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I had to drive from Branson West to Branson today, and the entire 7-8 miles was just recently paved/blacktopped. It normally has 3 lanes on most of it, but that was all indistinguishable, as they had not striped it yet. I caught myself wondering what a driverless car would do, as everyone, including myself, was hesitant in trying to figure out where our lanes were. Turn markings, nope, none of that. I am not aware of any accidents with all human drivers. |
DMV shuts down Cruise robotaxis in San Francisco over safety concerns
The California Department of Motor Vehicles on Tuesday shut down problem-plagued Cruise autonomous taxis in San Francisco, saying the vehicles, involved in several troubling incidents, presented an “unreasonable risk to the public.” “This is a wake-up call to Cruise to pay closer attention to road safety,” said Carnegie Mellon University engineering professor Phil Koopman, who likened the company’s robotaxis to “teenage drivers not displaying good judgment.” San Francisco has become a proving ground for driverless taxi technology, with Cruise and Google spinoff Waymo testing out their vehicles on public roads. But Cruise’s robotaxis in particular have come under fire from city officials over their propensity to stop and snarl traffic and obstruct emergency vehicles. Removal of Cruise’s driverless taxis from San Francisco’s roads comes as officials in other Bay Area cities closely watch the technology’s roll-out. Decisions on where the vehicles are ultimately deployed remains under the authority of state regulators. San Jose has said all it can do is hope to build positive relationships with robotaxi companies, and Oakland officials have told the utilities commission they know their city “may be next” for deployment. To get its permits back for testing and deploying driverless taxis with no human backup, Cruise would have to provide the DMV with information about “how it has addressed the deficiencies that led to the suspensions,” the agency said. Since August, when the state Public Utilities Commission gave General Motors’ Cruise a green light to take paid fares, there have been numerous reports of the cars’ obstructing emergency vehicles and bottlenecking traffic. San Francisco Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin at the time described the autonomous technology on public roads as “a recipe for death” and said the vehicles were “not ready for prime time.” https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/10/...led-on-safety/ |
California DMV revokes operating permit for driverless car company after pedestrian collision
The California Department of Motor Vehicles announced Tuesday that it is suspending Cruise LLC’s permit to operate its autonomous vehicles without a test driver present. The company, which is owned by General Motors, was operating a fleet of robotaxis in San Francisco. The decision is effective immediately. This marks the second time that the DMV has suspended a driverless testing permit, a DMV spokesperson said. “Public safety remains the California DMV’s top priority, and the department’s autonomous vehicle regulations provide a framework to facilitate the safe testing and deployment of this technology on California public roads. When there is an unreasonable risk to public safety, the DMV can immediately suspend or revoke permits. There is no set time for a suspension,” the DMV said in a statement. The agency said that it has provided Cruise with the steps needed to reinstate the permit to operate, “which the DMV will not approve until the company has fulfilled the requirements to the department’s satisfaction.” The decision does not affect the company’s ability to test vehicles with a safety driver. Cruise and Waymo, owned by Alphabet, both run driverless cars in San Francisco. Read more at: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics...#storylink=cpy |
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I’m glad they got blocked, even if it was temporary. Those cars became a nuisance. They were everywhere and with how congested SF streets are w Hipster Lance Armstrongs and double parked delivery trucks/ dashers /Ubers etc. they would block streets for minutes at a time trying to figure out safe passage through minor hazards.
It was ok when there were a few of them here and there but that shit got out of hand. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk |
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As a society, I figured driverless cars would have to be vastly superior to human drivers before they were accepted. If driverless cars had one-tenth the accident and fatality rate, they would still be prohibited or sued out of existence. Now I'm not claiming they are even that good yet. But I still expect to see widespread adoption in other countries before the US. |
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Hopefully they will get this problem figured out soon before they release too many more of these vehicles. I wonder if these vehicles stop and gawk at homeless people shitting in the streets? |
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On the interstate, absolutely true.
For urban environments, you have to add in bikes and jaywalking pedestrians. And really dense urban environments like SF and NYC have additional issues. On 'side streets', there are so many double parked delivery trucks, for instance, you sometimes have use the oncoming lane of traffic to go around them. So there is no way to follow the letter of the law, and sometimes it's not clear if the oncoming traffic is going to wait for you. If you want to wait for a huge gap in oncoming traffic, you can wait a long time. If it was all driverless, it would be easier. If people's Bluetooth, smartphones broadcast their location as a pedestrian, bicyclist, that would help a little bit. |
Well, I'm excited to give Waymo a try when I visit Phoenix in a month or so. :)
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That the DMV will be the final word about some technological fix for these myriad issues is somewhat worrisome. Not an organization that I would turn to for technological knowledge or progress. Ever.
