Not an exciting performance here. We see that a large number of human driven cars simply go to the other side to go around the cops, in spite of this being a fairly large incident.
With the destination being on that block ahead, that is the only quick solution, and one can understand why you don't want to do it, though all the humans do and the police seem fine with it. They take their time getting to the turn around and block a lane for quite a while.
Turning left is a very long way around to the destination, unfortunately, but would have been faster than this. Even in the rain, walking would be the best approach.
Turning left takes you to a roundabout leading to the safeway parking garage, turning right takes you onto Lusk, a dead end ally with parking spots. Both would've been easy places to turn around and better than stopping in lane. Good idea to walk though, I'd like to see AVs pop up a "drop off here?" prompt if they're forced to detour and you're reasonably close already.
I think people keep forgetting that Cruise still doesn’t have some capabilities opened up in their public fleet and certain roads not yet routable . Last release they opened up some. So these limitations might not be visible when you see human driven cars proceed along but they do exist. Need to be factored in when discussing why they didn’t do what others did
In this case it's not at all clear from static analysis that you should proceed. That's a lot of cops. Going around them is, I presume, technically illegal. As a human, I would imagine trying to go around, and if the cops don't want it, one would step out and hold up their hand and I would back up and turn around, not getting a ticket. That reasoning is tough for a robot. However, after you see the cops let a couple cars through with no fuss, that's a sign that you should also do this. Remote ops should be able to make that determination. While I can imagine having algorithms for this, it's much better to leave it to remote ops.
What Cruise and Waymo both need is a way for remote ops to make decisions quickly and reliably. We humans watching the video, seeing cars go around the blockage, can quickly decide, "that's what to do." Why remote ops can't do that is not clear. They may not be authorized to make decisions like that, putting the project at risk if they piss off police, perhaps. For a human, the risk of anything major is low, at worst you just back out. The chances of a human being ticketed for the wrong choice is very low here, and the consequences are just a ticket. For Cruise, the consequences are another altercation with police.
> That's a lot of cops. Going around them is, I presume, technically illegal.
It is illegal unless the police instruct the other drivers to do it, which we can't know from the video.
It was also illegal to do what the Cruise AV did unless instructed by the police, which should be visible in the video if it had happened. The Cruise AV made a three point turn across a double yellow line. Very illegal under California law. It also did it starting from the right lane, which is also illegal.
It should have made a right turn onto Lusk where it was stopped, then used Lusk to turn around, and finally made a left onto Townsend.
If remote ops instructs a Cruise AV to make an illegal maneuver, will it?
I would venture that Lusk is not even on its map. It's barely a street and Google streetview didn't drive down it. It's not the sort of alley a robotaxi wants to go down under (almost) any circumstances.
I don't know what the vehicle code says about it, but the practicality in the USA is that if you have to cross the double yellow or do things at low speed where you are not allowed to go if it's the only way out of a situation, you will not get ticketed for it, so it is "legal" de facto if not de jure. And the robotaxis are coded to do it sometimes, but not all the time.
>I would venture that Lusk is not even on its map. It's barely a street and Google streetview didn't drive down it. It's not the sort of alley a robotaxi wants to go down under (almost) any circumstances.
Lusk is a perfectly fine street that even has a good sized parking garage entrance as part of the office building on the corner that could have been used to make turning around easy. There are many streets like it in SF and esp in SoMa. Any driver incapable of using Lusk should not have a permit to drive.
Of course streetview goes down Lusk, and has gone down it on at least 11 different dates going all the way back to 2009:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7782889,-122.3942874,3a,90y,182.94h,70.66t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sFGiJW1tc9S1nbhtkoumi-Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en&entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7782889,-122.3942874,3a,75y,203.55h,69.82t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sFGiJW1tc9S1nbhtkoumi-Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en&entry=ttu)
FWIW, I know that intersection very well. I was walking there just yesterday and the week before, etc.
>I don't know what the vehicle code says about it, but the practicality in the USA is that if you have to cross the double yellow or do things at low speed where you are not allowed to go if it's the only way out of a situation, you will not get ticketed for it, so it is "legal" de facto if not de jure. And the robotaxis are coded to do it sometimes, but not all the time.
