population of
| people look bad if you cherry pick data-points and
| provide politically biased commentary while also not
| explaining co-factors or context.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| I think it is entirely reasonable to push for a (much)
| higher standard of police accountability. The problem is
| not that all police are bad and out of control, it's that
| whenever these incidents occur the _leadership_ and
| police unions institutionally push back forcefully on
| accountability. This institutional pushback is what makes
| this into a systemic problem that needs to be addressed.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| Sure I agree, that is reasonable. Many people try to make
| the argument that all/most police _are_ bad and out of
| control, which is what I refute.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Organizational leadership _really matters_. Imagine being
| a law-abiding person who joins an organization that 's
| run by organized crime. Most of your colleagues are
| decent law-abiding people, but a few are thugs. And when
| those thugs hurt people, leadership pours all its
| resources into supporting and shielding _them_ from
| consequences. When you (a law-abiding employee) try to
| report a thug for misbehavior, your leadership supports
| the thug over you or even drums you out of the
| organization.
|
| Do you think this would be a sustainable organization?
| Should the general population look at a given
| representative and think "90% probability this is a good
| person" or should they think "10% probability this person
| is a violent thug who can hurt or kill me with impunity,
| and in any group of ten reps one might try to kill me and
| the others will look the other way?" What is the right
| way to engage with an organization like that? And over
| time is this organization going to reform itself, or is
| it increasingly going to attract bad people and drive
| away the decent ones?
|
| There's a lot at stake here. Recent anti-accountability
| political activism by police leadership and union bosses
| is really scary and counterproductive stuff even if most
| cops are fundamentally decent.
| PeterisP wrote:
| The statement there isn't "All police are bad and out of
| control all over the country" but rather whether you
| should perceive that possibility as threatening enough to
| seriously affect your possible actions i.e. whether
| stopping in a non-dangerous place (as opposed to stopping
| immediately and staying put) is permissible. And if
| there's a 1-in-100 chance of a police being unreasonable,
| then that definitely is a too high of risk.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| That's fair, I just pulled that number from thin air to
| try and portray my point. The actual crime stats in the
| US is 47.7 per 100,000. Unless there's hard evidence to
| the contrary, it can be assumed that those number also
| apply roughly to police.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > There may be 1 in 100 truly awful police men and women
| out there, just as their are truly awful people in every
| known profession.
|
| This feels a bit like Father Ted's defense of the
| Church's child protection record: "Say if there are 200
| million priests in the world and five percent are
| paedophiles. That's still only 10 million."
|
| 1 in 100 would be _far_ too high. Maybe 1 in 100 people
| are awful in the general population, but ideally you'd
| hold police to a much higher standard.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| Yeah fair enough, I just pulled that number from thin air
| to try and portray my point. The actual crime stats in
| the US is 47.7 per 100,000. Unless there's hard evidence
| to the contrary, it can be assumed that those number also
| apply roughly to police.
| m_fayer wrote:
| I grew up in the late 90s in NYC, and spent a lot of time
| hanging out "on the streets".
|
| I think on average, I saw an act of gross police
| misbehavior about once a month. Sometimes it was quite
| savage. Always racist. I'm white, but many of my friends
| weren't. 20 years later I still have intrusive memories
| of standing by helplessly while terrible things were said
| and done to my not-white friends, and I still have
| violent fantasies about those cops getting theirs in
| kind.
|
| Sure, this was often aimed at young people who may or may
| not be smoking pot or engaged in other mildly truant
| behavior. The police were not reacting to the truant
| behavior. They were targeting the minorly truant young
| people because they wanted to get their rocks off, and
| these victims were easily available and had no recourse.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| I don't doubt your experience but let's not pretend that
| there haven't been any changes in the past 2 decades.
| m_fayer wrote:
| What makes you so sure? Even if there's data showing
| improvement, this would be data from a supremely
| untrustworthy source with a long history of manipulation
| and deception.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| I mean you're making an argument that does nothing to
| facilitate discussion on the issue. It's basically saying
| "No it hasn't changed. And if you have evidence or data
| showing otherwise, it can't be trusted." At the point you
| refute any provided data or evidence the conversation
| just devolves into an argument instead of a debate or
| conversation.
| m_fayer wrote:
| Discussion isn't what's needed here. It's reconciliation.
| This is what it looks like when abuse has built up and
| trust destroyed. The only way to claw back from that is
| patient humble hat-in-hands dialogue and persistent
| incremental trust-building measures. I haven't seen
| anything that looks like that from any major US law
| enforcement entity.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| I suggest watching some videos of how police behaved
| during the protests a couple years ago. The Verge had an
| excellent compilation. It's hardly one or two bad actors.
| My personal favorite was the police pulling parents out
| of a vehicle and beating them while their children
| watched -- the car was just trying to turn around and get
| out of the protest area safely.
|
| Your argument might be more valid if these "bad apples"
| faced appropriate punishment, but they never do.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| I've seen plenty of those videos, and 9 times out of 10
| if you're able to find the whole, unedited version of the
| video the officers actions suddenly seems much more
| reasonable. Not always, admittedly, but very often.
| mikestew wrote:
| With that many examples, it should be simple to post just
| _one_ example to make your point. But unsubstantiated
| contrarianism typically does not contribute to a
| conversation.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| No one else provided examples nor asked for any. Perhaps
| you should ask for examples instead of assuming I'm
| acting out of malice. Here's a link to the full video for
| probably the most widely recognized case in the history
| of police brutality, the killing of George Floyd.
|
| Does the context this video provides make the officers
| actions okay? No, I don't think so. Does it make those
| actions appear much, much more reasonable than it was
| made out to be on social media? Absolutely.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjKjaCvXdf4
| mikestew wrote:
| Thanks for the link, it indeed provides context to your
| comment.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| > Does the context this video provides make the officers
| actions okay? No, I don't think so.
|
| I understand and appreciate that social media can (and
| has) exaggerated things, which you've demonstrated, but I
| don't see how this demonstrates that police brutality is
| not a problem, or is an exaggerated problem. Ultimately
| you agree the police officer's actions were not okay.
|
| The Verge article which I referred to originally:
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/31/21276044/police-
| violence-...
|
| For example, there were multiple videos showing police
| cars literally running into protesters, ramming into
| groups of them. What additional context could ever make
| that okay? Under what circumstances would that be a
| reasonable response?
|
| Or as another example, police use tear gas on protesters,
| even though it's banned in war.
| dgellow wrote:
| Is it an euphemism for dead? /s
| cdot2 wrote:
| no but you'd probably be arrested
| nullc wrote:
| solarhoma wrote:
| A comment like this has no place on HN.
| nullc wrote:
| I apologize for creating offense.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Gallows humor like this always has a place.
| solarhoma wrote:
| It was a low effort comment. If you want low effort you
| go to Reddit. HN has made a name for itself as being a
| place for rational thought with good, honest, and
| respectable discussion. Just my opinion of the site
| though.
| cdot2 wrote:
| "Cruise vehicles are only authorized to drive from 10PM to 6AM,
| which obviously makes headlights pretty important."
|
| So why rely on the automatic headlights at all? Why not just set
| the headlights on manually?
| mobilio wrote:
| In EU there is a law that you should drive with headlight all
| time.
|
| Old cars drive with low beam, new cars comes with daytime
| running lights (DRLs).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daytime_running_lamp#European_...
