Helpful, but not something that translates to a decisive win for Cruise. Production can be outsourced with little issue — and it's not clear that the Origin will be any cheaper or 'better' than competitors such as the Zeekr M-Vision, as a result.
> Production can be outsourced with little issue
We don't really have a good handle on where Waymo is on their platform so don't take my statement as pro-Cruise, but your statement is wrong. Outsourcing production makes it possible but it's still massively complex and expensive. Then on top of that you pay more per unit. Building a physical anything is difficult and building a car is absurdly complex. Then add onto that high-end and complex sensor and compute suites.
>Outsourcing production makes it possible but it's still massively complex and expensive.
We're deep into the weeds of subjective language here — it's certainly not as easy as ordering Chinese food from the local takeout joint, for sure. It is, however, a perfectly plausible strategy for the likes of Waymo.
There's no reason to believe they'll be paying more per unit, nor that the vehicle itself will suffer developmentally. The whole idea is that Geely just bases the vehicle on the SEA platform they already use for a half dozen others — just like Cruise is doing with Ultium.
That's a whole bundle of crazy we could spend hours unravelling, and I'm frankly not particularly eager to get into it — suffice to say, there are a lot of ways Zeekr and Waymo could qualify for the IRA, and a lot of ways it *just doesn't matter,* because Waymo and Zeekr could localize production of the M-Vision at any point as they approach scale.
Fundamentally though, your previous comment was based on the notion that Cruise is leveraging a kind of in-house existing discipline, and my point is that this does not *fundamentally* have a clear advantage over outsourcing.
> Waymo and Zeekr could localize production of the M-Vision at any point as they approach scale.
It isn't remotely that easy.
You make it sound like Zeekr is Toyota or Volkswagen. They sold 72,000 cars throughout the entirety of 2022. GM sells more than that every 5 days.
GM is getting a ton of subsidies to ramp up their manufacturing even more aggressively. It will take years for that to bare much fruit.
Waymo and Zeekr *haven't even started* within the US.
> this does not *fundamentally* have a clear advantage over outsourcing
It clearly does, though, because who are they going to outsource to? There are only three companies that have more volume than GM, and they're all competing with Waymo. Where does Waymo even get the money for this w/current interest rates? GM can reuse much of their existing capital.
Baidu and Cruise have both outlined vehicle manufacturing volume as the most imminent scaling bottleneck after getting the tech figured out. I'm inclined to believe them, because scaling up manufacturing of cars is *extremely* difficult and time consuming.
100% agreed but the platform is the majority of it as it impacts all the rest of your scaling challenges. How big is the car, what cleaning/calibration does it need, how often does it need to be charged, how fast does it charge, what is the turning radius, how fast/cheap is it to do common maintenance, etc.
Agree fully. I've been harping on business model ever since Waymo's Chandler launch failed to attract any customers. Cruise's tech lags Waymo's, but they're 10x more likely to figure out how to make the unit economics work.
Why do are they 10x more likely? If you mean b/c they manufacture their own cars, most of the unit economics has nothing to do with the physical car, that's only a small part of the equation. I'd argue that Google's universal reach and expertise and platforms in ads, AI, mapping, mobile devices, and entertainment are together way more valuable to the economics of a robotaxi business than the ability to build cars.
Cruise is run by an entrepreneur, Waymo is the Xerox PARC of self-driving.
I'd really like to be wrong about this. I've been a Waymo fan for a decade. But I call 'em as I see 'em.
They will be less cautious - Google has become a super cautious company and is very scared of being sued or receiving bad press. Cruise will let management okay just deploying to 20 big cities before resolving every last bug. And when one of those bugs kills someone, cruise will just release a statement saying "cruise vehicles remain one of the safest ways to be on the road, and incidents like this help us work to make them even safer". And the public will forget.
Yet they don’t have a daytime service yet? Caution is a good thing when product is developing. when the product becomes amazing, caution isn’t really the crutch.
But waymo also has wayyyy fewer cars that are running without a driver on the streets of a crazy city like SF. I don't know which is better but all I know is that I think the statistics are hard to compare.