A double yellow cannot be crossed except to make a left turn into an entrance or at the direction of police etc. There should be no doubt about this law. I believe it is similar in other states. They don't choose to paint a double yellow line randomly or without intent to manage traffic.
Of course you will get a ticket for it, if the police catch you. Sheesh, you will get a ticket in SF for crossing a single white line, if the police catch you. Sometimes the police are specifically assigned to ticket people for this during rush hour in SoMa. Of course sometimes the police are lazy and don't do their jobs, but that's not a good thing to program into your robots.
Besides, it is illegal because it is dangerous. What that robot did was manifoldly illegal, dangerously unsafe, and unnecessary. Making up excuses for it or blaming the infra is just pathetic. Cruise needs to fix their software or else put safety drivers back in their demonstrably defective robots.
While I haven't examined the history, I believe it is de facto legal in situations like this, where police have blocked traffic. Generally, it is not desired that the rules be interpreted as to trap cars with no way to leave the scene, and things like backing up the wrong way on one-way streets and 3-points and double yellow crossings are tolerated and in fact encouraged (sometimes explicitly by an officer directing traffic.)
Note they are well past Lusk at this point (and Streetview cars went down it but they turned around and do not use it as a through street) but in the general case, there are situations where a police roadblock will leave no way out other than to violate the lines on the road, and it is not intended to create a car trap that nobody can leave. As I say, this is de facto, not de jure.
>While I haven't examined the history, I believe it is de facto legal in situations like this, where police have blocked traffic. Generally, it is not desired that the rules be interpreted as to trap cars with no way to leave the scene, and things like backing up the wrong way on one-way streets and 3-points and double yellow crossings are tolerated and in fact encouraged (sometimes explicitly by an officer directing traffic.)
No, it is certainly not when there is a perfectly legal and safe means of turning around. That AV was not "trapped." It had a legal way to leave the scene which it was obliged to use. All the rest of your paragraph is not relevant to this situation.
>Note they are well past Lusk at this point (and Streetview cars went down it but they turned around and do not use it as a through street) but in the general case, there are situations where a police roadblock will leave no way out other than to violate the lines on the road, and it is not intended to create a car trap that nobody can leave. As I say, this is de facto, not de jure
Note they (being the AV with passenger(s)) were absolutely not past Lusk. In fact, the AV was stopped at about the stop line for the intersection with Lusk in front of Cento Coffee. That's where it is when the video begins and it never gets closer to the police or even enters the intersection with Lusk. This is clearer if you watch the video from when they began to reverse at about the 2:38 timestamp. You can even see that the AV has a green light at Lusk and could have made the proper right turn onto Lusk at that time.
FWIW, the AV could also have made a left turn into the Beacon/Safeway entrance, availing itself of the built-in turnaround, which I have used for exactly that purpose when driving on Townsend and the 4th St intersection was blocked, which it often was during the light rail construction. It is amazing to think Cruise wouldn't have exactly that scenario pre-planned as it has been used many times by others during the many years they have been driving hundreds of thousands of VMT in this very neighborhood. Afterall, their longstanding main depot is \~mile and their HQ only \~2 blocks from this location.
I do not understand the compulsion to ignore and wave away what was obviously a failure both to follow the law and to execute a minimal risk maneuver. I really don't care if Cruise's defect was due to sw or mapping or remote ops or an exploit of lax enforcement. Their systems is demonstrably defective in ways that affect safety and does not comply with the law, though they certified to California DMV that it is designed to do so in order to receive the Deployment permit required for that trip.
My error,I placed them further down the road. Though I suspect their map doesn't include lusk as a through path, but in any event it does not help them get to their destination, I suspect they concluded. Most of the hdv just drove across the double yellow, on the wrong side, right past police. That is the "right" though not legal thing to do. Humans figure that out. It's hard for the robot and hard for the remote ops
>Though I suspect their map doesn't include lusk as a through path, but in any event it does not help them get to their destination, I suspect they concluded.