But I'm sure this will work out fine. |
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Unfortunately for me it is first hand experience. The problem for Cruise is the only way for them to get it figured out is running them “in the wild”. Lol. Shit, used needles, tranq zombies, sidewalk tent suburbs with full on living room set ups including a couch and lamps on night tables all plugged into the city grid. The homeless rule entire swaths of the city now. It’s going to take something major to ever stop this place from being a extreme, far left liberal shithole. It’s so far gone. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk |
Let's be honest the driving age at 14 is an absolute joke it should probably be 18 at the youngest and probably more like 21
they never should have given me a license at 15 I was a danger to everyone around me |
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Just have to share: After spending a few days this last week with my PHd, 50 year old, Scientist daughter, she told me she hopes to able to purchase a self driving car for her next vehicle. :D Change is going to happen whether I like it or not.
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Teslas add a few additional steps to that - more advanced versions of the above, change lanes with just the push of the turn signal, stopping at stop lights/signs, etc. Beyond that, there really aren't any options that are truly ready for prime time, and it seems like the growth curve has been flattening out in terms of tangible progress. Everything that's out there is really only able to adapt to a specific geographic area, and the ones that can do more than that (Tesla's FSD) still can't handle a lot of fringe scenarios (weird road construction markings, for example). I do think things will get there, but it's going to take longer than everyone was thinking a few years ago. So for the forseeable future, the question is going to be what self-driving features a car has rather than whether it is "self-driving." |
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The problem driverless cars ran into is the limits of AI. Yes, AI can do a good job emulating human decision-making, but when you run into a weakness it hits a quandry and can't come up with reasonable work-arounds on the fly. Instead, it brick walls and as in the above OP, will created congestion trying to deal with minor hazards that aren't in its programming.
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I was talking to my SIL on this visit and he said he had rented a rental car on their vacation that would over ride his steering some on the lane control when passing an eighteen wheeler. Is that the "adaptive cruise control" you referenced? Also, another feature some of these new vehicles have that I have noticed on rental cars, the motor will shut off when at a stop light/sign. That can not be good for the engine long term but I bet it really helps in those big traffic jams in metropolitan areas. |
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You can also set it to automatically change lanes whenever you turn on the blinker, and also set it so it'll stay within the lanes (it also complains if you take your hands off the wheel). There's been a time or two where it'll override steering a bit, so I don't use it much... and once where it slammed the brakes on the highway thinking I was about to hit something, but nothing was in my lane at all (and fortunately no one behind me). The last car I owned had the auto stop/start thing, but only for eco mode.. my current one does it all the time and don't think there's a way to disable it..... if you slow down just right though, it won't turn off. It's impressively seamless though when it does start up, even though I also wonder about long term effects. |
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120k miles and never an issue. |
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All kidding aside, on startups, the engine oil has to get picked up and circulated by the oil pump, thus the most critical wear time on an engine. I will not be owning a car/truck that does this, but fortunately I put myself in a position not to have to. |
Was in SF last month for a conference, and yes those things were all over the place. I found it hilarious when one of them stopped right over top of a huge crosswalk at a red light and 100s of conference goers couldn't safely cross the street because this driverless "smart" car couldn't comprehend a very visibly marked crosswalk. Meanwhile all the cars with actual drivers were where they were supposed to be.
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As for the engine shut off thing, that's becoming pretty common as a fuel efficiency improvement measure. They don't us a normal starter, so the typical logic on wear and tear doesn't really apply. |
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According to entities like SAE and AAA, auto start/stop systems can save anywhere from 5-15% on fuel consumption, depending on the scenario. They use what is called an EFB battery (Enhanced Flooded Battery) that is considerably more reliable for providing instant power, and they provide about twice as many charging cycles as a conventional battery.
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The seat will also vibrate if you look to be running into something - I had turn that off because my girlfriend kept trying to run into things. |
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I could probably root kit my current vehicle once it's out of warranty to disable it, but it's barely even noticeable and easy to let off the brake a bit to get it to start again. |
I had a rental car on a long road trip a while back, and it took me a bit to figure out the adaptive cruise control because I'd never seen it. I'd be on the highway cruising along and then I'd notice that I was going five miles under the speed limit for some reason. I eventually figured out that it was because there was a pokey person ahead of me, and so I would slow down to start a pokey parade with them. I had to switch lanes to get back up to speed.