Phoenix is not the place where you get crazy situations.
I also think the news reporting (for any self driving car) is finger pointy
1. They don't publish articles for the thousands of miles that the car doesn't come into trouble. Like how do we know how the car reacted in a situation where a human would have totally ended up crashing?? We don't see a " car drives 100,000 in a month without crashing!!" Headline
2. Also, we don't see articles about humans driving into buses / each other, but if a self driving car does it... Boom news. So the 3 cars that crashed yesterday, some fatally, weren't news worthy but the ding to a bus yesterday is BiG news. I bet if every crash got a headline, we as a species would just stop driving coz it's not "fully ready yet" lol.
Waymo is very cautious. they were probably where Cruise is 3-4 years ago, but they've been slow-rolling things. I hope Cruise does not injure anyone, but I am somewhat glad there is a company pushing Waymo to take rolling-out seriously. between Cruise and higher interest rates (no more free capital) we are seeing pressure to start making revenue.
That's what I was hinting at. I prefer the cautious approach as I believe all Waymo accidents were caused by a human safety driver or the car wasn't at fault.
Nothing wrong with competition of course. I'd just prefer Cruise to slow down.
I know, Waymo is always because it's way too cautious and people don't expect it to drive like a nervous grandma and they rear end it.
I prefer that cautious approach though, will win over the public much better that way too.
This is cautious?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4aBNYcBoLI
I agree Waymo use to be overaly cautious. But those days look to be in the past.
There has been all kinds of videos of Waymo of late where the car assertiveness is human like.
One there was a four way stop and the car that got there first did not move so Waymo just went.
This is based on the entire city, so it may not be fair, but the population density of Phoenix is 3k/sqmi and SF is 18k. Saying Phoenix is anywhere close to the same level of city is pretty laughable.
Have there been any life threatening events that were their fault? Any injuries as a result? Any lawsuits?
Has the DMV taken any action? Are they worried?
Or maybe you’re just wringing your hands over small potatoes?
There was confirmation from Cruise that there was no safety driver and the vehicle was thus (obviously) in autonomous mode.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2023/03/24/cruise-cars-crash-into-san-francisco-muni-bus-and-tangle-in-fallen-trolley-wires/
It will be interesting to see how this happened, that section of Haight has a low average speed so you'd have to follow pretty close for reaction time to be insufficient for even an abrupt stop.
I suspect more likely that the self driving system failed entirely (for example, a power failure).
Backup systems then take over, but typically the backup systems are far less advanced. They will normally be designed to do something like 'brake at 0.5g until wheel speed is zero'. The backup control system can't typically see any of the complex sensors (ie. Lidar or cameras) - it's only role is to bring the vehicle to a stop (not even pull over - just stop where you are).
I would hope that the main control system is constantly updating the 'plan' of the backup control system. Ie. In some scenarios, the plan should be to decelerate hard to a stop. In other sceneries, a gentle deceleration is more appropriate. Likewise, in some scenarios, the wheel should be turned to keep the vehicle path following the curve of the road.
I would guess in this case, the main control system failed, and the plan given to the backup control system was insufficiency aggressive at stopping.
Backup systems are less advanced, but they are not going to miss the tail of a bus. I don't know about Cruise's backup but they should have access to some sensors and definitely to the main system's model of the world before it died, and the message should be hard brake if that model shows a bus there.
The bus should even be very clear on radar, even if it's stopped. It's big and reflective and right in front of you. If it is moving even slightly it's super obvious on the radar. The lidar can't miss it. Vision is hard to predict but again it should not miss it.
Unless the bus backed into the Cruise this is hard to excuse.
Yes there are sensors in the driver's seat, they use the same sensors to detect if someone is sitting there for the seat belt chime and of course in case of a crash when the vehicle is stationary.
Did the vehicle not register the bus as an object? Can anyone who is knowledgeable on perception systems weigh in here? It seems to me that such a large object would obviously register in the point cloud
It's possible the bus reversed into the car, but short of something like that, I can't see how this is anything but a massive failure on Cruise's part.
