L4sBotSan Francisco protestors are disabling autonomous vehicles using traffic cones | "It's a great time"
alternative_iglooWhat exactly is the fear about self driving cars? I’ve never heard this side of the story.
Some autonomous vehicles are not properly programmed to actually notice and properly avoid everything they should. For example, cyclists might be getting hit more by them.
I believe they are fighting to get the AI worked on more to actually avoid real obstacles.
Shame we can’t do the same for people. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that humans cause more of this type of problem than self-driving cars for the number of miles driven.
I believe humans do cause more accidents, so these are definitely safer. But, the point is that these cars are meant to be very safe. If I can’t drive my motorcycle around an autonomous car and feel safe, that’s not great.
Honestly, what makes you more uncomfortable passing an autonomous vehicle than a human driver? At least you know the AV won’t take it personally when you pass. Are we seeing instances of AV’s sideswiping (motor)cyclists of any sort?
If anything, I would be more concerned with being in FRONT of an AV but that also is when I’m most concerned about humans behind me too. Getting decimated from behind while on 2-wheels is one of those sitting duck scenarios.
Yeah, the vast majority of AV accidents with motorcycles seem to be rear-endings or turning left in front of a motorcycle. The two exact same scenarios that human drivers cause all the time.
The protests are basically just pushing for a digital version of the “look twice” movement. Because there was a big push to remind human drivers to check for motorcycles, but the digital side of things seems to have been neglected.
There’s a concern about more cameras recording all the time, and while I don’t personally buy that argument (because being out in public means you don’t have any expectation of privacy) I don’t agree with these companies storing that data to give to police, effectively making Waymo or Cruise into private arms of law enforcement.
The reason that makes the most sense to me is it still encourages cities to be designed around cars, and not transit or people-oriented methods of travel. Even though they might make travel smoother by better decision-making than people, I’d still rather see more spaces devoted to foot traffic connected by buses or trains than the sprawl necessitated by personal vehicles.
I bet you own a car though.
Cars are freedom. You can go anywhere, anytime, without worrying about a delayed schedule or how many connections you’d need to get exactly where you’re going.
You can listen to your own music and carry as much as you like, without worrying about someone trying to steal it or altercations with the public.
I agree we need electric cars, but anti-car policy is ultimately just trapping people in cities, allowing the rich to still enjoy their cars from commuter towns, etc. whilst the working class are stuck in overcrowded pod apartments. This is literally the reality in a lot of Spain, Sweden, etc. where you’re lucky to get even a 70m2 apartment and parking is extortionate.
I think the view behind the anti-car movement is that there shouldn’t be cars. Period. Doesn’t matter what income bracket. Gas powered cars create huge amounts of pollution, all cars generate lots of waste and are in general very inefficient modes of transportation.
I believe in the end it advocates for busses and trains (above and below ground)as public transit. I think there’s also a belief that infrastructure is supposed to be updated to support this. Busses get their lane, while most of a street is for people moving under their own power, be it walking, cycling or using a wheelchair.
I live in one of the cities with the “best” public transport in the world. But it’s impossible for one of my friends to get to her night shift outside the city by public transport. It’s like a train for 40 minutes, and then an infrequent bus and then walking - all as a lone woman at night.
Or a 30 minute drive… in the safety of your own car.
I don’t see how public transport could ever be “improved” to solve that, it becomes increasingly expensive to cover every destination.
Nevermind the fact that most of the anti-car people are the same ones pushing for rehabilitative “justice”, defunding the police and weak sentencing - that’s not making walking at night and public transport any safer!
CarbonIceDragonPersonally, I find I feel much less safe when there are more and more well-armed cops out on the street than when there are, in regards to that last point
Different people feel differently about the safety of cops. You might live in a city that’s safe for women walking alone at night, but not everyone does.
cars are freedom
What about my freedom to walk or bike? My freedom to be able to cross the street? My freedom to get milk without taking 2000 pounds of metal with me?