| usrusr wrote:
| EU has a regulation requiring new cars to be equipped with
| DRL capability, that's all. Laws requiring the use of lights
| in daytime that exist in some countries are completely
| unrelated to EU.
| mobilio wrote:
| Actually this is interesting because manufacturers should
| make same car but equip it with different parts.
|
| Other example is turn signals. On EU they're orange. And
| when you drive after US imported car here drivers are
| confused because their turn signals are red. So driver
| behind don't know does front driver going to stop?
|
| DRL - is few bucks, but it's great improvement of road
| safety.
| usrusr wrote:
| > DRL - is few bucks, but it's great improvement of road
| safety.
|
| Only if you ignore all participants in traffic that don't
| burn through so much energy that a few watts extra aren't
| an issue. When drivers get everything they feel they need
| to see conveniently highlighted, attention will
| inevitably drop to compensate. They certainly know they
| need to see more than just cars, but the subconscious
| level only really cares for threats.
| cdot2 wrote:
| The US has this law for motorcycles. Maybe we should apply it
| to driverless cars as well
| BuildTheRobots wrote:
| I feel the need to point out that whilst permanent
| headlights make vehicles more visible most of the time, in
| the most dangerous scenario, they actually make you less
| visible.
|
| Low sun behind the vehicle, especially if it's a motorbike,
| makes it very hard to see. If the bike isn't lit up at the
| front you stand a fighting chance. If it's got the front
| headlight on then you don't even see the silhouette, you
| just see bright light surrounding and bright light from the
| middle.
|
| Motorcycle Action Group in the UK has had to run a handful
| of "repeal this safety law because it actually makes things
| more dangerous" campaigns in the last 20 years.
| mobilio wrote:
| That's an good idea.
|
| Actually few LED lights didn't require too much power and
| maintenance.
| unnah wrote:
| Yes, every self-driving car should have a row of LED lights
| at the front. Also, they should indicate that the AI is
| actively scanning its environment by switching the LEDs on
| and off in a regular left-to-right pattern.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| And those lights should be in a vertical row of 8 red
| lights, going left-to right.
|
| And when the car speaks to the driver and the
| surroundings, there should be three vertical bar graphs
| made of red leds to indicate the speech.
|
| There is a good controller for those kinds of lights,
| named "knight industry two thousand", but i think there
| is and upgrade to 'three tousand' available too.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| And a guy with the flag running in front of the vehicle.
| [deleted]
| Symbiote wrote:
| No, as you have cited, there is a law saying vehicles must be
| _equipped_ with these lights, but it 's up to national
| regulations on when they must be used.
|
| See https://trip.studentnews.eu/s/4086/77033-Car-travel-in-
| Europ... for a list (incomplete, Denmark requires daytime
| lights.)
| mobilio wrote:
| Nordic countries are different because even their "days"
| they sun can be seen 2-3-4 hours.
| Ekaros wrote:
| During winter at mid-day my lights automatically turned
| on... Just in simple overcast weather. So it does get bit
| gloomy at times.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| unless it's summer in which case it can be seen about 19
| hours.
| mobilio wrote:
| But even on 19 hours day it's good with daylights.
|
| It's easier to see what vehicle is running/driving or
| not.
| paulcole wrote:
| If a law says you should do something, it's not a law it's a
| suggestion.
| shafyy wrote:
| How do you pull over an autonomous car? Like, how does it know
| that it needs to pull over?
| chollida1 wrote:
| I would assume they have to have it programmed in them to pull
| over.
|
| They already need to incase of ambulance or fire trucks behind
| them. That's a day one feature. You see emergency flashing
| lights you pull over until they pass you.
|
| If they pull over behind you, then that's just a case of lights
| behind you, pull over and the car remains stopped.
|
| Flashing lights to signal to pull over is one of the most
| unbreakable of all driving rules, you can't release a self
| driving car that can't handle that case.
| dojitza1 wrote:
| Remote override for authorities to stop the car, instruct it to
| pull over etc. Alternatively, passengers always having access
| to a pull over when safe button.
| brigade wrote:
| Same way humans do? It needs to recognize flashing lights and
| emergency vehicles to obey the law to get out of their way, and
| from there add code to fully pull over and remain stopped as
| long as there's a cop car with flashing lights staying behind
| you.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| I assume it's more complex that that, but I can't see how a
| driverless car can reliable distinguish between being pulled
| over and an emergency vehicle is trying to get past on a
| narrow road.
| boondaburrah wrote:
| It might not, but the behaviour would be the same, so the
| effect is achieved.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| No, because on a narrow road, coming to a stop blocks the
| vehicle behind you.
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| If your on a narrow road where you can't safely pull
| over, you don't stop. You continue until you could safely
| pull over enough.
|
| Stopping would cause more harm than good if they're
| actually trying to get around you.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Sure, I know that, but does a driverless car? All it can
| see is blue lights right behind it, which could mean
| "stop right now or we'll shoot you" or "get a move on to
| the next passing point you can find" depending on context
| (probably conveyed by the gesticulating of the driver and
| maybe a loudspeaker).
| brigade wrote:
| Part of being pulled over is not blocking traffic while
| stopped, so if there's literally no shoulder/dirt to pull
| over onto then obviously you continue until there is.
|
| Just like a human driver is legally required to.
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| _" We work closely with the SFPD on how to interact with our
| vehicles and have a dedicated phone number for them to call in
| situations like this."_
|
| And yes, that seems thoroughly impractical at scale.
| asah wrote:
| Actually, I'd expect driverless cars to rarely get pulled
| over by police, so in fact this scales fine.
| shafyy wrote:
| Ok. So I guess the SFPD has been tailing the Cruise car,
| called the number, and then Cruise personnel made it pull
| over remotely?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| If that's the case then it's pretty impractical and double
| standard vs a human driver who needs to pull over
| immediately when instructed by the police or face
| potentially grave consequences if he doesn't immediately
| comply.
|
| When I'm at the wheel, I can't just tell the cop tailing me
| "yeah officer, I didn't pull over when you told me to
| behause you should have called me on my cell to tell me
| that" lol.
| hericium wrote:
| > double standard vs a human driver who needs to pull
| over immediately when instructed by the police or face
| potentially grave consequences
|
| Especially where Police is so hasty to use their cruisers
| as weapons[1]
|
| [1] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/06/10/
| arkansa...
| soco wrote:
| On an unrelated note: why are the US police cars called
| "cruisers"? Are they a different category so to say?