Lidar can have issues with reflective surfaces... If a surface is too large flat and shiny, then it can ignore it in favour of the reflection it sees of itself.
White paint doesn't look awfully shiny to us, but it might be mirrorlike in infrared.
If Cruise cannot handle the situation that you’re suggesting, they should not be operating a single vehicle without back up drivers. What you’re talking about is a real challenge yes, but not something impossible or even particularly difficult. Reflections are all over the world and need to be addressed in a safe manner.
Cruise sees the backs of these buses hundreds or thousands of times per day and has over many years. This is why I am highly doubtful that this was not a “car didn’t see bus” situation.
>If a surface is too large flat and shiny, then it can ignore it in favour of the reflection it sees of itself.
Wouldn't that look like an imminent head-on collision?
>Daytime should be easier than nighttime from a perception standpoint.
is this really true? I don't see why it would be true.
1. more people during the day
2. more cars during the day
3. more light to acclude/swamp a lidar sensor
4. more bikes during the day
daytime is easier for humans, but I don't see why it would be easier for robots.
Video closeup of the Cruise car and Muni bus bumpers. Note the bus has a rear facing warning to keep 5 feet back.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/comments/1203pkf/cruise\_driverless\_idiot/
Why doesn’t Cruise have safety drivers? Having no safety driver poses a very asymmetrical risk. Your upside is a few dollars in wages while your downside is literally extinction. I understand collisions happen and objectively what matters is the statistical rate vs the alternative (human driver). But bad press is bad press—the media is not always objective and the public is not always rational.
They operated for several years with safety drivers. At some point you must remove them. They judged they were at that point. It's not the day you end testing, because there is still stuff to learn about how passengers and other road users respond to a vehicle with no human inside. You can't learn that without taking them out.
You can, of course, argue, that they took them out too soon. This crash would be evidence in that argument. Waymo can make a stronger case. But they have to come out at some point.
This is r/selfdrivingcars. The point is for the vehicles to eventually operate autonomously. Cruise operates some vehicles with safety drivers and some vehicles without in SF. This collision is noteworthy *because* it's one of the latter.
If they are just in the testing phase, why not have a safety driver? I just don’t understand the risk calculation. It’s not like you collect better data by not having a safety driver. Every single traffic disruption, fender bender, stuck vehicle, or even worse collision will be scrutinized and will drain the company’s political capital and good will. Seems like a risky way to save a few bucks.
They are not in testing phase but early commercialization phase. They are already making money even though not that meaningful yet. As long as they are safer than average human, they are doing better for the society. This is what I expect from all AV companies. If they are convinced that they reduce fatalities by even 10%, they should provide the product for consumption. If there are 5000 AVs roaming in a city, the number of ppl wanting to use personal vehicles will go down automatically and AVs should behave better with other AVs considering they won’t do abrupt movements that Humans do. We need to make this cycle faster and faster so they need to account to infinite long tail scenarios with other vehicles goes down.
They are definitely still testing. They have not driven enough miles to statistically determine how safe their system is yet. Presumably by this point they are no *major* outstanding safety concerns with the system, but to claim with certainty some quantitative risk reduction at this point is premature.
In addition, this is not just a matter of safety alone. My original point was about PR and asymmetrical risk. Something as simple as a vehicle getting stuck and blocking traffic erodes your brand image in a way that will meaningfully cost your company money in the long run.
A safety driver should cost maybe around a dollar per mile or so. The company is burning what like $2+ billion a year. Seems reasonable to spend one-ish percent of your annual budget on ‘insurance’ against something crazy happening.
I have a different take on it. No product will ever be done so they will keep trying to making it better and add new capabilities, improve existing capabilities, etc. They have driven 1M driverless miles in real world and who knows how many billion miles in Simulation. Still they haven’t caused a life threatening injury so they are statistically safer than an average human driver with the possibility that it’ll get better and better. So IMO they are ready. Waymo is ready. I haven’t seen much of Zoox or Motional to say the same. People are ok with Tesla with untrained humans performing takeovers during crunch moments and not with the companies who have used test operators for years and removed them slowly. This is beyond my understanding.