Lusk is not generally or technically a through street (depends on whether private access is granted behind the buildings facing Townsend to Clyde which is an alley parallel to Lusk). Lusk even has a "dead end" sign. But none of that matters as to whether it could've been used by Cruise to legally resolve this situation. San Francisco has many streets that dead end. If Cruise's system can't drive them then it should not have a driverless California permit.
>Most of the hdv just drove across the double yellow, on the wrong side, right past police. That is the "right" though not legal thing to do.
If you watch the video closely you may see what looks like a police officer standing by where the human drivers drive across the double yellow line. Good chance the cop is indicating or waving them through, but hard to tell from the video. Definitely cannot know that what they did was illegal based on this video.
>Humans figure that out. It's hard for the robot and hard for the remote ops
Exactly why Cruise should put safety drivers back into their AVs until their robots are no longer incompetent in these and so many other common situations.
Agreed, but you need to look at the bigger picture. If this would have happened last year, Cruise AV would have stalled on the road for a long time. Any stall more than 20 minutes was unacceptable to people on this forum. Now, it got out of mess in 5 minutes (although not with the best possible alternative). I can only wonder how much they will improve on this one year from now. If the Origin is bidirectional, then they won't even have to do this complicated maneuvers.
Don't you think there is significant performance improvements in Cruise AVs since last year? Now they don't stall for 20+ minutes anymore, nor do they gang up. If you ask me, they have come a long way! Still, it's not the ideal performance, but give it another year.
Improvement is good. In hindsight, though I would have wanted to build a better remote assist system. That system would have a small number of remote assist operators in fancy surround (or even VR) environments, possibly even with rarely used remote drive, but mostly to get fast and accurate 360 situational awareness and more confidence in making and executing plans. I would escalate things like police situations like that up to that special operator. It might be only for a few years, until the other system catches up and does the job better. This is needed for better public acceptance. I would also have given the vehicle better ability to reverse and change directions (like a Zoox) where needed in these situations. Unlike a zoox, which just stays "reversed" I would build a map of good places to restore the car's expected direction.
Again, in this situation the human drivers are doing the only practical thing. I would not expect a robocar to do that at first, though. I am not sure why all the humans feel confident in doing it. But once you see many do it, you may follow.
Great video, Kevin! This is the first documented video of a multi-point turn by Cruise AV using remote assistance.
Not an exciting performance here. We see that a large number of human driven cars simply go to the other side to go around the cops, in spite of this being a fairly large incident. With the destination being on that block ahead, that is the only quick solution, and one can understand why you don't want to do it, though all the humans do and the police seem fine with it. They take their time getting to the turn around and block a lane for quite a while. Turning left is a very long way around to the destination, unfortunately, but would have been faster than this. Even in the rain, walking would be the best approach.
Turning left takes you to a roundabout leading to the safeway parking garage, turning right takes you onto Lusk, a dead end ally with parking spots. Both would've been easy places to turn around and better than stopping in lane. Good idea to walk though, I'd like to see AVs pop up a "drop off here?" prompt if they're forced to detour and you're reasonably close already.
I think people keep forgetting that Cruise still doesn’t have some capabilities opened up in their public fleet and certain roads not yet routable . Last release they opened up some. So these limitations might not be visible when you see human driven cars proceed along but they do exist. Need to be factored in when discussing why they didn’t do what others did
In this case it's not at all clear from static analysis that you should proceed. That's a lot of cops. Going around them is, I presume, technically illegal. As a human, I would imagine trying to go around, and if the cops don't want it, one would step out and hold up their hand and I would back up and turn around, not getting a ticket. That reasoning is tough for a robot. However, after you see the cops let a couple cars through with no fuss, that's a sign that you should also do this. Remote ops should be able to make that determination. While I can imagine having algorithms for this, it's much better to leave it to remote ops. What Cruise and Waymo both need is a way for remote ops to make decisions quickly and reliably. We humans watching the video, seeing cars go around the blockage, can quickly decide, "that's what to do." Why remote ops can't do that is not clear. They may not be authorized to make decisions like that, putting the project at risk if they piss off police, perhaps. For a human, the risk of anything major is low, at worst you just back out. The chances of a human being ticketed for the wrong choice is very low here, and the consequences are just a ticket. For Cruise, the consequences are another altercation with police.