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| The best description is on the first result from search:
|
| > Police cars are called cruisers because that is what
| they do. They cruise about town, _looking for trouble_ ,
| and responding to those requiring assistance.
|
| Doubt the original poster meant any irony there, but...
|
| Still, Webster:
|
| > cruiser, noun:
|
| > 1 : a vehicle that _cruises_: such as
|
| > a : squad car
|
| > cruise, verb:
|
| > 1 : to sail about touching at a series of ports
|
| > 4 a : to go about the streets at random but on the
| lookout for possible developments
|
| So probably it is the origin.
|
| Wonder if there are similar designations in other
| languages. In my native one the term 'cruise' is
| restricted only for sail (as in v., 1 definition in
| Webster), so it could never be applied to a police car
| roaming the streets.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > In my native one the term 'cruise' is restricted only
| for sail
|
| Do you not used a cognate word for "Cruise control" in
| your language?
|
| In Hebrew "Shait" is used for sail, but also for the idea
| of cruise control and a cruise missile. I cannot think of
| any other uses, not even for patrol vehicles.
| dagw wrote:
| In Swedish at least the 'cruise' when talking about in
| ships and missiles is the same word, but "cruise control"
| is a completely different word (literally "speed
| holder"). You can't "cruise" in you car in Swedish.
| jaclaz wrote:
| In Italy our police cars are much faster, a police car is
| usually called "volante" (literally "flying"), the more
| correct name is "autopattuglia" which is more like
| "patrol car".
|
| Then we have the two different animal derived names,
| police cars are "pantere" (panthers) and the Carabinieri
| ones are "gazzelle" (gazelles).
|
| As well you can't cruise with a car, the cruise control
| (often untranslated) is a "regolatore di velocita" (speed
| regulator), but you can actually mantain a "velocita di
| crociera" (cruise speed) on a vehicle.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > a police car is usually called "volante" (literally
| "flying")
|
| Don't all cars driven by Italians do that? I think that
| I've even seen a Punto with a single poor tire on the
| pavement once. :)
| jaclaz wrote:
| No Pinto ever set foot (I mean tire) in Italy AFAICT, I
| think they weren't ever imported in Europe, but -
| seriously - I once happened to be overtaken by one of the
| few Lamborghini's they have, on a highway, I was going
| (cruising) at a "normal" speed (some 120 kmh) and had
| this strange "something blue" feeling in the rear mirror
| and by the time I realized it was the police flashing
| lights I heard "whoosh" and they were gone. (in some rare
| cases they use these Lambo's to transport transplant
| organs when elicopter was not available/couldn't fly)
| between cities:
|
| https://it.motor1.com/news/457740/lamborghini-huracan-
| polizi...
| dotancohen wrote:
| Oops, I corrected "Pinto" to "Punto". For some reason,
| typing that just feels like it's a dirty word.
| jaclaz wrote:
| I see, that makes sense now.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > Do you not used a cognate word for "Cruise control" in
| your language?
|
| It is a literal copy from English here. ESC/ESP and ABS
| are used or abbreviations or as a full text ones, but
| they map 1:1 to both English and abbreviated
| counterparts.
|
| For what it worth I checked how the article "cruise
| missile" is called in other languages in Wikipedia (well
| at least ones I could tell).
|
| Most European languages uses a some variation of
| "cruise", while some European and Slavic languages uses
| "winged" or even "maneuverable" (Polish). There is a
| slight correlation between a sea-faring countries and a
| former Warsaw Pact ones.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| History.
|
| Transporting the verb "cruise" makes more sense circa
| 1915 when foot and mounted patrols are proportionally
| more common and the steering wheel interface had just
| recently been ported over from watercraft.
| em500 wrote:
| The scalable solution would be that law enforcement will be
| given a direct override/pull-over button for any driverless
| car. I expect this to happen in the future if driverless cars
| reach large volumes. Maybe I haven't thought this through
| enough, but I can't imagine a circumstance where you would
| want a driverless car to be able to ignore stopping
| directions from law enforcement.
| markdown wrote:
| > I can't imagine a circumstance where you would want a
| driverless car to be able to ignore stopping directions
| from law enforcement.
|
| Funny, I can't imagine a circumstance where I would want
| "law enforcement" to be able to override my directions and
| take control of my car.
| em500 wrote:
| Also, we're talking about driverless cars. The scenario
| is not the police pressing a remote stop button to
| override your directions, it's to override
| Cruise/Waymo/Uber's AI or remote control.
|
| This is a serious question, is there some real scenario
| that hasn't occurred to me, where it's desirable for
| either Cruise/Waymo/Uber's remote control or the onboard
| AI to ignore stopping directives from the police?
| markdown wrote:
| No. I agree with you. I was thinking further down the
| line, when everyone is in a driverless (optional?) car.
| shubb wrote:
| Do you want number plates?
|
| Mine have never helped me get anything except for parking
| fines, but lawmakers decided being able to visually and
| uniquely identify a car for the purposes of law
| enforcement was more important than my privacy because it
| enabled widespread use of this dangerous and strictly
| regulated machinery.
|
| You can own a car without number plates, you just can't
| drive it on a public road. Presumably similar with this
| hypothetical kill switch. Requiring compliance with rules
| for access to a shared resource doesn't seem that
| ethically challenging when you think about it.
| em500 wrote:
| Ok, I'm guessing you're American. I've read that the
| relationship between the police and the public can be a
| bit .. antagonistic. And I know that fugitives are
| disproportionately romanticized in fiction.
|
| But police officers giving you stopping directions are
| already overriding your directions and taking control of
| your car, fully backed by law and and force if necessary.
| Only with a very inefficient implementation.
| bregma wrote:
| And, like guns, only the police will ever use this weapon
| and only for the purposes of public good.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Ok, I'm guessing you're American. I've read that the
| relationship between the police and the public can be a
| bit .. antagonistic. And I know that fugitives are
| disproportionately romanticized in fiction.
|
| Two can play at this dumb game.
|
| I'm guessing you're European. I've read that the
| relationship between the police and the public can be a
| bit .. blindly trusting. And I know that fugitives are
| disproportionately demonized in fiction.
|
| I'd say you should concern yourself with problems on your
| side of the ocean and I'll do likewise. But looking at
| history says that's wishful thinking.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Wouldn't it be great to give the government the power to
| cause a traffic accident for anyone they didn't like?
| boondaburrah wrote:
| They already can. Police will simply crash your car if
| they feel like it by using their car.
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| That only happens when your running from them. Imagine if
| we give the DNC a kill switch to every car in America.
| Place it under as a tax penalty, and you'd have to wait
| until their audit finished in your favor for them to
| consider turning your car back on.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > That only happens when your running from them.
|
| Except for all the times it's happened when people
| weren't running from them?
| boondaburrah wrote:
| It's supposed to only happen when you're running from
| them (though I think it shouldn't happen then either),
| but the reality is they will do it if they feel like it.
| The only thing stopping them is physics. Police are
| generally not held accountable.
|
| Either that or I could argue we already have a killswitch
| like that - suspending your license - if I also go along
| with the idea that the cop won't flip your car when
| you're not running from them because that's also illegal.
|
| So either we have a world where the system works or where
| it doesn't, but unfortunately we have both.
| pueblito wrote:
| Some of us feel that the death of Michael Hastings was a
| demonstration of exactly that.
| rainbowzootsuit wrote:
| It's all fun and games until someone else figures out a
| remote attack on that system.
| bschne wrote:
| I'm guessing the plan is that once you reach that scale there
| will be people in the cars?
