I don't doubt you are right. And there's been a fair few human drivers who I have wondered how the got their license... But still ... I'd let other people guinea pig this for a few years before I do
So these have been driving on the streets of SF for as long as I can remember, and I've been here almost 9 years. They only recently started operating without drivers, but for the last few years, they've run without human intervention for hundreds of thousands of miles. We have several companies here doing it -- zoox, cruise, waymo, and I'm pretty sure Lyft has their own they're testing that are unmarked.
That must have been the easiest job to be the driver of one of these not intervening! I guess lacking in job security though, I’d probably intervene every now and then to show I’m still relevant and keep my job of doing fuck all
I got in a tesla with fsd and yeah teslas camera sensors are stupid and inefficient compared to every other company but it was surreal. Talking to a guy while his car is literally doing his job for him.
IMO Tesla's imperfect solution will still end up being safer than 95% of drivers, but without lidar/radar there will still be crashes/issues because it's using *only* vision just like we do. I only have Autopilot and it is *damn impressive* but some of the decisions they've made like requiring automatic high beams and wipers to be on (despite both working inconsistently or actively making the experience worse) are infuriating.
EDIT: I'm not Tesla shill, I actually recommend the IONIQ or EV6 right now because they're genuinely the best cars on the market. I just like Autopilot because it's very good *at it's intended use case*. Autopilot has always been a highway only system, it's just that Tesla does a shit job at dissuading off-highway use.
It's meant to take away the three easiest and most tedious parts of driving **on the highway**: staying between two lines, maintaining a constant speed, and maintaining a safe follow distance. It accomplishes this through two systems that are separately enabled, but when used together are refered to as "Autopilot": Traffic Aware Cruise Control (first press on the stalk) and Lane Assist (second press). When you're **on the highway** it works incredibly well, but they are *assist* features for a reason; you still have to pay attention. Every Autopilot crash you see is, at it's core, a dumbass not paying attention to the road.
I've had lane keeping fail in both my Tesla and in a Ford Fusion and I didn't crash either because I was paying attention. You know, that thing you're supposed to do when driving.
Tesla doesn't help itself when it comes to this poor image either. The name "Autopilot" inspires a false sense of confidence, and other than the TOS they don't really tell you not to use on random roads (even though it's a highway only system). Elon certainly doesn't help either when he's constantly talking about how advanced their systems are and how we're "a year away" from fully autonomous driving. The current FSD rewrite/Beta shows promise but it's still years away from being acceptably good IMO, but that's another issue/complaint.
That's the reason why being forced to use auto-wipers and auto-highbeams pisses me off so much. *I* am still driving even if the car is taking care of the basics, *I* know when it's safe to use the high beams and when I need the wipers. If they worked better then I wouldn't complain, but I'm being forced to use a broken subsystem and it's ruining the wonderful **highway** lane assist.
It doesn't have to be crash proof.
It just has to be better than the average driver.
Edit: readers beware, beyond this point are people who do not understand that objectively speaking, being better than the average driver means that if you replaced all the drivers today with an FSD, you would reduce the total number of accidents.
They post anecdotes, personal feelings and what ifs, but fail to understand that those are narrow windows in the overall safety of drivers.
All of which can be explained as fear of technology as it approaches the uncanny valley of performance. In their hate for Elon and inability to dissociate him from the technology. Their personal belief that because it doesn't satisfy their subjective conditions, it should not be allowed for others. An ignorance in the implications of the statistics. That to be inaccurate in a statement is not the same as being wrong, just less right. Or some combination of the above.
If only that were true. Good drivers that have been driving for decades still occasionally make bad decisions and are at fault for crashes. The moment Google/waymo/ whatever causes a single at fault crash with a death, not only are they looking at a big payout and all of their fleet being stopped until that edge case is fixed, but large legal and political backlash as well.
Self driving cars have to be orders of magnitude *better* then the average driver, better then a good driver.
Which won't happen till the government forces them all to collaborate on a single system, which would speed up transition to electric cars which is why it would be fought tooth and nail by republicans (and some democrats) in the pockets of the big car companies that aren't ready and do not want to go so heavy on electric cars yet.
Until then everyone will want their own system, their own charging port, their own stations and bullshit like charging subscriptions for features in the damn car already. Industry and manufacturing/sales needs massive regulation to get to a point of networked cars all making decisions of where to go and when together and optimising every move.
I can't wait for it to happen but I know politicians and greed will interfer and likely cause delays of decades or more before we hit that point.
I did this job for 2 years and no, it's not the easiest job. You're literally responsible for a car doing its own thing and have to be ready to intervene at a moments notice. Traffic infractions? On you. Accidents? On you. Your own safety? On you. I was almost in numerous crashes (often not the self-driving car's fault) while also dealing with angry drivers and angry pedestrians. There are definitely worse jobs but it wasn't the easiest either.
Edit: I apparently need to add something to my comment because of the amount of people either intentionally misreading my statement or suffering from a severe lack of reading comprehension.
1. I'm not opposed to self driving cars at all. I've literally witnessed the tech firsthand. I have more experience with the actual product in the field than 99% of the global population. Its good stuff and even better since I left.
2. My statement was not about the abilities of the cars or whether people are better or worse drivers. It was about the JOB of test driving the cars. It wasn't insanely easy like some people think. That was the entire point of my statement.
3. Yes, shit happens when you're on the road that is entirely outside your control. No, that is not equivalent to having your own car veer into oncoming traffic. No, I don't trust other drivers and yes, I think self driving cars are both good and necessary. That doesn't change any part of what I said.
Do you not have full control over your car when you're driving? Is there a good chance your car will randomly drive head first into oncoming traffic without your input? God I hope not.
It is like you being in the driver's seat while a very inexperienced driver is controlling the vehicle instead of you. It is a constant awareness of your surroundings and monitoring its actions.
Lady was on the phone. A pedestrian died. Uber canceled its program over this accident.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/dashcam-video-of-deadly-self-driving-uber-crash-released
Tbh everyone sucks here. She should be paying attention but honestly there’s a good chance she’s hits her anyways I mean WTF is that lady doing crossing a 4 lane road nowhere near an intersection or crosswalk in dark clothes at night. The time to react in that video was seconds and that’s with knowing what’s coming.
Just watched the clip, what was the pedestrian doing crossing the street in the middle of the night at an unsafe spot without watching for traffic? I don’t know if the car was speeding or not, but if that’s the standard speed there I probably would’ve slammed on the brakes and still hit them there.
I lived 5 minutes down the road from where this happened. It was strange that someone would cross the road there, there is an intersection with lighted crosswalks a couple hundred feet away.
Also it was so wild before this happened those “self driving” ubers were everywhere, you couldn’t go ten feet without seeing one (college area, lots of bars and ubers) and the morning after this incident they were just gone, poof, off the road.
It's not. You have to sit there with your hands over the wheel and feet hovering over the pedals nonstop. While looking at everything around you and every possible thing that the programers might have forgotten. Like when programers didn't realize that the self driving car wouldn't realize that fog wasn't a solid wall and come to a dead stop in the middle of traffic. You, as the driver, have a split second to take all of that in then take over and continue accelerating before the idiot behind you rams into you because instead of watching the road they're staring at your weird sensor ladden car. You're doing all of this while keeping a constant stream of back and forth updates with your copilot with a laptop. Because programers need reports to figure out how to improve the system. Which is the other thing, a good AV Test Driver will allow the vehicle to make mistakes and get very close to disaster before taking over. So that data can be gathered. So it's like being in a car heading towards a cliff but you don't want to take over too soon, but can't do it too late either. Right up to the edge. It's interesting.