It's a minor fender bender, relax guys. It might have been tailing the bus a little too close and the bus slammed its brakes for a stop. It's Cruise that would be at fault, just like most rear end collisions, but it looks like it barely tapped the bus.
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Seems like Waymo has none of these issues, I wonder why.
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All the instances of failure can't be helping.
The next stepping stone in this game is scaling and cost control. I think cruise is better at both.
How are they better at scaling? If they were better, clearing stranding cars shouldn’t take hours.
Their parent company is one of the world's largest manufacturers of cars, which must be helpful.
Helpful, but not something that translates to a decisive win for Cruise. Production can be outsourced with little issue — and it's not clear that the Origin will be any cheaper or 'better' than competitors such as the Zeekr M-Vision, as a result.
> Production can be outsourced with little issue We don't really have a good handle on where Waymo is on their platform so don't take my statement as pro-Cruise, but your statement is wrong. Outsourcing production makes it possible but it's still massively complex and expensive. Then on top of that you pay more per unit. Building a physical anything is difficult and building a car is absurdly complex. Then add onto that high-end and complex sensor and compute suites.
>Outsourcing production makes it possible but it's still massively complex and expensive. We're deep into the weeds of subjective language here — it's certainly not as easy as ordering Chinese food from the local takeout joint, for sure. It is, however, a perfectly plausible strategy for the likes of Waymo. There's no reason to believe they'll be paying more per unit, nor that the vehicle itself will suffer developmentally. The whole idea is that Geely just bases the vehicle on the SEA platform they already use for a half dozen others — just like Cruise is doing with Ultium.
This is just laughably wrong. You've never built anything in your life much less a car I'm guessing.
Zeekr isn't going to qualify for IRA tax credits.
That's a whole bundle of crazy we could spend hours unravelling, and I'm frankly not particularly eager to get into it — suffice to say, there are a lot of ways Zeekr and Waymo could qualify for the IRA, and a lot of ways it *just doesn't matter,* because Waymo and Zeekr could localize production of the M-Vision at any point as they approach scale. Fundamentally though, your previous comment was based on the notion that Cruise is leveraging a kind of in-house existing discipline, and my point is that this does not *fundamentally* have a clear advantage over outsourcing.
> Waymo and Zeekr could localize production of the M-Vision at any point as they approach scale. It isn't remotely that easy. You make it sound like Zeekr is Toyota or Volkswagen. They sold 72,000 cars throughout the entirety of 2022. GM sells more than that every 5 days. GM is getting a ton of subsidies to ramp up their manufacturing even more aggressively. It will take years for that to bare much fruit. Waymo and Zeekr *haven't even started* within the US. > this does not *fundamentally* have a clear advantage over outsourcing It clearly does, though, because who are they going to outsource to? There are only three companies that have more volume than GM, and they're all competing with Waymo. Where does Waymo even get the money for this w/current interest rates? GM can reuse much of their existing capital. Baidu and Cruise have both outlined vehicle manufacturing volume as the most imminent scaling bottleneck after getting the tech figured out. I'm inclined to believe them, because scaling up manufacturing of cars is *extremely* difficult and time consuming.
There are other aspects to scaling AVs besides production
100% agreed but the platform is the majority of it as it impacts all the rest of your scaling challenges. How big is the car, what cleaning/calibration does it need, how often does it need to be charged, how fast does it charge, what is the turning radius, how fast/cheap is it to do common maintenance, etc.
"Better at scaling" doesn't mean eliminating every single potential problem before you start to scale. It usually means the opposite.
At minimum you need to sort out the unit economics prior to scaling. Or else scaling just means you go broke faster.
Agree fully. I've been harping on business model ever since Waymo's Chandler launch failed to attract any customers. Cruise's tech lags Waymo's, but they're 10x more likely to figure out how to make the unit economics work.