But it made me wonder - if everyone had that same system, could you end up with a big pokey parade of dozens of cars if people didn't notice and pass? It seems like it. |
For most of my life, I think a bigger issue than self-driving may be not owning a car. Self-driving only really would affect me on longer road trips since I'd probably be actively monitoring in my normal urban driving.
But if we found ourselves in a world where a bunch of driverless cars prowl around and I order them up on an as-needed basis, then I won't own a car. And if I don't own a car, I have an empty garage, and I'm either renting it out to an old-school car owner or more likely I'm converting it into an ADU and making notable rental income. I think this trend is happening at a perfect time for me to generate retirement income and also not be a dangerous old codger on the road. |
Non-ownership, self-driving cars could be really transformative.
If you are no longer buying a car based on: well sometimes I need to carry five people and all this stuff and drive it up in the mountains and since I own it, it's part of my identity so I should get a big ass SUV/Truck etc. I usually work from home and to the extent I ever commute, it is only about 15 minutes. But if I had some commute that was pushing up against an hour or something, and I was being picked up in a single occupancy vehicle (which is a separate discussion). It really only needs to have a single seat that folds back flat like a first class airline, but the car could be relatively small since it only needs to hold one person and not much stuff. I would plan on sleeping, nodding off in the morning. On the way back home, would probably recline back and spend it on my phone/tablet like I would on a plane. For going to the grocery store or something involving family, yea you would order something larger. But unless the ride sharing is actually, like going to involve sharing rides, a lot of cars could both be small but have one, large comfortable seat. The thing that worries me about the on demand car, is it not actually being there when I really want it. Like when there is a forest fire or flood, I want to have a car in my driveway that is mine, that I know I can drive away in. Not a 'sorry, we aren't going to drive any of our cars into that to pick you up'. |
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So yeah, maybe it's big disasters that are the impetus for that. But in that case maybe you keep a scooter in the garage. The life you're describing seems awesome. And you're right - you could have different sizes of autonomous vehicles that you can call if you're one-person commuting or going out to dinner with the wife or needing to bring drywall home from the store. I'd also be thrilled to have a self-driving car for long road trips. It would be even better than a train because I could pull over at will. This needs to happen. |
This technology is going to line up with me aging perfectly.
My kids won’t have to have the discussion about should Dad quit driving. |
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Mine starts as soon as you let off the break. Also it only goes off if you press the break pedal all the way. There is a spot where you apply the break and it doesn’t shut off. 2022 Honda Ridgeline so I assume this is how all new Hondas are. |
I cannot possibly imagine relying on a car to come get me for my daily activities. I don’t always plan ahead to go to the store or park or whatever. So the idea of ordering a car and waiting on it multiple times a day just sounds awful.
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Being behind the adaptive cruise control people set to three car lengths is super annoying in LA, where everyone drives 80 bumper to bumper. Cars keep getting into the gap, which makes the adaptive car slow down, repeat ad nauseum.
Teslas used to always do this. I haven't seen it as much lately. I think the drivers got tired of it too. |
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Just think about how much lost "productivity" cars have today just sitting on the side of the road, in parking lots, or in garages. If cars are instead constantly moving and picking people up when they're needed, everything becomes more efficient. Obviously that's just a vision, and I can't really see us getting to that point in the next decade unless someone makes another breakthrough, but I bet that's where we'll get to eventually. |
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For me, I find it's far less stressful to just calm down and let the car deal with all of the stuff like that. I'll sacrifice a minute or two of commute time for that. |
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There's car productivity and there's people productivity. Look at all of the people driving on I-70 across western Kansas with their eyes half-glazed. With self-driving cars they could be reading a book or knitting or learning how to use a band saw instead of staring at the car ahead of them. |
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https://i.imgur.com/CQJxYM5.jpg (but DALL-E 3 apparently doesn't know what a band saw is) |
I hope that guy donates blood.
(that was a vein joke, not power-tools-in-a-moving-van joke.... either works though, I guess) |
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But if I was napping in a driverless car, I guess I would be okay with it. Or better yet, if all the cars were driverless. |
For those interested in these self driving cars, you might enjoy the series on Prime called "Upload." :D
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Driverless cars drive slower than 96 year old asian women. No thanks.