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| How can a passenger force a fully autonomous taxi to pull
| over? And what happens when the passenger is in the
| driver's seat and the police think they are resisting
| orders?
| ulimn wrote:
| I would be certainly terrified if the car didn't pull
| over and I would see cops chasing me. And all I could do
| was watch.
| gregoriol wrote:
| Next thing you hear is shots and glass breaking sounds.
| Not sure you hear much more though.
| bschne wrote:
| Pretty sure you'd have some sort of "gracefully pull
| over" and "hard emergency stop" options in those once
| they are actually used for passengers? There's other
| reasons than police stops you would want to have the
| option.
| timcavel wrote:
| qwertox wrote:
| How about putting a piece of cloth over a sensor.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| The police should have shot the tires out and boxed in the
| vehicle to stop it from escaping.
| free-malloc wrote:
| Don't forget pistol whipping the application just because it
| was written in php.
| noasaservice wrote:
| A human gets pulled over and gets a ticket.
|
| A bot gets pulled over and the cop acquiesces to the company.
|
| Of course, monied interests dont get tickets. Only us plebes do.
| bmitc wrote:
| I remain confused on how these cars are allowed on the road. Did
| they pass a driver's license check? Who's responsible? Who gets
| the ticket? In this instance, you can see that the car performed
| a dangerous maneuver by running from the cops, with its lights
| still off, and crossing an intersection, which is then spun by
| the company as finding a "safer" spot to pull over at. Even
| though, it found a spot essentially identical to where it was. It
| also took off pretty fast.
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| > Did they pass a driver's license check?
|
| Yes. That would be the AV permit that the cars operate under.
| Also as they are programmed to obey all road laws, it's
| exceedingly unlikely they will cause any moving infractions.
|
| > Who's responsible? Who gets the ticket?
|
| Cruise. Their name is on the AV permit, it's their insurance.
|
| > spot essentially identical to where it was.
|
| Before it was in a lane of traffic next to a parklet, after it
| was pulled over partially into what looks to be a parking spot.
| The SFPD officer also was no longer next to the vehicle.
|
| > how these cars are allowed on the road
|
| At the end of the day the argument is that these cars are safer
| than the average driver. Having spent a lot of time in SF, I've
| seen a lot of these cruise vehicles moving about. I remember
| watching them in the early days in the Dogpatch, when an errant
| cone would end up with them being stuck until manual action was
| taken. Slowly they got better and smarter.
|
| Yes, it's a hard transitional time. Mistakes may happen, but
| the same is true for humans. And not all AV technology is the
| same. Cruise has limited itself a great deal so it doesn't try
| to take on the entire world at the same time. Just the streets
| of SF, which are hard enough.
|
| How many Cruise traffic accidents have you read about? How many
| people injured or killed?
| bmitc wrote:
| Where do I apply for a permit to reassign culpability for my
| driving to a corporation?
|
| > At the end of the day the argument is that these cars are
| safer than the average driver.
|
| The last data I saw said otherwise, and that data was
| primarily collected in ideal conditions. That has been a few
| years, but these companies are not forthcoming with their
| data.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > Where do I apply for a permit to reassign culpability for
| my driving to a corporation?
|
| I think this is mandatory in most states and countries, at
| least for civil liability up to some limit. You can
| purchase more, of course (and I recommend to do so, given
| that the minimal liabilities in each state haven't really
| kept pace with needs).
| feoren wrote:
| > Where do I apply for a permit to reassign culpability for
| my driving to a corporation?
|
| Search a jobs aggregator for "Taxi Driver"?
| dogman144 wrote:
| Isn't OP about a moving infraction it caused, despite its
| programming?
|
| Arguing the probabilities of an outcome is an engineering-
| centric approach to selling these cars to the public, and it
| doesn't land well IMO/in this thread from others.
|
| It makes a false equivalence b/t how we value human agency's
| role in outcomes, and something other-than-human. Most people
| seem to prefer the risk outcomes of something I decided, vs.
| a faceless control system.
| logifail wrote:
| > Did they pass a driver's license check?
|
| Thought experiment: imagine a particular self-driving algo were
| to do something that would warrant a human driver getting their
| driving licence suspended, would that mean all the cars with
| that same algo would be simultanously suspended, or just that
| one car?
| flohofwoe wrote:
| That's easy and obvious: The whole fleet is "grounded" (or at
| least the self-driving feature disabled) until the bug has
| been identified and fixed. If you ask me, only a single car
| misbehaving is actually much more alarming than if the bug
| manifests in all cars of that type.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| >If you ask me, only a single car misbehaving is actually
| much more alarming than if the bug manifests in all cars of
| that type.
|
| It's not if it's hardware failure.
| bee_rider wrote:
| A hardware failure that puts the vehicle in a semi-
| functioning, but non-safe condition needs to be
| investigated, it could be silently lurking in any number
| of cars.
| eru wrote:
| Investigated, yes. Grounding the whole fleet? Not
| necessarily.
|
| It's a cost-benefit trade-off. We don't ground the whole
| fleet of human drivers, when one of them crashes their
| car, because the benefit doesn't outweigh the costs. It's
| not a given that the answer will change that much for
| self-driving cars. Especially for extremely rare failure
| modes.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Humans all have different versions of the 'driving'
| software installed, there's no way of identifying which
| ones will misbehave. If Teslas are malfunctioning, we
| shouldn't ground Chevy Cruise.
|
| We exist on a spectrum of competence. If a type of car
| has a widespread issue that unexpectedly gets it into a
| state where a minimally competent non-impaired person
| can't operate it safely, that type of car should be
| pulled from the road. However, because humans are so
| sloppy (0 human drivers should be the ultimate goal), it
| is generally assumed that most accidents are caused by
| us, and so we require a significant accumulation of
| evidence to take a type of car off the road. Without a
| human in the loop, what's the unreliable part to point
| the finger at?
| eru wrote:
| Well, the obvious incentive with such a rule would then
| be to install slightly different versions of the software
| in every vehicle.
|
| (Or perhaps to have separate versions on file, and just
| load that different version when the first version is
| grounded.)
|
| > Without a human in the loop, what's the unreliable part
| to point the finger at?
|
| It's a cost benefit analysis. If the problem is
| sufficiently rare, it might make more sense to leave the
| cars running while you investigate. Even human lives
| aren't infinitely valuable.
|
| Typical traffic engineering in the US assumes a cost of
| human life of about 6 million USD or so.
| eru wrote:
| Or a cosmic ray..
| qayxc wrote:
| That is a very intriguing scenario indeed. Due to the non-
| deterministic nature of many self-driving systems, I'd reckon
| a broader investigation would have to follow.
|
| Should that investigation reveal a reproducible behaviour, a
| recall or general suspension of vehicles running that
| particular software version would seem like a reasonable
| response. Otherwise suspending just that one car could be an
| option.
|
| It's uncharted territory both in terms of the legal system
| and w.r.t accountability so I guess no one has an answer to
| that yet.
| pxmpxm wrote:
| How is it non-deterministic? If you run the same trained
| model on the same input data, you should arrive at the
| exactly identical output.
| dahfizz wrote:
| I think 'chaotic' is the technical term. It is
| technically deterministic, but the system is
| incomprehensibly complex and sensitive, such that it may
| as well be non deterministic / pseudorandom.
|
| You could drive the same car down the same road at the
| same time tomorrow, and it may behave differently. It
| makes bugs / edges cases impossible to reproduce and fix.
|
| With a human you can just say "why did you do that? Don't
| do that." Little fine tuned tweaks to neural nets is not
| so easy.
| qayxc wrote:
| > How is it non-deterministic?
|
| It's non-deterministic in a practical sense; you cannot
| reproduce the exact circumstances that caused a certain
| behaviour. Maybe a bug flew by one of the cameras at a
| certain moment, or a pedestrian with certain type of
| clothing passed by. You get the idea.