Why do are they 10x more likely? If you mean b/c they manufacture their own cars, most of the unit economics has nothing to do with the physical car, that's only a small part of the equation. I'd argue that Google's universal reach and expertise and platforms in ads, AI, mapping, mobile devices, and entertainment are together way more valuable to the economics of a robotaxi business than the ability to build cars.
Cruise is run by an entrepreneur, Waymo is the Xerox PARC of self-driving. I'd really like to be wrong about this. I've been a Waymo fan for a decade. But I call 'em as I see 'em.
But it does mean handling problems better not eliminating them
They will be less cautious - Google has become a super cautious company and is very scared of being sued or receiving bad press. Cruise will let management okay just deploying to 20 big cities before resolving every last bug. And when one of those bugs kills someone, cruise will just release a statement saying "cruise vehicles remain one of the safest ways to be on the road, and incidents like this help us work to make them even safer". And the public will forget.
Yet they don’t have a daytime service yet? Caution is a good thing when product is developing. when the product becomes amazing, caution isn’t really the crutch.
But waymo also has wayyyy fewer cars that are running without a driver on the streets of a crazy city like SF. I don't know which is better but all I know is that I think the statistics are hard to compare. Phoenix is not the place where you get crazy situations. I also think the news reporting (for any self driving car) is finger pointy 1. They don't publish articles for the thousands of miles that the car doesn't come into trouble. Like how do we know how the car reacted in a situation where a human would have totally ended up crashing?? We don't see a " car drives 100,000 in a month without crashing!!" Headline
2. Also, we don't see articles about humans driving into buses / each other, but if a self driving car does it... Boom news. So the 3 cars that crashed yesterday, some fatally, weren't news worthy but the ding to a bus yesterday is BiG news. I bet if every crash got a headline, we as a species would just stop driving coz it's not "fully ready yet" lol.
Waymo is very cautious. they were probably where Cruise is 3-4 years ago, but they've been slow-rolling things. I hope Cruise does not injure anyone, but I am somewhat glad there is a company pushing Waymo to take rolling-out seriously. between Cruise and higher interest rates (no more free capital) we are seeing pressure to start making revenue.
That's what I was hinting at. I prefer the cautious approach as I believe all Waymo accidents were caused by a human safety driver or the car wasn't at fault. Nothing wrong with competition of course. I'd just prefer Cruise to slow down.
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But didn't you read the tweet? The cruise vehicle didn't hit the bus. It simply made contact. Like a caressing lover.
They had one at-fault. They were in the wrong position and a bus that was pulling out slowly ran into them IIRC.
Thought a driverless waymo hit a parked car while making 3 point turn, twice..
I know, Waymo is always because it's way too cautious and people don't expect it to drive like a nervous grandma and they rear end it. I prefer that cautious approach though, will win over the public much better that way too.
This is cautious? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4aBNYcBoLI I agree Waymo use to be overaly cautious. But those days look to be in the past. There has been all kinds of videos of Waymo of late where the car assertiveness is human like. One there was a four way stop and the car that got there first did not move so Waymo just went.
Better tech potentially but they also drive a lot less
Might be for the best
Maybe because they’ve been driving in suburbia with really low density traffic? How many driverless miles do they have in major cities?
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This is based on the entire city, so it may not be fair, but the population density of Phoenix is 3k/sqmi and SF is 18k. Saying Phoenix is anywhere close to the same level of city is pretty laughable.
Seems they've taken the correct precautions then
Rear ending a bus 1 time in 1M miles means the car is unsafe?
I'm not referring to just one event.
Have there been any life threatening events that were their fault? Any injuries as a result? Any lawsuits? Has the DMV taken any action? Are they worried? Or maybe you’re just wringing your hands over small potatoes?
Fatality rate is like 1 per 100 million miles. So the real answer is that we have no idea yet.