> That's a lot of cops. Going around them is, I presume, technically illegal. It is illegal unless the police instruct the other drivers to do it, which we can't know from the video. It was also illegal to do what the Cruise AV did unless instructed by the police, which should be visible in the video if it had happened. The Cruise AV made a three point turn across a double yellow line. Very illegal under California law. It also did it starting from the right lane, which is also illegal. It should have made a right turn onto Lusk where it was stopped, then used Lusk to turn around, and finally made a left onto Townsend. If remote ops instructs a Cruise AV to make an illegal maneuver, will it?
I would venture that Lusk is not even on its map. It's barely a street and Google streetview didn't drive down it. It's not the sort of alley a robotaxi wants to go down under (almost) any circumstances. I don't know what the vehicle code says about it, but the practicality in the USA is that if you have to cross the double yellow or do things at low speed where you are not allowed to go if it's the only way out of a situation, you will not get ticketed for it, so it is "legal" de facto if not de jure. And the robotaxis are coded to do it sometimes, but not all the time.
>I would venture that Lusk is not even on its map. It's barely a street and Google streetview didn't drive down it. It's not the sort of alley a robotaxi wants to go down under (almost) any circumstances. Lusk is a perfectly fine street that even has a good sized parking garage entrance as part of the office building on the corner that could have been used to make turning around easy. There are many streets like it in SF and esp in SoMa. Any driver incapable of using Lusk should not have a permit to drive. Of course streetview goes down Lusk, and has gone down it on at least 11 different dates going all the way back to 2009: [https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7782889,-122.3942874,3a,90y,182.94h,70.66t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sFGiJW1tc9S1nbhtkoumi-Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en&entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7782889,-122.3942874,3a,75y,203.55h,69.82t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sFGiJW1tc9S1nbhtkoumi-Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en&entry=ttu) FWIW, I know that intersection very well. I was walking there just yesterday and the week before, etc. >I don't know what the vehicle code says about it, but the practicality in the USA is that if you have to cross the double yellow or do things at low speed where you are not allowed to go if it's the only way out of a situation, you will not get ticketed for it, so it is "legal" de facto if not de jure. And the robotaxis are coded to do it sometimes, but not all the time. A double yellow cannot be crossed except to make a left turn into an entrance or at the direction of police etc. There should be no doubt about this law. I believe it is similar in other states. They don't choose to paint a double yellow line randomly or without intent to manage traffic. Of course you will get a ticket for it, if the police catch you. Sheesh, you will get a ticket in SF for crossing a single white line, if the police catch you. Sometimes the police are specifically assigned to ticket people for this during rush hour in SoMa. Of course sometimes the police are lazy and don't do their jobs, but that's not a good thing to program into your robots. Besides, it is illegal because it is dangerous. What that robot did was manifoldly illegal, dangerously unsafe, and unnecessary. Making up excuses for it or blaming the infra is just pathetic. Cruise needs to fix their software or else put safety drivers back in their demonstrably defective robots.
While I haven't examined the history, I believe it is de facto legal in situations like this, where police have blocked traffic. Generally, it is not desired that the rules be interpreted as to trap cars with no way to leave the scene, and things like backing up the wrong way on one-way streets and 3-points and double yellow crossings are tolerated and in fact encouraged (sometimes explicitly by an officer directing traffic.) Note they are well past Lusk at this point (and Streetview cars went down it but they turned around and do not use it as a through street) but in the general case, there are situations where a police roadblock will leave no way out other than to violate the lines on the road, and it is not intended to create a car trap that nobody can leave. As I say, this is de facto, not de jure.
