Even After $100 Billion, Self-Driving Cars Are Going Nowhere

Lmao. All of you are so dumb. You guys don’t know anything. Why don’t you all just shut up? 

Now how do I start a new thread? I got things on my mind.  It’s been like 6 years and i don’t know where to start.  

Where is the “other stuff” section?

Hope you're well old friend.

Hope you're well old friend.

Maybe it's best to just let such posts of "peanut gallery" sniping be, as unworthy of comment.

Maybe it's best to just let such posts of "peanut gallery" sniping be, as unworthy of comment.

This is just about the first instance of a nonsensical post on PSQ. They used to plague Skeptiko for a while. I wish one of our moderators would ban this guy. I mean if someone joins just about any forum, his first post is nonsense, then I think he should be booted out.

David

Maybe it's best to just let such posts of "peanut gallery" sniping be, as unworthy of comment.

Perhaps...admittedly I have a soft spot for this singular Trickster though I accept making a special exception for a singular person rules-[w]ise is not possible.

Cruise driverless rideshares operating in Houston under investigation

Michael Murney

In a Tuesday filing, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it has launched a probe into possible safety defects for about 600 driverless cars operated by the General Motors subsidiary Cruise, per the Wall Street Journal. According to the Journal, reports show that Cruise vehicles might be foregoing appropriate caution around crosswalks and roadways frequented by pedestrians.  The Journal reported Tuesday that the NHTSA is aware of four separate incidents including two that caused injuries, and that the agency is trying to determine the scope of the possible issue.

Cruise driverless rideshares operating in Houston under investigation

Michael Murney

Driverless car complaints in Austin describe collisions, near misses and confusion

Christopher Adams

Near misses were the most common complaint, with 15 in total. One of those, submitted by AFD on July 8, said a driverless car almost cut off an EMS unit “and came very close to colliding with the ambulance twice.” Other complaints said the cars have come close to hitting pedestrians in crosswalks.

Cruise Stopping Its Driverless Taxi Service Reveals What Self-Driving Cars Need To Focus On

Jason Torchinsky

Last night, Cruise issued a statement on ex-Twitter-now-X that stated the company intends to “proactively pause driverless operations across all of our fleets while we take time to examine our processes, systems, and tools and reflect on how we can better operate in a way that will earn public trust.” While apparently not “related to any new on-road incidents,” the decision is happening right after Cruise lost its operation license in California over an incident where one of its robotaxis dragged an injured woman underneath itself for 20 feet. Cruise will still have operations and development with a human safety driver in the driver’s seat, ready to take over. I think what is important here is something that’s maybe not so obvious. If you look at Cruise’s most recent incidents, something becomes apparent: One of the biggest hurdles of automated vehicles isn’t the obvious problem of solving the mechanical tasks of driving, but rather how to emulate the more blurry and vague general sense of surroundings that humans innately have.

Britain says makers, not car owners liable for self-driving crashes

Alistair Smout & Nick Carey

The government said the bill would protect users and promote safety in the AV industry.

"While the vehicle is driving itself, a company rather than an individual will be responsible for the way it drives," the government said.

Self-driving industry experts have said national regulatory frameworks and establishing legal liability are crucial to winning public acceptance of autonomous vehicles and for insurers to provide coverage.

The bill will establish processes to investigate incidents and improve the safety framework, and will also set the threshold for what is classified as a self-driving car.

In the U.S. market, where states have led the way in testing self-driving cars, California regulators last month ordered General Motors' (GM.N) driverless car unit Cruise to remove its vehicles from state roads, saying it had misrepresented the technology's safety.

Paul Newman, founder of Oxford-based AV software firm Oxa, which has raised about $225 million from investors, said the UK's proposed framework would unequivocally avoid a repeat of Cruise's situation in Britain because it clearly delineates responsibilities.

"There's an inevitability to this technology," he said. "This a fantastic opportunity to get out in front and... create frameworks to build public trust."

I think using machine "learning" means there is no genuine way to ensure safety, so unless Oxa is doing something radically different my guess is the same thing that happened to Cruise will happen to them.

AFAICTell when trying to employ machine "learning" for driving you can't really make this work without having partially working AI on public roads, and that is basically corporations putting the public at risk to line their own pockets. Seems pretty immoral to me?

The False Promise of Driverless Cars

Adrienne Westenfeld

Joanne McNeil, the author of the thrilling new satire Wrong Way, discusses the hollow promises and ethical quagmires at the heart of the industry.

I made it a point to visit Phoenix, where so many of the Waymos are available as robotaxi ride services. The week I got there, it rained every day. It didn't rain very much from my Northeasterner perspective—it was just a drizzle, but it was enough that every single Waymo I booked had a human driver in the driver's seat, steering the car and working the pedals. To someone walking down the street in Phoenix, they would recognize this Waymo as a self-driving car, but in fact, an actual human was behind the wheel. Unless someone was in the car, as I was, they wouldn't know that this car was being driven by a human—they would think it's just a safety driver there to observe, or they might not see the driver at all. This telegraphs an expectation to the rest of the road that these companies have solved the problem of driving through the rain when they absolutely have not.

Just this past week, there was a huge story in the New York Times about Cruise, showing how reliant these vehicles are on their remote operator workforce. What they're doing is still not fully public, but my understanding is that they can intervene remotely. There's enormous inefficiency and risk involved there. Would anyone feel safer in AV technology on the road, knowing how often someone is, in fact, interacting and perhaps intervening? Does that make anyone feel safe? I certainly don't; I felt safe with the driver in a car with me, but not with someone in a call center.

There are so many ways that this technology could be implemented in a beneficial way. Coming to California from New England, it's been a change to drive on these streets, which are enormous. Trying to take a left turn on a quiet street across six lanes of traffic... I look left, I look right, then I want to look left again, and I still don't feel safe. That's when I'd love to have technological assistance, with the technology assisting me, as opposed to the car driving itself. Unfortunately, that's a sensible technology that isn't sexy to investors, which is why we end up with these bizarre and usually non-functional technologies that don't deliver on their promises.

Cruise Knew Its Self-Driving Cars Had Problems Recognizing Children — and Kept Them on the Streets

Sam Biddle

In an internal address on Slack to his employees about the suspension, Vogt stuck to his message: “Safety is at the core of everything we do here at Cruise.” Days later, the company said it would voluntarily pause fully driverless rides in Phoenix and Austin, meaning its fleet will be operating only with human supervision: a flesh-and-blood backup to the artificial intelligence.

Even before its public relations crisis of recent weeks, though, previously unreported internal materials such as chat logs show Cruise has known internally about two pressing safety issues: Driverless Cruise cars struggled to detect large holes in the road and have so much trouble recognizing children in certain scenarios that they risked hitting them. Yet, until it came under fire this month, Cruise kept its fleet of driverless taxis active, maintaining its regular reassurances of superhuman safety.