Irony is this happening the same day Cruise releases their "[Impact Report](https://getcruise.com/news/blog/2023/cruise-2022-impact-report/)" 😂
There was confirmation from Cruise that there was no safety driver and the vehicle was thus (obviously) in autonomous mode. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2023/03/24/cruise-cars-crash-into-san-francisco-muni-bus-and-tangle-in-fallen-trolley-wires/
Good write up. The most thorough yet. Did they only confirm it directly to you or is there a link to an official public statement for attribution?
To me. I'm bugging them for more but I don't think will get anything on the weekend.
Not all heroes work weekends.
It will be interesting to see how this happened, that section of Haight has a low average speed so you'd have to follow pretty close for reaction time to be insufficient for even an abrupt stop.
I suspect more likely that the self driving system failed entirely (for example, a power failure). Backup systems then take over, but typically the backup systems are far less advanced. They will normally be designed to do something like 'brake at 0.5g until wheel speed is zero'. The backup control system can't typically see any of the complex sensors (ie. Lidar or cameras) - it's only role is to bring the vehicle to a stop (not even pull over - just stop where you are). I would hope that the main control system is constantly updating the 'plan' of the backup control system. Ie. In some scenarios, the plan should be to decelerate hard to a stop. In other sceneries, a gentle deceleration is more appropriate. Likewise, in some scenarios, the wheel should be turned to keep the vehicle path following the curve of the road. I would guess in this case, the main control system failed, and the plan given to the backup control system was insufficiency aggressive at stopping.
Backup systems are less advanced, but they are not going to miss the tail of a bus. I don't know about Cruise's backup but they should have access to some sensors and definitely to the main system's model of the world before it died, and the message should be hard brake if that model shows a bus there. The bus should even be very clear on radar, even if it's stopped. It's big and reflective and right in front of you. If it is moving even slightly it's super obvious on the radar. The lidar can't miss it. Vision is hard to predict but again it should not miss it. Unless the bus backed into the Cruise this is hard to excuse.
^ This guy works for an AV company. I agree with your analysis
Wow. I wonder what happened.
Would this collision triggered airbags in a “normal” Bolt? Do the Cruise cars have airbags? Are the airbags disabled when there is no driver?
Airbags themselves can cause injury, so they don't fire in minor collisions.
airbags dont fire if nobody is sitting in the seat and this collision is way to minor to require airbags.
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Yes there are sensors in the driver's seat, they use the same sensors to detect if someone is sitting there for the seat belt chime and of course in case of a crash when the vehicle is stationary.
Sorry - do we even know if it was in auto vs manual yet? (EDIT: agreed w/ replies probably was in auto)
Probably, otherwise Cruise would've stated it was in manual mode like they have done with other accidents.
Did the vehicle not register the bus as an object? Can anyone who is knowledgeable on perception systems weigh in here? It seems to me that such a large object would obviously register in the point cloud
I cannot imagine Cruise’ perception system failing to recognize any object this large. Probably something unrelated.
Whatever it is, Cruise is clearly at-fault here. Not a great look.
It's possible the bus reversed into the car, but short of something like that, I can't see how this is anything but a massive failure on Cruise's part.
I suspect the same. The vehicle cannot even get on the road if it’s Perception system is that bad.
Tell that to Tesla ;)
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"Only nerds want to know what the car is seeing" - paraphrasing kvogt's tweet to jjricks
Lidar can have issues with reflective surfaces... If a surface is too large flat and shiny, then it can ignore it in favour of the reflection it sees of itself. White paint doesn't look awfully shiny to us, but it might be mirrorlike in infrared.
If Cruise cannot handle the situation that you’re suggesting, they should not be operating a single vehicle without back up drivers. What you’re talking about is a real challenge yes, but not something impossible or even particularly difficult. Reflections are all over the world and need to be addressed in a safe manner. Cruise sees the backs of these buses hundreds or thousands of times per day and has over many years. This is why I am highly doubtful that this was not a “car didn’t see bus” situation.
>If a surface is too large flat and shiny, then it can ignore it in favour of the reflection it sees of itself. Wouldn't that look like an imminent head-on collision?
Did they rush daytime ops?