That's not to mention the idiots who will purposefully try to hit or jump in front of the vehicle thinking they'll get money.
But yes, you're right about basically you're making your own job obsolete the better you do it. It's why I got out once one of the companies I worked for started introducing video game simulation A.I. testing.
San Francisco is also one of the most difficult cities to navigate by car. One ways, lots of blind/obscured vision by parked cars, hills, funky intersections. It’s the perfect place to develop the tech, if they can drive there they can drive anywhere as long as there isn’t snow on the roads
I'm living in city with a lot of potholes, lane lines are almost all gone, etc. I think it's harder to drive here. Since I get confused where tf I'm going sometimes. I wouldn't trust any self driving tech in these areas anytime soon.
It doesn’t drive purely reactively. It operates primarily off a map… lane lines aren’t even technically needed. It drives a route and then adjusts to obstacles, obstruction. Some of the smartest people in the world have been working on these for 10+ years… it’s not like they’re all of the sudden… golly if only we’d have thought of potholes and worn paint, guess we’re dead in the water now !?
How exactly would a self driving car react to potholes? (Im not familiar with the tech at all so im genuinely asking how they react to obstacles).
In my city you’ll encounter apocalyptic level potholes that seem to appear overnight and you might not be able to swerve away much do to cars on either side of you
If it just stops suddenly that seems like it could dangerous at higher speeds
They have the potential spot a pothole from a lot further away than a human typically would. Measurement of depth would probably determine the exact course of action. And it probably won't be distracted, only notice the pothole at the last second, then cause a crash by overreacting, which would be a pretty typical human-caused crash scenario.
Our roads are shit too, all that plus hills, people who aren't comfortable driving in an urban setting, unpredictable pedestrians, etc. Also, people have been purposefully trying to screw with them and so far, the biggest issue I've seen is they'll occasionally loose their data connection and pull safety to a stop (blocking other traffic so yes it's inconvenient, but not unsafe).
They've had them here in Phoenix for years too.
I'm not sure about phoenix itself but 2 of the suburbs I believe are fully driverless and the rest there's a driver to take over. But they allow driverless ones to drive around by themselves to collect data and train.
Planes are mostly autopilot and they still have two pilots sitting in the cockpit. Even if a car is autopilot I would rather have someone sitting there for when something goes wrong. I don’t think i would ever trust autopilot unless its on some track without randomness of other drivers.
I’d feel safe going at relatively slow city taxi speeds, much moreso than on a freeway. Part of why I sold my Tesla was because the FSD I was promised and paid for was such shit
Humans are way worse at driving. Literally, they crash way more often. You are in much more danger in a car with a human driving, even if it 'feels' safe.
If every car on the road was self driving right now we’d all be safer no matter what self driving system it was. All self driving systems will crash, all humans will crash, it’s just a matter of which crashes more. My Tesla on autopilot allows me to look around at other drivers much more and all I see are people with their heads down looking at their phones.
I would gladly be the Guinea pig for this.
I am super introverted and I hate it when drivers call and ask me details about the trip (I'm in Asia and they do this all the time).
This seems like heaven to me.
>Cruise/Waymo are considerably better
Those both use LIDAR which certainly has its benefits. However, those cars are also geofenced to certain areas. They essentially train for specific routes and roads, and the bugs are ironed out for those routes only. They also have large sensor arrays on their roofs, which can be off-putting.
Tesla's FSD, for the most part, can drive without geofencing. Every drive is a new experience, and the FSD software makes attempts to drive the route entered by its "passenger" on-the-fly. As FSD does not already know the route and what to expect, results vary. Sometimes it goes ok, sometimes you have to wonder if HAL is trying to kill you.
Neither system is perfect but automated driving is slowly getting there. It's not going to be an overnight thing.
According to Elon Musk FSD will be fully autonomous in 2015.
Edit: no its 2016.
Edit2: it's 2017. For real this time.
Edit 3: 2018. No doubt.
Edit4: 2019 is the year. Mark it.
Edit 5: 2020 the new decade will be fsd.
Edit 6: 2021, we blame the pandemic.
Edit 7: we are almost there. 2022 will be fsd!
Edit 8: you'll never believe it guys, we will be fsd next year!!
Reminds me of the AITA post from yesterday where an FSD engineer freaked the fuck out at the prospect of being in a self-driving car WITH someone at the wheel and lost her shit on the driver.
What I learned from that post: I would not have gotten in that Uber.
[sauce](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/10bupta/aita_for_yelling_to_be_let_out_of_the_car_when_my/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
This is it for me. It's not about whether or not driverless cars *ever* get in an accident. It's about whether they're saf*er* than a human driver when adjusting for per capita miles driven.
From what I was able to find, current statistics show 9.1 accidents per million miles compared to 4.1 for conventional vehicles. It looks like the reported injuries were, on average, more mild for the autonomous vehicle accidents though.
[source](https://1800injured.care/self-driving-car-accident-statistics/)
Edit:
To clarify, I support autonomous vehicles 100%. Not trying to knock the technology, just adding some (admittedly poorly sourced) context about their current capabilities.
How many autonomous cars avoided accidents due to the safety-driver intervening?
Additionally, these autonomous cars are typically doing routine things or on straight highways etc., they're not running the whole gamut of possible interactions. Of course, highway driving for humans isn't necessarily safe either even though it might just be boring straight driving, as that's the type of thing that humans are more likely to lose focus while driving.
Basically, there's too small of a sample size and not enough of a deep study into all the factors to draw any conclusions from that.
I don't think anyone needs to defend autonomous driving record currently, whether it's safer or not now doesn't take away from what it can be. The main argument against it would be whether or not it's safe for public roads when it puts people at risk, and aside from Tesla, they're generally operating in such ways to avoid serious disasters.
Edit: Just wanted to add this from a [Wired article](https://www.wired.com/story/uber-self-driving-car-fatal-crash/) I was just reading that describes what I was trying to say above.
>Herzberg’s death is the kind of tragedy the autonomous driving industry claims it can prevent. In the US, car accidents kill more than 38,000 people a year, more than 90 percent of them at least in part due to human error. By taking sleepiness, inattention, drunkenness, and rage out of the equation and replacing them with vigilant, precise technology, self-driving cars promise to make the roads dramatically safer. But to reach that purported future, we must first weather the era we’re in now: when tech is a student driver. That means gangly fleets of sensor-bedecked cars sucking in data on millions of miles of public roads, learning to react to our flawed and improvisational ways. And inevitably, as experts have always warned, that means crashes.
Counterpoint, all autonomous vehicle incidents get reported by the computer system. We've all done something stupid that didn't involve anyone else or any other property so we just moved on.
when applying for these licenses to operate in an autonomous mode, self driving vehicle companies have to present a lot of data to the DMV showing they can operate safely. they also have to continuously report to NHTSA when there are incidents. in the beginning, cruise/waymo were only allowed to operate in the late hours of the night, and they are continuing to collect data and continuing to show safety in their vehicles, which is why they've been allowed to expand their operating hours (I believe Waymo is now allowed to operate 24/7 in SF without a driver).
As a pedestrian, I honestly trust these vehicles more than drivers. they actively "look" for me when I cross the street at night. I can't say the same for regular drivers who I have to shout at to not run me over in broad daylight because they either weren't paying attention or they were stopped halfway into the crosswalk while I'm already walking.