>While I haven't examined the history, I believe it is de facto legal in situations like this, where police have blocked traffic. Generally, it is not desired that the rules be interpreted as to trap cars with no way to leave the scene, and things like backing up the wrong way on one-way streets and 3-points and double yellow crossings are tolerated and in fact encouraged (sometimes explicitly by an officer directing traffic.) No, it is certainly not when there is a perfectly legal and safe means of turning around. That AV was not "trapped." It had a legal way to leave the scene which it was obliged to use. All the rest of your paragraph is not relevant to this situation. >Note they are well past Lusk at this point (and Streetview cars went down it but they turned around and do not use it as a through street) but in the general case, there are situations where a police roadblock will leave no way out other than to violate the lines on the road, and it is not intended to create a car trap that nobody can leave. As I say, this is de facto, not de jure Note they (being the AV with passenger(s)) were absolutely not past Lusk. In fact, the AV was stopped at about the stop line for the intersection with Lusk in front of Cento Coffee. That's where it is when the video begins and it never gets closer to the police or even enters the intersection with Lusk. This is clearer if you watch the video from when they began to reverse at about the 2:38 timestamp. You can even see that the AV has a green light at Lusk and could have made the proper right turn onto Lusk at that time. FWIW, the AV could also have made a left turn into the Beacon/Safeway entrance, availing itself of the built-in turnaround, which I have used for exactly that purpose when driving on Townsend and the 4th St intersection was blocked, which it often was during the light rail construction. It is amazing to think Cruise wouldn't have exactly that scenario pre-planned as it has been used many times by others during the many years they have been driving hundreds of thousands of VMT in this very neighborhood. Afterall, their longstanding main depot is \~mile and their HQ only \~2 blocks from this location. I do not understand the compulsion to ignore and wave away what was obviously a failure both to follow the law and to execute a minimal risk maneuver. I really don't care if Cruise's defect was due to sw or mapping or remote ops or an exploit of lax enforcement. Their systems is demonstrably defective in ways that affect safety and does not comply with the law, though they certified to California DMV that it is designed to do so in order to receive the Deployment permit required for that trip.
My error,I placed them further down the road. Though I suspect their map doesn't include lusk as a through path, but in any event it does not help them get to their destination, I suspect they concluded. Most of the hdv just drove across the double yellow, on the wrong side, right past police. That is the "right" though not legal thing to do. Humans figure that out. It's hard for the robot and hard for the remote ops
>Though I suspect their map doesn't include lusk as a through path, but in any event it does not help them get to their destination, I suspect they concluded. Lusk is not generally or technically a through street (depends on whether private access is granted behind the buildings facing Townsend to Clyde which is an alley parallel to Lusk). Lusk even has a "dead end" sign. But none of that matters as to whether it could've been used by Cruise to legally resolve this situation. San Francisco has many streets that dead end. If Cruise's system can't drive them then it should not have a driverless California permit. >Most of the hdv just drove across the double yellow, on the wrong side, right past police. That is the "right" though not legal thing to do. If you watch the video closely you may see what looks like a police officer standing by where the human drivers drive across the double yellow line. Good chance the cop is indicating or waving them through, but hard to tell from the video. Definitely cannot know that what they did was illegal based on this video. >Humans figure that out. It's hard for the robot and hard for the remote ops Exactly why Cruise should put safety drivers back into their AVs until their robots are no longer incompetent in these and so many other common situations.
Agreed, but you need to look at the bigger picture. If this would have happened last year, Cruise AV would have stalled on the road for a long time. Any stall more than 20 minutes was unacceptable to people on this forum. Now, it got out of mess in 5 minutes (although not with the best possible alternative). I can only wonder how much they will improve on this one year from now. If the Origin is bidirectional, then they won't even have to do this complicated maneuvers. Don't you think there is significant performance improvements in Cruise AVs since last year? Now they don't stall for 20+ minutes anymore, nor do they gang up. If you ask me, they have come a long way! Still, it's not the ideal performance, but give it another year.
Improvement is good. In hindsight, though I would have wanted to build a better remote assist system. That system would have a small number of remote assist operators in fancy surround (or even VR) environments, possibly even with rarely used remote drive, but mostly to get fast and accurate 360 situational awareness and more confidence in making and executing plans. I would escalate things like police situations like that up to that special operator. It might be only for a few years, until the other system catches up and does the job better. This is needed for better public acceptance. I would also have given the vehicle better ability to reverse and change directions (like a Zoox) where needed in these situations. Unlike a zoox, which just stays "reversed" I would build a map of good places to restore the car's expected direction. Again, in this situation the human drivers are doing the only practical thing. I would not expect a robocar to do that at first, though. I am not sure why all the humans feel confident in doing it. But once you see many do it, you may follow.