| eru wrote:
| Depends. In principle you can log exactly what data the
| camera sends to the decision making unit. And you could
| replay that data.
|
| The camera itself might not be deterministic enough to
| reproduce the same data with the same beetle, but
| replaying the log should work.
|
| (Keep the log in a 'black box' on the car, and perhaps
| only keep the last x hours of data, if necessary.)
|
| I think Waymo already does something like these kinds of
| replays.
| joshribakoff wrote:
| what you're referring to is just simulating, at least
| after the point your modified algorithm does something
| slightly different in the simulator than the real car did
| in real life.
| eru wrote:
| I wondered about the last point, too. But Waymo
| apparently worked out a satisfactory solution to that.
| hakuseki wrote:
| It does sound silly at first, but I think suspending the one
| car is actually a rather elegant solution on several counts.
|
| 1. Easy to implement
|
| 2. Doesn't punish fleet scale (compare: suspending the whole
| fleet means a fleet that's twice as large would be suspended
| twice as often)
|
| 3. Punishes the fleet owner in proportion to the frequency of
| the error
|
| 4. Is exactly correct when the cause is really a hardware
| problem specific to the car
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Why would you treat a _software_ problem that 's specific
| to the car (and, by extension, specific to all cars running
| the same software version) differently from a _hardware_
| problem that 's specific to the car?
| bee_rider wrote:
| The whole fleet should be grounded until the issue is
| debugged. Without debugging the issue
|
| * It might be a software issue (maybe the cars self-
| destruct when they encounter a solar eclipse -- silly
| example, but if the cars malfunction on events which are
| rare but wide-spread and correlated this could cause an
| emergency).
|
| * If it is a hardware issue, it must be understood how a
| hardware failure can put the device in a dangerous, still
| semi-functional state. If one car was able to get itself
| pulled over for driving dangerously, then there'd be an
| unknown number of cars driving themselves dangerously.
|
| * It is good that the fleet is punished disproportionately
| to the frequency of errors. We shouldn't accept a linear
| disincentive for putting dangerous vehicles on the road.
| eru wrote:
| > * It is good that the fleet is punished
| disproportionately to the frequency of errors. We
| shouldn't accept a linear disincentive for putting
| dangerous vehicles on the road.
|
| We already do..
|
| Putting driverless cars to a much higher standard, makes
| perfect the enemy of the better. Human drivers are not
| all that great.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Yet we sort of do accept a linear disincentive for
| putting dangerous drivers on the road, worst case we take
| that driver off the road and very rarely do anything to
| increase the standard all drivers need to meet such that
| it would weed out all the drivers that are as bad as or
| worse than the ones taken off the road.
|
| I think you're letting perfect be the enemy of good. In
| an ideal world we'd stop everything for debugging.
| Realistically all we need to have a net benefit right now
| is for the cars to be safer drivers than human drivers on
| average. As long as the issue isn't suspected of being
| intentionally triggered or correlated with some sort of
| large scale event, the world is still paying less of a
| cost than now even when not grounding the fleet.
|
| A reasonable compromise would be to require autonomous
| vehicles moving in especially risky areas like highways
| to have a human inside with at least a "stop or slow down
| safely" override. In places where the vehicle would be
| moving too slowly to cause serious injury we can allow
| them to be human-less. By defining clear and objective
| criteria, the decision to ground a fleet becomes much
| easier to make (particularly for the machine, since you
| don't need advanced AI to check GPS against a database
| and apply appropriate speed limiters). If the incident
| was a serious malfunction of a basic function like
| ignoring the criteria for human-less operation, the fleet
| should be grounded. In other cases it wouldn't justify
| preemptively grounding the entire fleet (but may justify
| it after the severity of the issue has been assessed,
| probably by a group independent of the company
| responsible for the vehicles).
| tiku wrote:
| But the software "that did the crime" is all the same..
| hakuseki wrote:
| Yes, and that's why suspending the one car might seem
| counterintuitive. But that doesn't mean it's a bad
| solution.
| AvocadoPanic wrote:
| Can we have lawn darts back if we suspend the darts that
| maim or kill?
| eru wrote:
| You can't even have Kinder Surprise..
| FabHK wrote:
| Just sell guns without any controls whatsoever, and if a
| gun is used to shoot someone, impound that gun. Problem
| solved. Right?
| logifail wrote:
| > suspending the one car is actually a rather elegant
| solution
|
| If the software in a commercial aircraft were to be found
| defective, would we really be OK if only the individual
| aircraft in which the fault manifested itself gets grounded
| (assuming that aircraft isn't itself already on the ground
| in thousands of pieces spread all over a hillside...)
|
| Surely the FAA (or international equivalents) would issue
| an airworthiness directive which would apply to every
| single example of that specific _type_ of aircraft?
| snovv_crash wrote:
| It depends. If it's an issue with just that vehicle then
| yes, you don't ground the whole fleet.
|
| If it's non-safety-critical, then it needs to be fixed
| asap but nothing gets grounded.
|
| If it's safety critical, then yes, all planes are
| grounded.
|
| But, I'd argue FAA levels of safety aren't suitable for
| cars. If a car has an engine failure or even a structural
| failure, they can usually just stop. Planes don't have
| that option.
| logifail wrote:
| > I'd argue FAA levels of safety aren't suitable for
| cars. If a car has an engine failure or even a structural
| failure, they can usually just stop. Planes don't have
| that option.
|
| I had supposed we were thinking primarily about _software
| faults_ and specifically those relating to the self-
| driving bit of a self-driving car.
|
| Best case: self-driving car gets lost and is found with
| flat battery miles from "home" (?)
|
| Worst-case: self-driving car kills cyclist/pedestrian and
| doesn't even notice or stop.
|
| We should spend some thought on how to handle the latter
| because it _will_ happen sooner or later. To be blunt: if
| the algo kills, why wouldn 't you ground the algo (all
| instances of it)?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > if the algo kills, why wouldn't you ground the algo
| (all instances of it)?
|
| Well 40,000 people in the U.S. die in car crashes every
| year currently, why do we let people drive?
| eru wrote:
| I wonder whether that would just lead to people using
| slightly tweaked variants of the same algorithm branded
| to be different?
|
| (Of course, you don't want to fork too much, because
| there's probably a certification per algorithm needed.
| But it might make sense for Google to officially field a
| thousand 'different' algorithms, so that a single
| incident doesn't ground the entire fleet?)
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Engineers often fail to realize you can't cheese a judge
| and if you try to, the law will come down much, much
| harder on you.
|
| Either one of two things will be the case with this
| approach:
|
| 1. The algorithm will be too imperceptibly different to
| be treated as a different program. Adding some tiny
| decimals somewhere won't make it unlikely to make the
| same mistakes, and the entire class of algorithms will be
| treated as one.
|
| 2. The algorithm will be different enough to make
| different decisions, which means one program is probably
| "better" than the other(s) and they'll be taking a bigger
| risk by deploying cars to the road that are more
| dangerous than others.
| eru wrote:
| Judges are human indeed. But things like tax dodges still
| exist and other loopholes. You just need good enough
| lawyers to structure things for you.
|
| Your second point would lead to a ban on all but one
| self-driving car systems, when taken seriously?