Cars warp entire cities around them. In an ideal world, everyone would be able to own a car, but very few people would need to own a car
You’re ignoring the thing car drivers complain about the most, traffic delays. To me real freedom is being able to get to the places I need to using my own two feet, without needing to spend thousands every year on a car, insurance, etc. Headphones also exist and let you enjoy your own music while outside of a car without disturbing anyone!
What we need everywhere is a people first policy that makes it so you don’t need a car to get around, especially in cities.
I’m not sure what you are talking about with Spain. People there are not “trapped” in cities, they have good public transit in most cities and one of the best high speed rail systems in the world to get between cities, on top of that an extensive bus system that is even cheaper and extensive than the trains.
But in Spain there are not connections to most places outside cities, like most smaller towns don’t even have rail connections, nevermind going to the countryside and touristic places.
Yeah, it’s okay between cities (although AVE is expensive), but that’s my point - it’s only cities.
In Spain you can totally get the bus to most places, especially touristy places! AVE is expensive but there are budget high speed operators operating now and the bus is cheap. All these options are far cheaper than owning a car (and cheaper than owning a car in a car centric country as well!).
Also those towns that don’t have good connections it’s mostly poor people living there, so rather than being stuck in cities because they don’t own cars, they’re stuck in poor rural towns because there is no transit to other places!
FantasticFoxNot really. Miravet is a famous tourist castle place. You can’t get there via public transport from Barcelona or even from Tarragona.
Same for Besalú.
Honestly, Germany is the only place I have been where I felt I could get anywhere by train.
Cars aren’t freedom though. You can only go to places where there are roads/streets and you’re entirely dependent on energy logistics to provide you transportation. You’re entirely subject to a delayed schedule through traffic (accidents/congestion).
If you also bring your car to a public parking area, you can subject yourself to potential theft.
Of course living in a city where space is at a premium you’re going to be limited in living space but there’s nothing stopping us from Building out public transportation and alternative methods of transportation out in to suburbs.
I mean, not really. You can go with a car only where infrastructure (roads) has been built, same as transit. There’s more places reachable by that infrastructure, but that is only because things have been built around it. You absolutely do have to worry about delays; there are after all things like traffic jams and road closures. You have to worry about the route you take, not in the form of what connections to take but in the form of navigating the right route. People absolutely have to worry about things like theft and altercation when driving, else people wouldn’t lock their cars, and road rage wouldn’t exist.
Personally, after having moved somewhere I can manage to at least live my life, without owning a car, I find it feels a lot more freeing to just be able to walk places I want to be, or get on a train that someone else is driving, than having to own some expensive machine that needs periodic and also costly maintenance, and then having to operate it constantly to get anywhere, with the risk of accidently killing someone if I make a mistake.
Yeah, I like stuff being walkable too. The situation in some parts of the US and Mexico, etc. is crazy, I remember once my hotel was across the road from some shops and there was no way to walk across!
I just dislike this idea that working people don’t deserve private transport. Like here in Sweden getting the driver’s licence can easily cost $3000+, then parking is $200+ a month (especially if you need a charger), tax and insurance are another $200 or so but that varies a lot, fuel taxes are very high, and there are extra fees for driving into Stockholm (although you’d want to avoid it anyway!). So including the cost of the car you’re looking at almost $1000 a month or so just for the car to be drivable - when you take into account that Swedish salaries are usually less than half of their US counterparts (especially in professional jobs - Medicine, Tech, Law, etc.) it becomes really unaffordable.
Even moreso with the rampant inflation and high interest rates right now.
The point that everyone in the comments is getting at is that it should not be required for people to spend 1000s of dollars a month on a personal vehicle. It’s not the transit thats forcing people to be stuck in cities, it’s the lack of it and the overreliance on cars that people can’t afford!
You can go with a car only where infrastructure (roads) has been built
I can drive a car from where I’m at right now to where you’re at right now. And I’m not even going to ask where you’re at. I think that’s pretty neat.