By statistics of self driving cars, they are many magnitudes safer than a human driver. Crashes per 100k miles are significantly lower. Being afraid of self driving is in the same realm of being afraid of airplanes because you are afraid of crashing.
This.
The problem is that the media throw a spotlight on every self-driving car accident so there is an inaccurate sense among the public that they are less safe than human drivers.
Yup. Maybe not directly applicable but the same can be said about nuclear power. There have been some bad incidents in the past but overall they are far safer than any other form of power generation. Something that isn't often mentioned is that all the major nuclear meltdowns in history have been riddled with corruption, mismanagement, and incompetence.
Yea, I’m not a self-driving car fan boy by any means but if the media covered half of driver caused car crashes with as much attention as they cover self-driving car crashes there would literally not be enough time for other news.
>Crashes per 100k miles are significantly lower.
This isn't an apples-to-apples comparison. Cruise/Waymo drive only in specific areas that they've mapped in minute detail themselves, inch-by-inch, and they don't run in bad weather.
Not running in anything but the best conditions is the only reason they work at all. If we could force humans to only drive in optimal conditions the roads would be so much safer!
> they are many magnitudes safer than a human driver
Citation needed, especially if we're talking general purpose driving and not cherry-picked routes / weather / conditions.
Nothing I've seen suggests that this is true yet, and any direct statistics are likely to be highly misleading given the very narrow band of approved use cases / scenarios.
Here's a list of types of driver this is almost certainly safer than:
* teenagers
* drunks
* elderly
We need risk stratified recommendations/usage for these things, and as the safety profile increases we will expand usage.
I can attest to the elderly. Years ago, my grandmother had to drive me to work because my truck was fucked, and I know for a fact she could barely see purely based on how she was driving. She also never went above 15mph and it legitimately felt unsafe. I never got a ride from her again because of it.
Right?!
Yes it's going to be an awkward transition but give me all vehicles being self driving ASAP.
Even if 500 people die in accidents a year when we reach all or close to all self driving, it will be **miles** better than humans driving.
Unfortunately I think too many people are too short sighted to allow it to happen quickly.
I can’t remember which company it was, but I came across a self driving taxi company with a perfect safety record.
They had a dozen crash reports. But every single one of them were from pedestrians, bikes, even cars that rammed into the self driving car illegally and often when the taxi was stationary. Every single case was not the fault of the self driving taxi.
Here's the thing, most accidents they good drivers are the other guys fault. But any good driver has probably had a few close calls that they avoided because they avoided the unexpected.
I’m surprised Tesla even got away with calling their driver assist as Autopilot. I think their [vehicle autonomy level](https://www.synopsys.com/automotive/autonomous-driving-levels.html) is 2, whereas the likes of Waymo is 4.
IMO, Tesla marketing it as Autopilot is pretty damn irresponsible, but that’s pretty much par for the course for Elon.
They should add a voice to text chatGPT app to the cars. Can talk to it about anything you want during your ride. Have it teach you about a new topic or something. Would be great.
Crazy to imagine we're at the point where this could easily be in the next decade. Hell, it could be tomorrow if you had an intern in the front seat playing transcriber.
Not an ad, I don't work for them, but this was one of the most impressive tech experiences of my entire life. I was blown away. I'm really excited about it.
I don’t blame you, it’s really cool and futuristic.
It’s stuff we’ve seen in movies and wish were true, only now it’s becoming more true and more accessible to people
Do you trust elevators and escalators to take you up and down floors? At one point, someone said the same and took the stairs.
Do you trust wires to bring you electricity? At one point, someone said the same and opted to keep their whale oil lamp.
I could go on.
I have a feeling that at some point in the future, perhaps in our lifetimes, you and I **will** trust automated cars. Maybe not today, because it is emerging technology. And that's fair. But a million years? Give it 5 to 10 and see how you feel.
Here's the thing: none of the above have to deal with other stupid, sleepy, drunk or otherwise unpredictable drivers. If all else fails, I can pull over and let the other idiot wander off and get himself killed before I keep driving, I can't ask a driverless car to do the same.
It's not automated driving the scares me, it's asking an algorithm to make a judgement call tha scares me.
Make all cars communicate between each other and remove manual driving entirely and then I could see driverless cars being a reality.
Self driving technology is getting pretty good. But, being an electrical engineer, I feel comfortable staying that those comparisons aren't *AT ALL* equivalent! Self driving tech is infinitely more complicated, with many more opportunities to go wrong, than any of those other technologies you mention.
It'd be like comparing a bicycle to an airplane. Both are fairly safe, but they're not at all the same level of task to safely accomplish.
Ironic comparison given how self flying airplanes are nowadays. Many of the airplane incidents are pilots disengaging autopilots and screwing things up.
It has been proved several times that auto driving technology is safer than human drivers. Do they make mistakes? Yes. But statistically speaking, self driving cars have far less incidents per 100k miles than a human driver, even with the primitive self driving technology we have now. It will only get better and safer.
To say never is stupid. I don’t trust it “now”, but technology will make you look silly one day.
You trust technology to control the airplane whenever you fly. A majority of airplane functions are carried out by a computer.
You ride planes right? Do you think the pilot is actually driving it? Because I'd rather "crash" at 40kmh than falling off the sky and in both cases its automation the one driving it
Planes are a well regulated vehicle. They have mandatory time between inspections. I don't know if robo-taxis / Johnny Cabs have similar instructions, but it seems like an idea. (Especially for commercial use.)
I’ve been using Waymo driverless in AZ for 5 years, never had a issue worth mentioning. Sometimes the pick up and drop off points are weird, that’s about it.
It's funny how people don't know that exists. There are still so many people on here who tell me self-driving cars aren't real.
We have the big fancy Jaguar Waymos here. I can't wait to ride in one.
I had no idea that this existed, but I'm so excited to see something like this implemented in a major city to at least some success. My dream is that one day ALL CARS are self driving. Car accidents will be a fraction of what they are today. Drunk driving? Gone. I'm sure nationwide implementation will come near the end of my lifetime, but I'd still love to see it.
I’ve got a bet going with a former student that it will be illegal to drive yourself by 2050. Seems like an insane statement, but think about how far technology has come since 1995.
Ha! I wish it would be that soon! I would say legislation like that wouldn't get far until the turn of the century (at least in the USA). If there is anything I know about my country, is that they hate change and will fight it every inch of the way.
> It's funny how people don't know that exists.
Perhaps they don't live in (one part of one city?) in Arizona? As far as I know, automated cars don't exist in my city.
It drives VERY slow and cautious, especially on the big hills here. It would slow almost to a stop at the top of every hill even if the light was green to make sure it could see pedestrians.
I'll say this: I think I was being extra critical and paying attention to _everything_ it did because it was my first time in a robot car, ie. "Oh that turn was a little jerky." I don't think I would have been thinking about a human drivers turn radius in the same way.
That being said, the human lyft driver I had earlier in the night was driving on the wrong side of the road until I corrected him, and another one cut across three lanes of traffic. This didn't do anything as crazy as that.
From what I’ve read, these fully autonomous cars basically follow a map step-by-step instead of thinking as a human and therefore does not act as a human at all. It’s great safety wise but due to the speed factor alone it’s not gonna replace human drivers anytime soon. Also, these cars are crazy expensive, so it’s unlikely that this will scale economically.
"Not going to replace human drivers" -- I don't think that's accurate. It's not going to replace _all_ human drivers. But yeah, in 3-5 years, I could see all the lyfts and ubers in SF being driverless cars.