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I don't know about that. I do think that if, say, Google
| operated a spectrum of 1,000 self-driving algorithms, and
| knew that some were safer than others, a judge would take
| a very dim view to knowingly deploying less safe cars
| than others. And even from a business standpoint, it
| wouldn't be good business to have less safe (aka, higher
| liability) cars on the road.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| > To be blunt: if the algo kills, why wouldn't you ground
| the algo (all instances of it)?
|
| It depends what the alternative is. If it crashes less
| than humans, then you keep running it despite the flaws.
| josephcsible wrote:
| It's unreasonable to expect airliner reliability from
| self-driving cars when cars driven by humans are accepted
| despite being 100 times more dangerous.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| [deleted]
| paulcole wrote:
| Easy. All of the cars with that algo would be simultaneously
| suspended.
| notatoad wrote:
| Waymo's marketing would imply they think the whole fleet
| should be suspended in this case. They call their system the
| driver, and seem to anthropomorphise it.
|
| But more practically: what could a self-driving car do to get
| it's licence suspended? Afaik That's a pretty rare punishment
| outside of two cases: drunk driving or street racing.
| ufmace wrote:
| It's a rare normal punishment for any single crime. But
| it's a pretty common escalation for repeated failure to
| cooperate with the system. A ticket for speeding or running
| a stop sign might be just a fine. But if you start no-
| showing your court dates, not making the payments, keep
| raking up more moving violations without properly resolving
| any of them, then you might find your license getting
| suspended.
| toast0 wrote:
| Many (most?) states have a point based system for
| suspending licenses based on moving violations. You tend to
| collect points for things like speeding, failure to follow
| traffic signals, or illegal turns. Get enough points and
| your license is suspended for some period. Other states
| give you a number of points, and you lose points for
| infractions, get to zero and suspension.
| howunpleasant wrote:
| > Did they pass a driver's license check?
|
| No
|
| > Who's responsible?
|
| Cruise and their insurance
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Insurance doesnt pay for crimes. You cannot buy "speeding
| insurance" to pay your traffic tickets anymore than you can
| hire someone else to go to jail for you.
| dghughes wrote:
| >"...anymore than you can hire someone else to go to jail
| for you." *
|
| * unless you're rich
| kevingadd wrote:
| The _company_ probably has various kinds of liability
| insurance that would cover things like lawyer 's fees
| eru wrote:
| There's laws and regulations for this kind of stuff, and you
| need to get a permit.
|
| Details depend on location / jurisdiction. Some Googling
| brought up eg https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-
| services/auto...
| sjmulder wrote:
| What worries me a little bit is how this can shift blame
| further on other (more vulnerable) road users once such
| vehicles become more common, solidifying even stronger the
| notion that roads are for motor vehicles and for motor vehicles
| alone.
| eru wrote:
| I'd say actually less so. As a pedestrian I'd be much more
| confident stepping in front of a self-driving car, than
| stepping in front of a human-driven car.
|
| So much so, that I've read about people's fears that self-
| driving cars will be subject to bullying by pedestrians (and
| other drivers).
| bmitc wrote:
| > As a pedestrian I'd be much more confident stepping in
| front of a self-driving car, than stepping in front of a
| human-driven car.
|
| Why?
| makeitdouble wrote:
| In case no one is specifically identified for the infraction,
| doesn't it come back to the car owner ?
|
| Not in the US, but that's how it would work here for illegal
| parking or if the driver fled from the cops and the car is
| never found for instance. Even if the owner doesn't own a
| driving license, that's just where the buck stops. The owner if
| of course free to try to shove it somewhere else, but that's on
| them to make it work.
| brigade wrote:
| Parking citations attach to the car (as does civil collision
| liability generally), but moving violations can only be
| levied against the driver. Which is how some red light camera
| fines are avoided, if the driver isn't clearly identifiable
| by the camera.
| pge wrote:
| In the US, fines for moving violations identified by camera
| are the responsibility of the car owner, regardless of who
| was driving at the time of the infraction. The inability to
| identify the driver just means that the owner is not
| convicted of a moving violation, but he is stil l
| financially responsible for the penalty.
| eru wrote:
| Is that a federal rule, or decided by the states?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| States.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| This is specific to jurisdiction. Having received a
| ticket for speeding from an automated camera, they just
| sent me a picture and told me to pay up or deny that it
| was me. In Oregon, moving violations attach to drivers
| only, so if they cannot prove you were driving the car at
| the time they drop the ticket.
| gambiting wrote:
| Here in UK it's always the owner of the car who is
| responsible, unless they can say who was driving the car at
| the time. If they can't then the fine defaults to them -
| the assumption being that they are responsible for knowing
| who is using their vehicle.
|
| In other countries with similar laws(Poland) it has been
| argued in front of court that it cannot be the owner's
| responsibility to know who is driving their car at any
| given point especially if there are multiple people who do
| that usually - it should be the police's job to establish
| who they are fining.
| rvnx wrote:
| It's quite logic and an easy rule to take responsible the
| driver no matter whether they have a driver assist
| feature on or not.
|
| Then the driver could sue the manufacturer for any defect
| or if the manufacturer misled the user into thinking the
| system was safe and didn't need human attention.
|
| This way, if a system is unreliable, users will start
| blaming the system and stop using the feature or buying
| this car. Also, it allows manufacturers to roll-out
| features faster and learn faster from the real world.
|
| If the manufacturer is directly responsible when driver
| assist features are engaged, but not the driver, then the
| manufacturer will get scared to roll anything, and
| progress will be much slower, and there will be more
| victims because the drivers think "I don't care, I'm not
| responsible, it's even better if the auto mode is on,
| even if less safe, cause I won't be responsible"
| eru wrote:
| > It's quite logic and an easy rule to take responsible
| the driver no matter whether they have a driver assist
| feature on or not.
|
| That doesn't work in general. We'd want kids to be able
| to use self-driving cars. And really old people, and
| people without a licence, or who are mentally challenged
| enough that they don't have legal responsibility.
|
| > If the manufacturer is directly responsible when driver
| assist features are engaged, but not the driver, then the
| manufacturer will get scared to roll anything, [...]
|
| Google's Waymo specifically lobbies for getting the legal
| liability on themselves, not on the driver or owner.
| thfuran wrote:
| >Also, it allows manufacturers to roll-out features
| faster and learn faster from the real world.
|
| I don't think that "move fast and break things" is the
| approach we want for self-driving cars.
| [deleted]
| nkingsy wrote:
| Just my anecdote, saw a cruise car trying to turn left from the
| middle lane on Franklin.
|
| Came to a complete stop, bringing traffic to a halt, and waited
| for the cars on its left to clear out, including anyone who went
| around, then cautiously moved into the left lane and turned.
|
| Some kind of rude, selfish programming I'd be yelling at a person
| for.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The intention is for the car to be a very boring, unremarkable
| driver.
|
| This sort of behavior has been noted before and most incidents
| were thought to have been fixed by a merge ~6 months ago, but
| there can always be missed scenarios/interactions. Was this
| more recent?
| nkingsy wrote:
| Yes this was march 29th, 12am ish 15 ish blocks south of
| Lombard
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Weird. I'd look into it if I were still at cruise, but
| alas.
| axg11 wrote:
| I wonder if Cruise or other AVs have a programmed threshold to
| "give up"? A human driver in the middle lane might decide to
| keep driving on and take a different route rather than hold
| those people up.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > Some kind of rude, selfish programming I'd be yelling at a
| person for.