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It's been 9 years. Have driverless cars changed anything yet?
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other...se/ar-AA1jWBYZ |
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Commuters will love that one. |
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Without googling it, I would hazard to guess that even if traffic flowed somewhat reasonably well and crashes were reduced, the high testosterone guys in their vehicles with the oversized knobby tires went ballistic and that was that.
Just like some significant percentage of commuters will when driverless cars encounter the threat of snowy, icy streets and reduce speed to a crawl. Or it may be that the fleets of driverless cars will find it unprofitable to put their cars in harm's way of human drivers when the streets are that dangerous and if you thought you were going to work that day... Sorry, no cars are available. |
Cruise slashes 24% of self-driving car workforce in sweeping layoffs
Cruise, the GM self-driving car subsidiary, is laying off 900 workers to slash costs and revamp the company, TechCrunch exclusively learned https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/14/cr...ent=newsletter |
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*No mullet |
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<iframe src="https://streamable.com/e/zmja5v" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> (this video will expire in 2 days, so you're not crazy if it's not working) I still wouldn't predict they'll be common any time soon, but it was a much smoother ride than I was expecting, especially compared to videos of Tesla drivers trying out FSD mode. |
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Did you experience any anxiety sitting in the back like that with no control? I think I would for a bit. |
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Once it was on the road, it was a pretty normal ride. Definitely no safety-related anxiety. |
Driverless cars covered 5x more test miles in California in 2023
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 2 (Reuters) - (This Feb. 2 story has been corrected to remove the word ‘Chinese’ from paragraph 9) Completely driverless vehicles traveled nearly 3.3 million miles in California last year, over five times the previous year's total, even as concerns rose in the wake of a Cruise robotaxi accident, state data on vehicle testing released on Friday showed. General Motors' (GM.N), opens new tab Cruise and Alphabet's (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Waymo accounted for the bulk of the miles - 63% and 36% respectively - recorded without a safety driver, according to the state's department of motor vehicles (DMV). Taxis with empty driver's seats have become common in the San Francisco area. The Cruise accident, in which an autonomous vehicle hit and dragged a pedestrian 20 feet (6.1 meters), sparked a public outcry and prompted the company to halt operations across the country. Autonomous tests with a safety driver rose to 5.7 million miles from 5.1 million, DMV data from Dec. 1, 2022 to Nov. 30, 2023 showed. https://www.reuters.com/business/aut...ent=newsletter |
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While I agree, I would say that the autonomous cars could be an improvement. There are some awful drivers out there. Distracted driving is rampant. |
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The main issue will be cost. It will be FAR cheaper to order your car a couple times a day than to own a car and pay for it just to have it sit around for 20 hours a day. Ordering cars will get faster , cheaper and easier. Most people are not going to choose to pay for a car or two full time when they can just order and use them as needed. Just my thoughts... main issue: cost When the cost of driverless is far less than owning, thats when people will start switching. |
I did Waymo for the first time in my life two weeks ago with a client. It was weird as hell having no one drive the car but I felt 100% safe.
They even called into the car when I took my seat belt off in the back seat as it was strangling me and I couldn't adjust it. Jaguars suck! The only downside is they stay at speed limit and EVERYOME passed us by! |
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They're doing it different than I thought they would, apparently they're using cameras to determine collision avoidance. They have a massive amount of sensors for some of the other stuff, but I think the cameras are doing the heavy lifting for the liability protection. I don't know the mechanics of what it's doing, but that is a massive amount of computing they're doing. Obviously Deere has an army of lawyers, so they're on it, but it looks like it's happening. And as should be a shock to nobody, I appear to have been wrong. |
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However, having to wait 5-10 minutes every time you need a ride? That kind of starts to suck. |
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Im talking about total costs. The models that I have seen are something like this: You join a club/group and pay a monthly fee to be able to use 1, 2 or 3 different kinds of vehicles. (A pickup, a sedan, a minivan for example, so multiply the total costs!). You get so many hours over a month, and if you go over you can pay extra. But the savings will be there. No insurance, No maintenance, No fuel costs etc. Paying for part of a car in a group will absolutely be cheaper than paying for a whole car that sits around most of the time. Plus you will have more options for different types of vehicles. I dont think people will pay MORE for the "convienience" of not having a car right at their house (so I agree with you on that) .. But you bet your ass people will join clubs where you pay LESS for having access to more kinds of cars and no insurance/gas/oil changes/ repairs ! (and be willing to wait 10 min) Also, obviously not EVERYONE will do this. Guys like me who need a truck for work, probably will have a work truck at home. Or people who drive more than allowed by group ownership etc, or maybe as a luxury or status symbol. |
Waymo was cheaper than Lyft and Uber by about 25%
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I'm a tight ass when it comes to cars. I'd love to have a nice vehicle in the garage but I just can't justify the expense. My two cars are both over ten years old one both over 100k miles, one is over 210k. Have not had a car payment for 8 years now. The ONLY time I wish I had something different is when we are going on a trip of some sort. A subscription service would be great for that. Still think I'd want to have something sitting in the garage, but maybe that plus a subscription would be great. |
Too late for Pat Senior?