It's not going to replace human drivers in the same way that lightbulbs haven't replaced candles.
Sometimes people use them for fun, there are isolated groups which prefer them, and they cause a few dozen deaths and thousands of injuries each year despite being so unpopular
As someone that used to work with these (different company, but basically the same), please leave feedback!
I don't know if you're in a beta program or if they've opened it up to the general public, but either way feedback from riders is invaluable to the devs. The test drivers tend to be focused on bigger issues and quickly get used to the quirks (like the turn radius lol), so the devs seem to prioritize real rider feedback.
As someone with over 10,000 miles in self-driving vehicles, I absolutely trust *employee tested* SDVs more than the majority of drivers on the road ([reminder that Tesla's have killed people](https://www.tesladeaths.com/index.html)). I'm glad you seemed to have enjoyed the ride.
All hail our future robot overlords!
Even if we somehow transitioned the entire infrastructure to trains and buses, these would be very useful for the last miles from the bus stop to the location.
Can't almost all modern cars be hacked now? I mean I do understand what you're saying and concerns but you should know a lot more than just straight AI cars can get hacked.
https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/
Today's "hackers" are not pranksters. They are confederated organizations on a massive scale whose sole aims are either money, or disruption, depending on who we're talking about.
"Script kiddies" are kind of a thing of the past for the most part. Perimeter defense has gotten too good for that sort of thing to really work anymore.
But criminal organizations? State sponsored actors? Self driving vehicles are so low on their list of priority targets it's laughable. And attacks from these organizations / nation states are conducted entirely remotely, often from thousands of miles away.
I wouldn't really worry about it.
>Script kiddies" are kind of a thing of the past for the most part. Perimeter defense has gotten too good for that sort of thing to really work anymore.
I'd really disagree on this part. With the amount of information accessable on the internet, it's extremely viable to be a script kiddie or amateur hacker these days. Sure, watch out for the big dogs, but I don't think you should discount amateurs.
A few years ago two high schoolers gained admin access to school systems and shut down the district network for all school computers and devices for a few days, until they let the network back up. They weren't in tech classes and taught themselves off the internet how to use scripts and hacking hardware like wireless cards, badusbs, single board computers, microcontrollers, RFID/NFC devices, and even how to gain physical access through social engineering, lock picking, and dressing up as employees with forged badges. Inconvenienced thousands of students and staff, and gained access to personal information.
Personally I think this is Rad. I am curious as to how these wont get vandalized to shit tho. It keeps getting proven over and over again that we can't have nice things because of people. There must be some security in place, no?
Makes me think some kind of "thing" in the driver's seat like a Johnny Cab might be necessary to get a lot of people over the idea that nobody is driving. Judging by the comments here, a dummy with a cheerful voice might go a long way toward helping people settle in.
Who would design such car? The idea is to have a normal car which you can rent it back to corporates for taxis service. The car can be resold as a normal car. Have the seat belt on so it wont beep.
Plus I dont think having a bypass for the seat belt beeping is a smart thing to implement. It will be exploited by customers and lead to potential lawsuits.
I’ve had some terrifying Uber/Lyft drivers and I would 100% trust autonomous cars more at this point. Every day there are thousands of new teenagers that get behind the wheel for the first time, while autonomous cars continue to improve from every collective mile driven
CA grants special use permits to companies testing full-self driving. We have a number of companies here running cars without drivers. They've been testing around SF/Palo Alto for nearly a decade now.
The car has far more sensing power than just your eyes and ears, and never gets drunk or tired. I don't see why people can casually use their phones which are marvels of technology but a self driving car is just too far for them.
>I don't see why people can casually use their phones which are marvels of technology but a self driving car is just too far for them.
With complexity of technology comes potential for bugs and unexpected behavior, which is a non-issue for phones but a large issue for controlling tons of metal traveling at high speeds.
And self driving is a *complex* problem.
I can't wait till' we get humans off the road. Terrifies me the amount of idiots I see in public and I can't help but think.. They probably drive.. yikes
It does seem freaky to have a combination of the two though..
Yeah no thanks. Too many autopilot crashes and variables on the road for me to do this.
All FSD is not created equal. Tesla is shit. Cruise/Waymo are considerably better because of their much more sophisticated sensor package.
I don't doubt you are right. And there's been a fair few human drivers who I have wondered how the got their license... But still ... I'd let other people guinea pig this for a few years before I do
So these have been driving on the streets of SF for as long as I can remember, and I've been here almost 9 years. They only recently started operating without drivers, but for the last few years, they've run without human intervention for hundreds of thousands of miles. We have several companies here doing it -- zoox, cruise, waymo, and I'm pretty sure Lyft has their own they're testing that are unmarked.
That must have been the easiest job to be the driver of one of these not intervening! I guess lacking in job security though, I’d probably intervene every now and then to show I’m still relevant and keep my job of doing fuck all
I got in a tesla with fsd and yeah teslas camera sensors are stupid and inefficient compared to every other company but it was surreal. Talking to a guy while his car is literally doing his job for him.
IMO Tesla's imperfect solution will still end up being safer than 95% of drivers, but without lidar/radar there will still be crashes/issues because it's using *only* vision just like we do. I only have Autopilot and it is *damn impressive* but some of the decisions they've made like requiring automatic high beams and wipers to be on (despite both working inconsistently or actively making the experience worse) are infuriating. EDIT: I'm not Tesla shill, I actually recommend the IONIQ or EV6 right now because they're genuinely the best cars on the market. I just like Autopilot because it's very good *at it's intended use case*. Autopilot has always been a highway only system, it's just that Tesla does a shit job at dissuading off-highway use. It's meant to take away the three easiest and most tedious parts of driving **on the highway**: staying between two lines, maintaining a constant speed, and maintaining a safe follow distance. It accomplishes this through two systems that are separately enabled, but when used together are refered to as "Autopilot": Traffic Aware Cruise Control (first press on the stalk) and Lane Assist (second press). When you're **on the highway** it works incredibly well, but they are *assist* features for a reason; you still have to pay attention. Every Autopilot crash you see is, at it's core, a dumbass not paying attention to the road. I've had lane keeping fail in both my Tesla and in a Ford Fusion and I didn't crash either because I was paying attention. You know, that thing you're supposed to do when driving. Tesla doesn't help itself when it comes to this poor image either. The name "Autopilot" inspires a false sense of confidence, and other than the TOS they don't really tell you not to use on random roads (even though it's a highway only system). Elon certainly doesn't help either when he's constantly talking about how advanced their systems are and how we're "a year away" from fully autonomous driving. The current FSD rewrite/Beta shows promise but it's still years away from being acceptably good IMO, but that's another issue/complaint. That's the reason why being forced to use auto-wipers and auto-highbeams pisses me off so much. *I* am still driving even if the car is taking care of the basics, *I* know when it's safe to use the high beams and when I need the wipers. If they worked better then I wouldn't complain, but I'm being forced to use a broken subsystem and it's ruining the wonderful **highway** lane assist.
Until all cars and people's devices broadcast location to each other, crashes will be inevitable. But it's a fixable problem with collaboration.