But I do agree, walkability and reliable public transit are super nice. The time I’ve spent in smaller, remote ski towns where I could walk/bike or take a bus anywhere in a short amount of time are some of my favorite memories.
This may sound argumentative, it isn’t:
The capitalist pitched the infrastructure cost to the government, design of transportation and city design flex around them, and now you need to buy the privilege to participate in society back from them. Where I live public transport is basically non-existent (unless you just so happen to live in a wealthy area, oddly enough) and I’ve known people trapped in poverty because no car means no job, but job don’t pay, so they work for car because everyone is laser focused on the merits for the individual over the collective. Even if it’s cooking the environment and is inefficient for moving people en-masse as well.
In the example you gave why not offer a train station that goes to the city? I’m one of the fortunate few that can take the train into the city and it has been ideal. Just me, my e-bike, and the train. No insurance; no emissions. It’d be perfect save the two tons of metal flying around me constantly.
City officials in June said there have been ninety incidents involving Alphabet’s Waymo and General Motors’ Cruise vehicles since January.
Compared to how many traffic incidents involving human-operated vehicles? Because if that number is greater than 90, the AVs are the safer choice.
Automated cars don’t have to be perfect; they just have to be better than people.
Compared to how many traffic incidents involving human-operated vehicles? Because if that number is greater than 90, the AVs are the safer choice.
Well that is simply flawed logic. How many autonomous cars are there compared to human-operated? Far far more.
How many autonomous cars are there compared to human-operated? Far far more.
I think you meant less.
Ideally, you’d be correct and we should be looking at per capita incidents- like how many incidents per 100 miles on the road or something. But the article just cited a flat number of incidents without contextualizing, which as you’ve pointed out can be misleading. Without knowing the ratio of AVs to human-driven vehicles, the best rebuttal that could be offered is “Yeah, but how do those 90 incidents compare to how people drive?”
Yeah sorry - I meant less.
And yep agree on all the rest. I was just triggered by the simple comparison.
Bay Area native here. They’re also prone to dead stopping in the middle of the street and other moving violations, blocking emergency services and public transit in addition to normal traffic. Ideally, we’d like these vehicles to be held accountable for these violations like normal drivers: fines, suspensions, impounds. But we’ll settle for a human driver on standby who can immediately override the software when a moving violation occurs.
One of the car companies is quoted as having caused no serious injuries or deaths, so it seems like the 90 incidents number only includes those. Unfortunately the article doesn’t question those numbers or explain what is counted, which is very poor journalism. I don’t understand how they can write about the protesters’ motivations without asking how many moving violations those cars have caused, or at least mention that this number is unknown.
If the numbers indeed don’t count the times where they block traffic, stop for no reason or block emergency vehicles where they need to wait for the company to send someone out to the car, then AV’s could be far worse than human drivers, not only in the number of incidents but also in the total delays they cause. At least a human driver can be removed from the car so that someone more competent can take over and resolve the situation quickly. And a human generally doesn’t just stop in a lane and refuse to move out of the way for a very long time.
Another bonus: a human can just remove a cone from the hood and continue driving.
CoderKatThe comparison needs to be normalized for distance driven. There’s far more human driven cars. But most humans don’t spend that long driving (I’m not sure how much of the day is spent driving by these AI cars, but they theoretically could drive all day long).
The quota also does say “involving”, which may include accidents where someone else hits an AI driven car. If so, that’s highly misleading.
To play devil’s advocate, how does this compare to an equivalent amount of human drivers? There are millions of cars on the road so statistically there are going to be a ton of accidents.
catsarebadpeopleThousands of accidents a year from human drivers. I sleep
90 accidents a year from autonomous vehicles. Lazer eyes
They stop for no reason, cause gridlocks that require a human to pilot it, they’ve run over fire hoses being used and don’t always get out of the way for emergency service vehicles. Nice statistic though.
So are you talking about autonomous cars or…
If sarcasm could make the cars drive better I’d send you right out, but maybe you should leave the issue to people who understand the actual problem.