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Woof. I didn't realize it was this bad. I haven't taken the time to see the legitimacy of what he's saying, but it's bad.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2DOd4RLNeT4?si=QpdH6U5_PFTj3Uav" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe> |
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What's up with that dude's left eyebrow? |
Sorry, your Telsa is a POS.
Fixed the click bait title for you. |
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This article is covering "driver assist" but I thought it might be relevant and interesting in this thread.
Almost No One Makes a Good Driver Assistance System, Report Says Your driver assistants are letting you down. A report released by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) Tuesday examined the safety of 14 driver-assistance products from various automakers. The results were dismal: only one car, Toyota’s Lexus LS, notched an “acceptable” rating. The GMC Sierra and Nissan Ariya managed to nab “marginal” scores, while the rest — including driver-assistance poster child Tesla — were deemed “poor.” The report’s individual assessments were pretty withering, but potentially more damaging was the overall conclusion that driver-assistance systems do nothing to improve safety. The Insurance Man Cometh The IIHS’ main safety concerns stemmed from a lack of driver engagement. Driver-assistance systems can pretty much drive your car, but they’re not fully self-driving systems. Drivers need to be ready to take control of their vehicles at any time — and in the IIHS’ view, the systems themselves should enforce that level of engagement. “Many vehicles don’t adequately monitor whether the driver is looking at the road or prepared to take control,” Alexandra Mueller, a senior research scientist at the IIHS, said in a statement. “Many lack attention reminders that come soon enough and are forceful enough to rouse a driver whose mind is wandering,” she added. This isn’t really a smoking gun, since automakers with driver-assistance systems can assert that it’s the driver’s responsibility to remain attentive. However, bullish automakers like to maintain that self-driving vehicles are in fact safer than those driven by fallible humans. The IIHS study hints otherwise: IIHS President David Harkey said in a statement that there is “little evidence [partial automation] makes driving safer,” and added: “As many high-profile crashes have illustrated, it can introduce new risks when systems lack the appropriate safeguards.” Harkey told Reuters that his statement leaned on insurance claims data. "We have been able to look at vehicles with and without these (systems) and determine there is no reduction in claims as a result of these more advanced systems," he said. Lithium Lining: The IIHS wasn’t totally raining on automated driving’s parade; the report looked at how each system performed in a variety of criteria, and none were universally bad. “No single system did well across the board, but in each category at least one system performed well,” Starkey said in a statement. “That means the fixes are readily available and, in some cases, may be accomplished with nothing more than a simple software update.” The report was completed before Tesla’s most recent software update in December, so improvements may already have been made there. We hope, anyway. Written by Isobel Asher Hamilton |
Good news. I found a way to beat 2024 Tesla Autopilot
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Bought the wife a new Subaru in Jan with all the safety features including driver assist. We call driver assist Jesus take the wheel mode and I find it annoying. The car tends to wander a little as it looks for the lane lines. It also doesn't like you driving with only one hand. It will eventually flash a warning on the dash and if you don't obey it will then sound a beep alarm.
Separately it has a lane warning system that will attempt to keep you in your lane. If you go to pass someone it will kick in if you don't turn on your blinker. The forward looking avoidance system is nice with one exception. If you have the cruise set and you slowly catch up to a car going 1 or 2 mph slower it will lower your speed and keep you at a pre-selected distance until you change lanes to pass. The few times I've driven it I all of a sudden I'm going 77 instead of 80 because I caught up to a slower car. I think I'll eventually get used to it even though I will hardly ever drive it. The wife loves the car. |
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I would probably be cussing and yelling at the car like I do other idiot drivers now. |
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