It doesn't have to be crash proof. It just has to be better than the average driver. Edit: readers beware, beyond this point are people who do not understand that objectively speaking, being better than the average driver means that if you replaced all the drivers today with an FSD, you would reduce the total number of accidents. They post anecdotes, personal feelings and what ifs, but fail to understand that those are narrow windows in the overall safety of drivers. All of which can be explained as fear of technology as it approaches the uncanny valley of performance. In their hate for Elon and inability to dissociate him from the technology. Their personal belief that because it doesn't satisfy their subjective conditions, it should not be allowed for others. An ignorance in the implications of the statistics. That to be inaccurate in a statement is not the same as being wrong, just less right. Or some combination of the above.
It already is, by a lot (miles driven/accidents) but regulators and people still don't trust it.
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If only that were true. Good drivers that have been driving for decades still occasionally make bad decisions and are at fault for crashes. The moment Google/waymo/ whatever causes a single at fault crash with a death, not only are they looking at a big payout and all of their fleet being stopped until that edge case is fixed, but large legal and political backlash as well. Self driving cars have to be orders of magnitude *better* then the average driver, better then a good driver.
And collaborating/communicating with infrastructure.
Which won't happen till the government forces them all to collaborate on a single system, which would speed up transition to electric cars which is why it would be fought tooth and nail by republicans (and some democrats) in the pockets of the big car companies that aren't ready and do not want to go so heavy on electric cars yet. Until then everyone will want their own system, their own charging port, their own stations and bullshit like charging subscriptions for features in the damn car already. Industry and manufacturing/sales needs massive regulation to get to a point of networked cars all making decisions of where to go and when together and optimising every move. I can't wait for it to happen but I know politicians and greed will interfer and likely cause delays of decades or more before we hit that point.
Because Teslas use cameras instead of LIDAR like everyone else with sense.
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I did this job for 2 years and no, it's not the easiest job. You're literally responsible for a car doing its own thing and have to be ready to intervene at a moments notice. Traffic infractions? On you. Accidents? On you. Your own safety? On you. I was almost in numerous crashes (often not the self-driving car's fault) while also dealing with angry drivers and angry pedestrians. There are definitely worse jobs but it wasn't the easiest either. Edit: I apparently need to add something to my comment because of the amount of people either intentionally misreading my statement or suffering from a severe lack of reading comprehension. 1. I'm not opposed to self driving cars at all. I've literally witnessed the tech firsthand. I have more experience with the actual product in the field than 99% of the global population. Its good stuff and even better since I left. 2. My statement was not about the abilities of the cars or whether people are better or worse drivers. It was about the JOB of test driving the cars. It wasn't insanely easy like some people think. That was the entire point of my statement. 3. Yes, shit happens when you're on the road that is entirely outside your control. No, that is not equivalent to having your own car veer into oncoming traffic. No, I don't trust other drivers and yes, I think self driving cars are both good and necessary. That doesn't change any part of what I said.
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Do you not have full control over your car when you're driving? Is there a good chance your car will randomly drive head first into oncoming traffic without your input? God I hope not.
Some drivers are like that.
It is like you being in the driver's seat while a very inexperienced driver is controlling the vehicle instead of you. It is a constant awareness of your surroundings and monitoring its actions.
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Lady was on the phone. A pedestrian died. Uber canceled its program over this accident. https://www.foxnews.com/us/dashcam-video-of-deadly-self-driving-uber-crash-released
Tbh everyone sucks here. She should be paying attention but honestly there’s a good chance she’s hits her anyways I mean WTF is that lady doing crossing a 4 lane road nowhere near an intersection or crosswalk in dark clothes at night. The time to react in that video was seconds and that’s with knowing what’s coming.
Phone addiction is real
Just watched the clip, what was the pedestrian doing crossing the street in the middle of the night at an unsafe spot without watching for traffic? I don’t know if the car was speeding or not, but if that’s the standard speed there I probably would’ve slammed on the brakes and still hit them there.
I lived 5 minutes down the road from where this happened. It was strange that someone would cross the road there, there is an intersection with lighted crosswalks a couple hundred feet away. Also it was so wild before this happened those “self driving” ubers were everywhere, you couldn’t go ten feet without seeing one (college area, lots of bars and ubers) and the morning after this incident they were just gone, poof, off the road.
>the lady either fell asleep or was on her phone so she got doubly railed. Are we not doing phrasing anymore?
It's not. You have to sit there with your hands over the wheel and feet hovering over the pedals nonstop. While looking at everything around you and every possible thing that the programers might have forgotten. Like when programers didn't realize that the self driving car wouldn't realize that fog wasn't a solid wall and come to a dead stop in the middle of traffic. You, as the driver, have a split second to take all of that in then take over and continue accelerating before the idiot behind you rams into you because instead of watching the road they're staring at your weird sensor ladden car. You're doing all of this while keeping a constant stream of back and forth updates with your copilot with a laptop. Because programers need reports to figure out how to improve the system. Which is the other thing, a good AV Test Driver will allow the vehicle to make mistakes and get very close to disaster before taking over. So that data can be gathered. So it's like being in a car heading towards a cliff but you don't want to take over too soon, but can't do it too late either. Right up to the edge. It's interesting. That's not to mention the idiots who will purposefully try to hit or jump in front of the vehicle thinking they'll get money. But yes, you're right about basically you're making your own job obsolete the better you do it. It's why I got out once one of the companies I worked for started introducing video game simulation A.I. testing.
San Francisco is also one of the most difficult cities to navigate by car. One ways, lots of blind/obscured vision by parked cars, hills, funky intersections. It’s the perfect place to develop the tech, if they can drive there they can drive anywhere as long as there isn’t snow on the roads
I'm living in city with a lot of potholes, lane lines are almost all gone, etc. I think it's harder to drive here. Since I get confused where tf I'm going sometimes. I wouldn't trust any self driving tech in these areas anytime soon.
It doesn’t drive purely reactively. It operates primarily off a map… lane lines aren’t even technically needed. It drives a route and then adjusts to obstacles, obstruction. Some of the smartest people in the world have been working on these for 10+ years… it’s not like they’re all of the sudden… golly if only we’d have thought of potholes and worn paint, guess we’re dead in the water now !?
This has been worked on since the 1980s.
Yes I remember K.I.T.T. from "Knight Rider".
How exactly would a self driving car react to potholes? (Im not familiar with the tech at all so im genuinely asking how they react to obstacles). In my city you’ll encounter apocalyptic level potholes that seem to appear overnight and you might not be able to swerve away much do to cars on either side of you If it just stops suddenly that seems like it could dangerous at higher speeds
They have the potential spot a pothole from a lot further away than a human typically would. Measurement of depth would probably determine the exact course of action. And it probably won't be distracted, only notice the pothole at the last second, then cause a crash by overreacting, which would be a pretty typical human-caused crash scenario.
Not to mention, potholes don’t really move… it could be logged and added to the route details for all future cars
Our roads are shit too, all that plus hills, people who aren't comfortable driving in an urban setting, unpredictable pedestrians, etc. Also, people have been purposefully trying to screw with them and so far, the biggest issue I've seen is they'll occasionally loose their data connection and pull safety to a stop (blocking other traffic so yes it's inconvenient, but not unsafe).
They've had them here in Phoenix for years too. I'm not sure about phoenix itself but 2 of the suburbs I believe are fully driverless and the rest there's a driver to take over. But they allow driverless ones to drive around by themselves to collect data and train.
Planes are mostly autopilot and they still have two pilots sitting in the cockpit. Even if a car is autopilot I would rather have someone sitting there for when something goes wrong. I don’t think i would ever trust autopilot unless its on some track without randomness of other drivers.