|
| Sounds like an inexperienced or incompetent driver who lacks
| confidence. Basically, the kind of driver that shouldn't be on
| the road.
| zip1234 wrote:
| Perhaps all human drivers are incompetent? In the USA there
| are 5 million crashes that involve insurance every year.
| Insurance companies say that someone will get in a crash
| (however minor) once every ~18 years of driving on average.
| nkingsy wrote:
| Rereading my comment yeah that's harsh. Not trying to promote
| road rage though it is kind of fun to generally be loud from
| the safety of your car when no one can hear you.
| corysama wrote:
| I have lots of anecdotes of the opposite. Many, many times I've
| been driving around SF and noted "Hey! That driver had an
| opportunity to be an ass and instead chose to be a polite,
| reasonable driver. Ohhhh, it's a Cruise car. That explains it."
| 9/10 times it's a robot car.
| gothungry wrote:
| There are _a lot_ of things concerning about these cars driving
| themselves around the city -- most of which are typically covered
| in these comment threads -- but here are a few questions that
| seem relevant to this particular incident:
|
| How are police officers trained to deal with these machines?
| Hopefully its more than "call this number"; are Cruise support
| lines required by law to be open when their cars are on the
| streets? What mechanism to police or city officials have to
| _control_ these machines? Do they have some interface to put the
| vehicle in neutral and roll it away? Assuming no, why not? What
| 's the right protocol if a car gets a flat tire or is driving
| around with a door open? Would a driverless car by a different
| manufacture follow all the same protocols?
|
| I'm sure there are clear answers to similar questions -- for
| example -- for the BART or Muni. It is preposterous that
| something this significant and potentially dangerous can be
| deployed on streets in a city with tens of thousands of
| pedestrians, and no messaging to the public about these details.
| woah wrote:
| I think they all still have test drivers in them right?
| ra7 wrote:
| They do outreach programs for local police and fire departments
| on first responder training and have published relevant
| materials.
|
| Waymo: https://waymo.com/firstresponders/
|
| Cruise: https://www.getcruise.com/firstresponders
| coldcode wrote:
| So what would happen if the passenger is arrested by the police
| for being in a car that refused to stop? I wonder what legal
| principle could be used to justify this. Involuntary failure to
| stop? Are there any laws about driverless vehicles and who is
| responsible for problems?
| MisterTea wrote:
| Why would they arrest the passenger?
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| > So what would happen if the passenger is arrested by the
| police for being in a car that refused to stop?
|
| Just for being in the car? Presumably they would be questioned
| and released.
|
| > I wonder what legal principle could be used to justify this.
|
| "Probable cause" of having committed a crime is typically the
| principle I believe.
|
| > Involuntary failure to stop? Are there any laws about
| driverless vehicles and who is responsible for problems?
|
| I don't know and can't imagine what involuntary failure to stop
| might be. I'm sure they could fit an existing law to the
| situation if they suspected the passenger was instructing the
| car to not stop.
| grapescheesee wrote:
| Sir, step out of the car please.
|
| I am sorry, I can't do that Dave.
| 4dahalibut wrote:
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-th...
| grapescheesee wrote:
| 'Afraid Mode' coming soon!
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Being used to riding motorcycles in the US, why are headlights
| not always on for all vehicles at this point? LED bulbs last a
| very long time and there is little reason to not have them on
| during the day. I know, it's much more fun to anthropomorphize
| the car in this case, but the simple solution is to just hard
| wire them.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I mean they can be pretty annoying on some cars whose
| manufactures have decided its ok to have the beams right at eye
| level.
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| You may be approaching a check point and be asked to turn off
| the outside lights.
| bin_bash wrote:
| Mechanics need to be able to turn them off when they work on
| them or they'll get blinded. Every car I've driven in the last
| 10 years seems to have an auto mode though.
|
| I'd be surprised if the Chevy's these are based on don't have
| an auto mode. It could be that a fuse blew here.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| I have been working on my vehicles for a while. Removing the
| fuse or unplugging the lights is stupid easy.
| bin_bash wrote:
| I don't know how you've come to the conclusion that's a
| reasonable solution. Wiring harnesses on cars are a pain in
| the ass and definitely are not heavy duty enough for being
| removed many times. With a fuse you have to find the fuse
| box, remove the cover, find _which_ fuse to remove, then
| pull it out with pliers. It 's far more work than you're
| implying. Also, this is done every time I take my car in
| for service whether it's a tire change, oil change, or
| engine change.
|
| More importantly you need to remember to put it all back
| together when you return the vehicle--not necessary with a
| switch.
|
| It seems Canadian vehicles handle both use cases by
| allowing the vehicle to have the headlights off but only
| when parked.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| What are you talking about? Remove plastic cover from
| fuse box. Remove fuse. Done.
|
| Or open hood. Unplug bulb. Done.
|
| Also most times when you work on a vehicle it is off.
|
| Have you actually had this problem yourself? Or are you
| doing this on behalf of imaginary other people?
| bee_rider wrote:
| I bet it is something boring, like a fuse blew, or maybe they
| still have the auto/manual lights selector even though the
| car is autonomous, and somebody misconfigured it.
|
| You'd think 'are the lights on' would be a self-check it
| would perform, though. GM has to know that headlights go out
| occasionally, right?
| bin_bash wrote:
| > You'd think 'are the lights on' would be a self-check it
| would perform, though.
|
| If it wasn't before I would bet it will be soon.
| xutopia wrote:
| The same cars sold in Canada have the tail and head lights on
| when it turns dark since September 2021. If the mechanic is
| scared for their eyes they can just have well lit area to
| work and the lights will not turn on.
| bin_bash wrote:
| Let's not be so dismissive of issues for the plebs. You
| wouldn't want bright lights in your face while trying to
| work either.
|
| Artificial lights are not very bright in terms of lux, even
| very bright ones. Headlights need to come on at dusk which
| is still far brighter than a shop.
|
| It seems Canada thought of this by allowing lights to be
| disabled when the car is in park.
| beambot wrote:
| > Mechanics need to be able to turn them off when they work
| on them
|
| Couldn't you just turn off the car?
| bin_bash wrote:
| Mechanics need to turn the car on for various reasons like
| diagnosing problems and verifying things are seated.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It could also be that some bumbling meat-man clumsily knocked
| the switch out of the "Auto" position. The Bolt has a truly
| idiotic headlight switch which always indicates "Auto" even
| when its been disabled by turning the switch
| counterclockwise.
|
| In Canada it's programmed to reset to Auto every time the car
| is started, but not the U.S. model.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZlYCSmtD_4
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > In Canada it's programmed to reset to Auto every time the
| car is started, but not the U.S. model.
|
| That's a Volt. My Bolt & Camaro (in the US...) also have
| momentary switches that default to auto, and they both
| actually default to auto. You can only turn off the
| headlights until the next time you turn off the car.
| bin_bash wrote:
| Somehow I thought they would have hooked the selector up to
| the AI but you're right. This probably just got missed on
| the checklist when the car went out. That selector also
| makes it seem highly likely to be missed.
|
| Detailers always turn headlights off. (At least they do for
| my car.) They probably always turn them off when they come
| in to be cleaned then need to be turned back on when they
| go out.
| m463 wrote:
| What I find annoying is the people whose cars DO have
| headlights that are automatically "on", yet all the OTHER
| lighst on the car are off.
|
| It's common to come across one of these cars at night from
| behind - no visible tail lights, but when you pull up next to
| them, their headlights are on, yet dim (daytime running
| lights?).