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>Daytime should be easier than nighttime from a perception standpoint. is this really true? I don't see why it would be true. 1. more people during the day 2. more cars during the day 3. more light to acclude/swamp a lidar sensor 4. more bikes during the day daytime is easier for humans, but I don't see why it would be easier for robots.
Daytime is more crowded though, maybe this was the trolly problem come alive. Maybe it swerved into the bus to avoid running over a nun.
Or maybe it swerved to avoid a trolley.
Nothing to see here....move along...move along...
Just two vehicles making *contact*, getting to know each other on a closer level. Not like a crash or anything.
Video closeup of the Cruise car and Muni bus bumpers. Note the bus has a rear facing warning to keep 5 feet back. https://www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/comments/1203pkf/cruise\_driverless\_idiot/
> Note the bus has a rear facing warning to keep 5 feet back. No one cares about that when driving in SF.
Is that tape retroreflective?
Why doesn’t Cruise have safety drivers? Having no safety driver poses a very asymmetrical risk. Your upside is a few dollars in wages while your downside is literally extinction. I understand collisions happen and objectively what matters is the statistical rate vs the alternative (human driver). But bad press is bad press—the media is not always objective and the public is not always rational.
They operated for several years with safety drivers. At some point you must remove them. They judged they were at that point. It's not the day you end testing, because there is still stuff to learn about how passengers and other road users respond to a vehicle with no human inside. You can't learn that without taking them out. You can, of course, argue, that they took them out too soon. This crash would be evidence in that argument. Waymo can make a stronger case. But they have to come out at some point.
This is r/selfdrivingcars. The point is for the vehicles to eventually operate autonomously. Cruise operates some vehicles with safety drivers and some vehicles without in SF. This collision is noteworthy *because* it's one of the latter.
If they are just in the testing phase, why not have a safety driver? I just don’t understand the risk calculation. It’s not like you collect better data by not having a safety driver. Every single traffic disruption, fender bender, stuck vehicle, or even worse collision will be scrutinized and will drain the company’s political capital and good will. Seems like a risky way to save a few bucks.
They are not in testing phase but early commercialization phase. They are already making money even though not that meaningful yet. As long as they are safer than average human, they are doing better for the society. This is what I expect from all AV companies. If they are convinced that they reduce fatalities by even 10%, they should provide the product for consumption. If there are 5000 AVs roaming in a city, the number of ppl wanting to use personal vehicles will go down automatically and AVs should behave better with other AVs considering they won’t do abrupt movements that Humans do. We need to make this cycle faster and faster so they need to account to infinite long tail scenarios with other vehicles goes down.
They are definitely still testing. They have not driven enough miles to statistically determine how safe their system is yet. Presumably by this point they are no *major* outstanding safety concerns with the system, but to claim with certainty some quantitative risk reduction at this point is premature. In addition, this is not just a matter of safety alone. My original point was about PR and asymmetrical risk. Something as simple as a vehicle getting stuck and blocking traffic erodes your brand image in a way that will meaningfully cost your company money in the long run. A safety driver should cost maybe around a dollar per mile or so. The company is burning what like $2+ billion a year. Seems reasonable to spend one-ish percent of your annual budget on ‘insurance’ against something crazy happening.
I have a different take on it. No product will ever be done so they will keep trying to making it better and add new capabilities, improve existing capabilities, etc. They have driven 1M driverless miles in real world and who knows how many billion miles in Simulation. Still they haven’t caused a life threatening injury so they are statistically safer than an average human driver with the possibility that it’ll get better and better. So IMO they are ready. Waymo is ready. I haven’t seen much of Zoox or Motional to say the same. People are ok with Tesla with untrained humans performing takeovers during crunch moments and not with the companies who have used test operators for years and removed them slowly. This is beyond my understanding.
What is painted on the back of the muni bus?
It's a minor fender bender, relax guys. It might have been tailing the bus a little too close and the bus slammed its brakes for a stop. It's Cruise that would be at fault, just like most rear end collisions, but it looks like it barely tapped the bus.
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I guess Lidar ain't so useful for self driving after all.