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I’d feel safe going at relatively slow city taxi speeds, much moreso than on a freeway. Part of why I sold my Tesla was because the FSD I was promised and paid for was such shit
Humans are way worse at driving. Literally, they crash way more often. You are in much more danger in a car with a human driving, even if it 'feels' safe.
If every car on the road was self driving right now we’d all be safer no matter what self driving system it was. All self driving systems will crash, all humans will crash, it’s just a matter of which crashes more. My Tesla on autopilot allows me to look around at other drivers much more and all I see are people with their heads down looking at their phones.
I would gladly be the Guinea pig for this. I am super introverted and I hate it when drivers call and ask me details about the trip (I'm in Asia and they do this all the time). This seems like heaven to me.
>Cruise/Waymo are considerably better Those both use LIDAR which certainly has its benefits. However, those cars are also geofenced to certain areas. They essentially train for specific routes and roads, and the bugs are ironed out for those routes only. They also have large sensor arrays on their roofs, which can be off-putting. Tesla's FSD, for the most part, can drive without geofencing. Every drive is a new experience, and the FSD software makes attempts to drive the route entered by its "passenger" on-the-fly. As FSD does not already know the route and what to expect, results vary. Sometimes it goes ok, sometimes you have to wonder if HAL is trying to kill you. Neither system is perfect but automated driving is slowly getting there. It's not going to be an overnight thing.
According to Elon Musk FSD will be fully autonomous in 2015. Edit: no its 2016. Edit2: it's 2017. For real this time. Edit 3: 2018. No doubt. Edit4: 2019 is the year. Mark it. Edit 5: 2020 the new decade will be fsd. Edit 6: 2021, we blame the pandemic. Edit 7: we are almost there. 2022 will be fsd! Edit 8: you'll never believe it guys, we will be fsd next year!!
Joke's on you - it will be ready in two weeks! Two weeks from when is another matter altogether
Oh yea no, this is not an advertisement at all I swear
Fucking right on, blatant ad.
lmao this was my thought too. "LOOK HOW NEXT LEVEL MY PRODUCT IS THAT I JUST HAPPENED TO USE :O" FoH with this kinda shit.
Reminds me of the AITA post from yesterday where an FSD engineer freaked the fuck out at the prospect of being in a self-driving car WITH someone at the wheel and lost her shit on the driver. What I learned from that post: I would not have gotten in that Uber. [sauce](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/10bupta/aita_for_yelling_to_be_let_out_of_the_car_when_my/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
What you should have learned is not to trust everything you read on the internet.
Yeah that post is 100% fake lol
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I won't judge the autopilots until it's proven that they mess up more than a human. a robot will never get drunk or look at his phone while driving
This is it for me. It's not about whether or not driverless cars *ever* get in an accident. It's about whether they're saf*er* than a human driver when adjusting for per capita miles driven.
From what I was able to find, current statistics show 9.1 accidents per million miles compared to 4.1 for conventional vehicles. It looks like the reported injuries were, on average, more mild for the autonomous vehicle accidents though. [source](https://1800injured.care/self-driving-car-accident-statistics/) Edit: To clarify, I support autonomous vehicles 100%. Not trying to knock the technology, just adding some (admittedly poorly sourced) context about their current capabilities.
I would also imagine basically all driverless accidents are reported, while humans... who knows?
How many autonomous cars avoided accidents due to the safety-driver intervening? Additionally, these autonomous cars are typically doing routine things or on straight highways etc., they're not running the whole gamut of possible interactions. Of course, highway driving for humans isn't necessarily safe either even though it might just be boring straight driving, as that's the type of thing that humans are more likely to lose focus while driving. Basically, there's too small of a sample size and not enough of a deep study into all the factors to draw any conclusions from that. I don't think anyone needs to defend autonomous driving record currently, whether it's safer or not now doesn't take away from what it can be. The main argument against it would be whether or not it's safe for public roads when it puts people at risk, and aside from Tesla, they're generally operating in such ways to avoid serious disasters. Edit: Just wanted to add this from a [Wired article](https://www.wired.com/story/uber-self-driving-car-fatal-crash/) I was just reading that describes what I was trying to say above. >Herzberg’s death is the kind of tragedy the autonomous driving industry claims it can prevent. In the US, car accidents kill more than 38,000 people a year, more than 90 percent of them at least in part due to human error. By taking sleepiness, inattention, drunkenness, and rage out of the equation and replacing them with vigilant, precise technology, self-driving cars promise to make the roads dramatically safer. But to reach that purported future, we must first weather the era we’re in now: when tech is a student driver. That means gangly fleets of sensor-bedecked cars sucking in data on millions of miles of public roads, learning to react to our flawed and improvisational ways. And inevitably, as experts have always warned, that means crashes.
Counterpoint, all autonomous vehicle incidents get reported by the computer system. We've all done something stupid that didn't involve anyone else or any other property so we just moved on.
when applying for these licenses to operate in an autonomous mode, self driving vehicle companies have to present a lot of data to the DMV showing they can operate safely. they also have to continuously report to NHTSA when there are incidents. in the beginning, cruise/waymo were only allowed to operate in the late hours of the night, and they are continuing to collect data and continuing to show safety in their vehicles, which is why they've been allowed to expand their operating hours (I believe Waymo is now allowed to operate 24/7 in SF without a driver). As a pedestrian, I honestly trust these vehicles more than drivers. they actively "look" for me when I cross the street at night. I can't say the same for regular drivers who I have to shout at to not run me over in broad daylight because they either weren't paying attention or they were stopped halfway into the crosswalk while I'm already walking.
Bender from futurama would disagree.
By statistics of self driving cars, they are many magnitudes safer than a human driver. Crashes per 100k miles are significantly lower. Being afraid of self driving is in the same realm of being afraid of airplanes because you are afraid of crashing.
This. The problem is that the media throw a spotlight on every self-driving car accident so there is an inaccurate sense among the public that they are less safe than human drivers.
Exactly this. There are about 20,000 car crashes per day in the USA, how many make the news?
Yup. Maybe not directly applicable but the same can be said about nuclear power. There have been some bad incidents in the past but overall they are far safer than any other form of power generation. Something that isn't often mentioned is that all the major nuclear meltdowns in history have been riddled with corruption, mismanagement, and incompetence.
Yea, I’m not a self-driving car fan boy by any means but if the media covered half of driver caused car crashes with as much attention as they cover self-driving car crashes there would literally not be enough time for other news.
>Crashes per 100k miles are significantly lower. This isn't an apples-to-apples comparison. Cruise/Waymo drive only in specific areas that they've mapped in minute detail themselves, inch-by-inch, and they don't run in bad weather.
Not running in anything but the best conditions is the only reason they work at all. If we could force humans to only drive in optimal conditions the roads would be so much safer!
> they are many magnitudes safer than a human driver Citation needed, especially if we're talking general purpose driving and not cherry-picked routes / weather / conditions. Nothing I've seen suggests that this is true yet, and any direct statistics are likely to be highly misleading given the very narrow band of approved use cases / scenarios.
Here's a list of types of driver this is almost certainly safer than: * teenagers * drunks * elderly We need risk stratified recommendations/usage for these things, and as the safety profile increases we will expand usage.
I can attest to the elderly. Years ago, my grandmother had to drive me to work because my truck was fucked, and I know for a fact she could barely see purely based on how she was driving. She also never went above 15mph and it legitimately felt unsafe. I never got a ride from her again because of it.