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| Headlights always being on was the biggest thing I noticed when
| I visited Iceland. It is so much easier to see vehicles even
| during a sunny day, they simply stand out much more. As a
| result, I _always_ turn my lights on right after I get into a
| vehicle.
| _greim_ wrote:
| > LED bulbs last a very long time
|
| LEDs are a high-end feature even in new cars, never mind all
| the existing cars on the road.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| $20 bulbs are widely available on Amazon.
| Saris wrote:
| They're so poorly designed that they are completely
| useless. Also 100% illegal to use on road.
| Vladimof wrote:
| > why are headlights not always on for all vehicles at this
| point
|
| It's been that way for over 30 years in Canada (since 1989 I
| think)...
|
| I'd be curious to know how many more replacement headlights
| they see per car per year
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| It's been required to do so in some northern European
| countries. The practical reason there is that dawn and dusk can
| take many hours during much of the year at higher latitudes
| thus creating a weird situation where it's not really clear
| when exactly you should have the lights on or off in exactly
| the kind of situation where a lot of accidents can happen if
| you don't have them on.
|
| The simple rule of "always have your lights on" fixes that and
| it slightly improves visibility even in broad daylight. The
| only downside would be the increased power usage and the light
| bulb wearing out sooner. A minor issue a few decades ago when
| this became normal and a very minor one now that we have LEDs
| that last a long time without using a lot of power.
|
| My rental bike (a Swapfiets) has the LEDs permanently on; there
| is no off switch. If you ride it, the lights are on. That's
| indeed how it should be. I can't think of any good reason to
| voluntarily reduce my visibility while cycling through
| potentially lethal traffic.
| lolc wrote:
| I've gotten so used to lights being on always that I classify
| cars with lights off as parked. I won't focus on them. I'm
| very surprised when they move.
|
| It should really be hardwired, because people forget.
| bin_bash wrote:
| > I can't think of any good reason to voluntarily reduce my
| visibility while cycling through potentially lethal traffic.
|
| Watch more horror movies and you'll think of some.
| recursive wrote:
| Rephrase to "any good non-fiction reason".
| Vecr wrote:
| Probably some special forces/police operations in
| countries with a reasonable road system. Vans and SUVs
| are much more convenient than MRAPs or humvees.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| It's required in Canada, but in the US, we tend to prefer our
| freedoms. There are also credible scenarios, say when someone
| is being stalked, when you would want to keep them off for
| security reasons; or, if you are parked in front of a house, or
| pulling into your driveway, perhaps you just don't want them to
| rake across the front windows and wake your sleeping children
| up. Many people won't buy a GM vehicle for precisely this
| reason.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| When I had a GM car with daytime lights, they would switch
| off if you applied the parking brake. So a trick is to apply
| the parking brake enough that the lights go out (happens at
| the same time the parking brake indicator illuminates on the
| dash), but not enough to really grab the wheels. Then you can
| pull into a driveway with the lights off.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| fatnoah wrote:
| I'm also not sure why this is a thing. With all of the various
| sensors, etc. in cars, there's safeguards to prevent me from
| typing an address in the GPS while moving, so why can't there
| be something that turns your headlights on while driving at
| night above a certain speed.
|
| On Saturday, I drove from NJ to MA and saw 3 vehicles on the
| highway at night with only daytime running lamps, and one with
| no lights on whatsoever.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The Bolt has auto headlights, something malfunctioned.
| swozey wrote:
| I haven't driven a modern car in a decade or more that didn't
| have light sensors in the dashboard to know when to
| automatically turn on lights. They even turn them on when the
| wipers are engaged. Everytime you go through a tunnel you'll
| see headlights pop on automatically. My 2009 BMW is the
| oldest car I have that has auto lights, but it doesn't have
| wiper sensors.
|
| Older cars? Of course not.
| fatnoah wrote:
| The problem with auto lights is that they can be turned off
| or set into other modes that prevent the auto part from
| working. Throw in drivers who don't seem to notice that
| their headlights are not or barely illuminating the road
| and we get what I experienced over the weekend.
|
| Maybe there's hope: https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/make-
| sure-your-headlights-a...
| jaywalk wrote:
| My current car (2020 model year) defaults to Auto every
| time the car is started. I haven't had a car without auto
| headlights in a very long time, but this is the first one
| that actually defaults back to Auto.
| aivisol wrote:
| Many EU countries (especially those on the North) mandate them
| to be ON at all times when car is moving. The cars sold in
| those regions have light switch on Auto by default, which you
| can manually override in both directions.
| ableal wrote:
| I believe that (having headlights on) was locally required
| before Daytime Running Lights (DRL) became mandatory in the
| EU some twelve years ago:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daytime_running_lamp
| post_break wrote:
| Headlights do burn out. I'd rather not pay $1,000-$2,000 to
| replace my headlights since they are LED built into the
| headlight. I'd much rather have auto headlights be mandated.
| Even that can be a pain in the ass if you have HID bulbs and
| travel in areas where they turn on and off often reducing the
| life of them.
|
| https://www.hondapartsnow.com/parts-list/2021-honda-accord--...
| dharmab wrote:
| Automotive LEDs made by an OEM should not burn out for the
| life of the vehicle.
| post_break wrote:
| Should not sure, but I have seen people on the Accord
| forums complaining about headlight leds being dead, and
| being shocked at the replacement cost.
| lubujackson wrote:
| The real surprise here is that SF police pulled over a car at
| all. Have been here for more than a decade and I can count the
| times I have seen a car pulled over in SF on one finger -
| meanwhile, I have seen numerous cars blow through red lights,
| speeding, U-turns in the middle of the street etc. in front of
| police with no response.
| pie42000 wrote:
| Yeah, this was my impression as well. In Chicago you have
| police actively pulling people over all the time. In SF i have
| literally not seen a single person pulled over in the year I've
| been here. For context, in Chicago i would see about 1 per day,
| and double that in Wisconsin.
| pbrb wrote:
| In Chicago? Like, in the city proper and not the suburbs?
| I've lived most of my life in Chicago, and it's basically
| unheard of to get pulled over for a traffic violation.
|
| Lately, blatant disregard for traffic laws in Chicago has
| gotten so bad that it's a little terrifying. It's become a
| common thread on the r/chicago subreddit with regular posts
| pointing out how bad it's gotten and how police never stop
| anybody.
|
| Here are two posts from yesterday alone:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/tzyrmn/red_lights_.
| ..
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/u0x3sd/im_getting_.
| ..
|
| EDIT: Wanted to point this out b/c I think it's a larger
| problem in general of people not following rules of the road,
| not isolated to specific cities.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > In Chicago you have police actively pulling people over all
| the time
|
| Lived in Chicago for 25 years, this is pretty much the
| opposite of my experience. Seems like 90% of the time someone
| is pulled over here they're being arrested so I don't think
| it's because of a traffic violation.
| tonywastaken wrote:
| Yeah this is the real surprise for me as well. How many cars
| drive around SF with no license plates and the SFPD doesn't do
| anything about it.
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