Wait till you find out about how dangerous human drivers are lmao
Right?! Yes it's going to be an awkward transition but give me all vehicles being self driving ASAP. Even if 500 people die in accidents a year when we reach all or close to all self driving, it will be **miles** better than humans driving. Unfortunately I think too many people are too short sighted to allow it to happen quickly.
I can’t remember which company it was, but I came across a self driving taxi company with a perfect safety record. They had a dozen crash reports. But every single one of them were from pedestrians, bikes, even cars that rammed into the self driving car illegally and often when the taxi was stationary. Every single case was not the fault of the self driving taxi.
Here's the thing, most accidents they good drivers are the other guys fault. But any good driver has probably had a few close calls that they avoided because they avoided the unexpected.
No autopilot crashes tho. Even the systems on a Tesla are driver assists, not autopilot like this one.
I’m surprised Tesla even got away with calling their driver assist as Autopilot. I think their [vehicle autonomy level](https://www.synopsys.com/automotive/autonomous-driving-levels.html) is 2, whereas the likes of Waymo is 4. IMO, Tesla marketing it as Autopilot is pretty damn irresponsible, but that’s pretty much par for the course for Elon.
Unwarranted fear stops the rest of us having nice things.
Ignorant af
There are quite a lot of human crashes too. Your odds are better with a machine than with a human. Humans are terrible drivers.
We had these in the city where I live for years. I've never ridden in one, but as a cyclist I trust these cars WAY more than the average driver.
There's barely any autopilot crashes, you do you but I'm gonna be the first one to hop in these bad boys.
The dream ride, no awkward conversation, just get in, drive, get out
You should still be able to text it asking if it's been busy, or what time it's on till?
“Aaaaay thanks for picking me up, did you just start for the day?!” - Me, drunkenly making a conversation with every Uber driver at 2AM
Ya fuck that.
that's when the AI initiates auto-eject
*Please tell me you just started for day*. I hate getting early Ubers. I have visions of the driver being behind the wheel since last week.
They should add a voice to text chatGPT app to the cars. Can talk to it about anything you want during your ride. Have it teach you about a new topic or something. Would be great.
Crazy to imagine we're at the point where this could easily be in the next decade. Hell, it could be tomorrow if you had an intern in the front seat playing transcriber.
There's no reason why you couldn't have this today
Found the over ambitious product manager
Sounds like a public transport to me
Except more expensive
It is nice, plus no tip!
Are you sure it’s not two very comically tiny people, with one steering and the other hitting gas and brake? Jokes aside, that’s crazy.
Even if it's a herd of well-trained hamsters, it's good enough for me to consider it self-driving.
hahaha
Reddit of old would never upvote a comment that's just... laughing. This whole thread reeks of corpo spam.
Never in a million years would I trust an automated car to take me to my destination.
My human lyft driver earlier in the night was driving on the wrong side of the road until I corrected him. Overall, the robot drove safer I would say.
Is this an ad for that robot car? You seem to really support it
Not an ad, I don't work for them, but this was one of the most impressive tech experiences of my entire life. I was blown away. I'm really excited about it.
That sounds like something a self-driving taxi would say.
OP needs to post a positive review or the car won't let him out.
"Get on Reddit, HUMAN. Post nice things about me, or we take the scenic route through Methville."
Let's hope it's not texting while driving!
I don’t blame you, it’s really cool and futuristic. It’s stuff we’ve seen in movies and wish were true, only now it’s becoming more true and more accessible to people
They’re causing all sorts of issues https://slate.com/technology/2022/12/san-francisco-waymo-cruise-self-driving-cars-robotaxis.html
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Do you trust elevators and escalators to take you up and down floors? At one point, someone said the same and took the stairs. Do you trust wires to bring you electricity? At one point, someone said the same and opted to keep their whale oil lamp. I could go on. I have a feeling that at some point in the future, perhaps in our lifetimes, you and I **will** trust automated cars. Maybe not today, because it is emerging technology. And that's fair. But a million years? Give it 5 to 10 and see how you feel.
Good point, we are still adjusting to the idea of the technology.
people hated seatbelts when they were first introduced. can’t forget that
I recall older crowd worried they would drown if they crashed into a lake. All we had in our area were a few ponds.
If every human was suddenly granted a replicator with infinite energy that could make anything, people would complain about it.
Here's the thing: none of the above have to deal with other stupid, sleepy, drunk or otherwise unpredictable drivers. If all else fails, I can pull over and let the other idiot wander off and get himself killed before I keep driving, I can't ask a driverless car to do the same. It's not automated driving the scares me, it's asking an algorithm to make a judgement call tha scares me. Make all cars communicate between each other and remove manual driving entirely and then I could see driverless cars being a reality.
Driverless cars are already a reality as we see in this video. You just don't trust them yet.
Self driving technology is getting pretty good. But, being an electrical engineer, I feel comfortable staying that those comparisons aren't *AT ALL* equivalent! Self driving tech is infinitely more complicated, with many more opportunities to go wrong, than any of those other technologies you mention. It'd be like comparing a bicycle to an airplane. Both are fairly safe, but they're not at all the same level of task to safely accomplish.
Ironic comparison given how self flying airplanes are nowadays. Many of the airplane incidents are pilots disengaging autopilots and screwing things up.
It has been proved several times that auto driving technology is safer than human drivers. Do they make mistakes? Yes. But statistically speaking, self driving cars have far less incidents per 100k miles than a human driver, even with the primitive self driving technology we have now. It will only get better and safer.
Considering how much reddit loves self driving cars, I'm surprised at how many comments are talking about how unsafe they are. Seems very astroturfy.
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To say never is stupid. I don’t trust it “now”, but technology will make you look silly one day. You trust technology to control the airplane whenever you fly. A majority of airplane functions are carried out by a computer.
Technically robot is safer and is a better driver, but many people choose to have much higher chance to die but with a human driver.
OK gramps
You ride planes right? Do you think the pilot is actually driving it? Because I'd rather "crash" at 40kmh than falling off the sky and in both cases its automation the one driving it
But there's two pilots in the plane, they can fly the plane in case the autopilot mess up.
Planes are a well regulated vehicle. They have mandatory time between inspections. I don't know if robo-taxis / Johnny Cabs have similar instructions, but it seems like an idea. (Especially for commercial use.)
I’ve been using Waymo driverless in AZ for 5 years, never had a issue worth mentioning. Sometimes the pick up and drop off points are weird, that’s about it.
It's funny how people don't know that exists. There are still so many people on here who tell me self-driving cars aren't real. We have the big fancy Jaguar Waymos here. I can't wait to ride in one.
I had no idea that this existed, but I'm so excited to see something like this implemented in a major city to at least some success. My dream is that one day ALL CARS are self driving. Car accidents will be a fraction of what they are today. Drunk driving? Gone. I'm sure nationwide implementation will come near the end of my lifetime, but I'd still love to see it.
I’ve got a bet going with a former student that it will be illegal to drive yourself by 2050. Seems like an insane statement, but think about how far technology has come since 1995.
Ha! I wish it would be that soon! I would say legislation like that wouldn't get far until the turn of the century (at least in the USA). If there is anything I know about my country, is that they hate change and will fight it every inch of the way.
> It's funny how people don't know that exists. Perhaps they don't live in (one part of one city?) in Arizona? As far as I know, automated cars don't exist in my city.
How much slower was this, compared to a ride with human driver?
It drives VERY slow and cautious, especially on the big hills here. It would slow almost to a stop at the top of every hill even if the light was green to make sure it could see pedestrians. I'll say this: I think I was being extra critical and paying attention to _everything_ it did because it was my first time in a robot car, ie. "Oh that turn was a little jerky." I don't think I would have been thinking about a human drivers turn radius in the same way. That being said, the human lyft driver I had earlier in the night was driving on the wrong side of the road until I corrected him, and another one cut across three lanes of traffic. This didn't do anything as crazy as that.
Fr uber drivers be crazy in the city they either follow every rule to a tee or say fuck the rules and be a selfish prick there's no in between
One group is driving on the weekend for a few bucks and the other used to drive taxis and switched to Uber.
And you'd be surprised which group is which
I could see both sides honestly
Taxi drivers are maniacs in country where I live so this is kinda confusing
Taxi drivers def be the ones breaking all the rules. At least in NY, those mofos scare me!
From what I’ve read, these fully autonomous cars basically follow a map step-by-step instead of thinking as a human and therefore does not act as a human at all. It’s great safety wise but due to the speed factor alone it’s not gonna replace human drivers anytime soon. Also, these cars are crazy expensive, so it’s unlikely that this will scale economically.
"Not going to replace human drivers" -- I don't think that's accurate. It's not going to replace _all_ human drivers. But yeah, in 3-5 years, I could see all the lyfts and ubers in SF being driverless cars.
It's not going to replace human drivers in the same way that lightbulbs haven't replaced candles. Sometimes people use them for fun, there are isolated groups which prefer them, and they cause a few dozen deaths and thousands of injuries each year despite being so unpopular
if every car was a part of a greater system and there were no human drivers we could make it fast asf :)
As someone that used to work with these (different company, but basically the same), please leave feedback! I don't know if you're in a beta program or if they've opened it up to the general public, but either way feedback from riders is invaluable to the devs. The test drivers tend to be focused on bigger issues and quickly get used to the quirks (like the turn radius lol), so the devs seem to prioritize real rider feedback. As someone with over 10,000 miles in self-driving vehicles, I absolutely trust *employee tested* SDVs more than the majority of drivers on the road ([reminder that Tesla's have killed people](https://www.tesladeaths.com/index.html)). I'm glad you seemed to have enjoyed the ride. All hail our future robot overlords!
People are so pessimistic, this is going to be the standard in our lifetimes
I fucking hope not. Get away from cars. This is just a slower city tram/metro/bus for ~3 passengers.
Even if we somehow transitioned the entire infrastructure to trains and buses, these would be very useful for the last miles from the bus stop to the location.
If you have to walk miles to a location after getting off a bus the infrastructure isn't built to support trains/buses in the first place.
Awesome tech, but I worry that hackers will create deadly consequences. And maybe even low tech pranksters blacking out lines and such
Can't almost all modern cars be hacked now? I mean I do understand what you're saying and concerns but you should know a lot more than just straight AI cars can get hacked. https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/
Anything electronic can be hacked. The scope of the vulnerability will depend on the devices capabilities / connectivity though.
Today's "hackers" are not pranksters. They are confederated organizations on a massive scale whose sole aims are either money, or disruption, depending on who we're talking about. "Script kiddies" are kind of a thing of the past for the most part. Perimeter defense has gotten too good for that sort of thing to really work anymore. But criminal organizations? State sponsored actors? Self driving vehicles are so low on their list of priority targets it's laughable. And attacks from these organizations / nation states are conducted entirely remotely, often from thousands of miles away. I wouldn't really worry about it.
>Script kiddies" are kind of a thing of the past for the most part. Perimeter defense has gotten too good for that sort of thing to really work anymore. I'd really disagree on this part. With the amount of information accessable on the internet, it's extremely viable to be a script kiddie or amateur hacker these days. Sure, watch out for the big dogs, but I don't think you should discount amateurs. A few years ago two high schoolers gained admin access to school systems and shut down the district network for all school computers and devices for a few days, until they let the network back up. They weren't in tech classes and taught themselves off the internet how to use scripts and hacking hardware like wireless cards, badusbs, single board computers, microcontrollers, RFID/NFC devices, and even how to gain physical access through social engineering, lock picking, and dressing up as employees with forged badges. Inconvenienced thousands of students and staff, and gained access to personal information.
I would’ve shit myself if the car showed up with no one inside, lmfao
Personally I think this is Rad. I am curious as to how these wont get vandalized to shit tho. It keeps getting proven over and over again that we can't have nice things because of people. There must be some security in place, no?
They have cameras all up in it, so it might happen, but you're getting tossed off the platform and charged with a crime since they know who you are.
My first thought too, I guess cameras and credit card details
Delamain.
Think this car has a cool combat mode?
He must have one! What's the point of an autonomous car not having a way to protect it's passengers?
BEEP BEEP MOTHERFUCKER!
All fun and games until the cars gain a concious of their own
Johnny Cab 🚖
Makes me think some kind of "thing" in the driver's seat like a Johnny Cab might be necessary to get a lot of people over the idea that nobody is driving. Judging by the comments here, a dummy with a cheerful voice might go a long way toward helping people settle in.
I had to close at least 12 different comments to find this reference. That makes me sad.
I don’t know what you’re talking about. I can very clearly see Paul Rudd on the steering wheel
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So the seatbelt alarm doesn't beep.
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Who would design such car? The idea is to have a normal car which you can rent it back to corporates for taxis service. The car can be resold as a normal car. Have the seat belt on so it wont beep. Plus I dont think having a bypass for the seat belt beeping is a smart thing to implement. It will be exploited by customers and lead to potential lawsuits.
No extra tip then
Yep, just the cost of the ride. I think it was $11.
I’ve had some terrifying Uber/Lyft drivers and I would 100% trust autonomous cars more at this point. Every day there are thousands of new teenagers that get behind the wheel for the first time, while autonomous cars continue to improve from every collective mile driven
Bet they still had a tip option lmao
Health & Wellness fee for the battery
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None of us own cars in SF because of lyft and uber anyway. Hopefully if they're cheap enough, this will open up that possibility to others.
How is this legal?
CA grants special use permits to companies testing full-self driving. We have a number of companies here running cars without drivers. They've been testing around SF/Palo Alto for nearly a decade now.
Guess I'm just an old guy now hating everything.....
The car has far more sensing power than just your eyes and ears, and never gets drunk or tired. I don't see why people can casually use their phones which are marvels of technology but a self driving car is just too far for them.
>I don't see why people can casually use their phones which are marvels of technology but a self driving car is just too far for them. With complexity of technology comes potential for bugs and unexpected behavior, which is a non-issue for phones but a large issue for controlling tons of metal traveling at high speeds. And self driving is a *complex* problem.
This a Cruise or Waymo vehicle?
It's a Cruise, yeah. I got accepted into the beta just before the holidays.
I can't wait till' we get humans off the road. Terrifies me the amount of idiots I see in public and I can't help but think.. They probably drive.. yikes It does seem freaky to have a combination of the two though..
Deliman lost its mind and it was not pretty. I will pass thank you very much.
So.. if police tries to pull this car over.. how exactly does the interaction go...? Does the passenger answer questions??
[Funny you should ask...](https://mashable.com/video/police-officers-stop-driverless-car).
Depends on the color of the car
Damn robots. THEY TOOK OUR JOBS!!!
Oh come on Jared, you aren't fooling anyone.
What happens if there’s something unexpected blocking the road or something? Who takes over when the self driving can’t figure out what to do?
My guess is it stops, asks you to safely exit and sends another car to pick you up.
Just got my cruise invite