But are you the people who at least understand the actual problem?
Im literally telling you what they say in the articles about why they’re doing this and all you guys wanna do is joke and pretend theres no issues with an unproved technology because you saw some statistics about it. So compared to the other commenters in this chain Im Secretary Butigege.
Sir/Mam/Potato, you got my upvotes 👍
FizzArticles are not as factual as you seem to be making out. Every stupid thing you’ve mentioned has been done by humans 100 times over. The difference is we can fix the issue in self driving vehicles while humans will continue to make the mistakes.
You’re never gonna fix them by denying they have problems, welcome, that’s how we got to this conversation.
I’m not denying they have problems I’m just saying that it’s early tech and it’s already better than humans in a lot of ways. People are working day in and day out of fixing and improving the tech. I’m not responsible for fixing it.
You’re responsible for what you say and advocate for, especially in a democracy.
Advocating for throwing unproven and unverified technology on the road because you like tech and blindly trust data from a bunch of greedy corporations absolutely makes you partially responsible for every death that occurs due to this technology.
I’ve watched 5 hours + of unedited footage of tesla self driving mode driving in all kinds of places. It’s really amazing what it can do. It’s getting better at such a rapid rate I have no doubt that it will surpass the top 1% of human drivers. It’s already surpassed the average driver.
Me talking about this does not make me responsible for every death that occurs from the technology. The only person responsible is the lawmakers that allow it on the road. It seems to me that a lot of journalists are exaggerating the dangers because they don’t like Musk. This in turn convinces a lot of people that these cars are on the loose causing so many accidents. I am happy for ai to cause some road accidents while the technology grows. It’s not like the roads have 0 deaths at the moment.
You make it sound like it’s a 50/50 split between human drivers and autonomous vehicles, which is definitely not the case.
There are way more human drivers than autonomous vehicles. So, when an autonomous vehicle runs your child or pet over or whatever, who do you blame? The company? The programmers? The DMV for even allowing them on the road in the first place?
What’s an autonomous vehicle do if it gets a flat? Park in the middle of the interstate like an idiot instead of pulling over and phone home for a mechanic?
You need to first ask yourself if it more important to put blame than to minimize risk.
“Autonomous vehicles could potentially reduce traffic fatalities by up to 90%.”
“Autonomous vehicle accidents have been recorded at a slightly lower rate compared with conventional cars, at 4.7 accidents per million miles driven.”
Story time…
I once had a crazy accident driving only like 15-20 MPH or so down a side road, then about 20 feet in front of me some idiot backed out of his parking spot right in front of me.
Broad daylight, overcast skies, no other vehicles blocking his view even. Dude just backed up without looking like a freaking idiot.
I responded in a split second. I did not hit the brakes, as I knew I didn’t have enough time or distance to stop. If I had hit the brakes, his car would have had more time to back out further and I would have smacked straight on into the passenger side of his car.
Instead of hitting the brakes, I quickly jerked the steering wheel hard and fast to the left. See, I knew an impact was inevitable at that point, I made that move to clip his bumper instead of smacking into the passenger side and ruining both vehicles.
Would an AI do that? 🤔
Would? Maybe, don’t know, not sure. Could? Yes.
They tend to work on basic sensors and simplified logic. They don’t tend to consider forward momentum and a vehicle pulling out perpendicular in front of you.
I believe half the programmers of autonomous vehicles never even drove a vehicle in their life.
It’s weird that you think this isn’t the suggested driving practice in such an instance
That opinion puts a lot of blind faith in the companies developing self driving and their infinitely altruistic motives.
That’s one way of strawmanning your way out of a discussion.
It’s not a strawman argument, it is a fact. Without the ability to audit the entire codebase of self-driving cars, there’s no way to know if the manufacturer had knowingly hidden something in the code that might have caused accidents and fatalities too numerous to recount, but too important to ignore, that were linked to a fault in self-driving technology.
It is most definitely a strawman to frame my comment as considering the companies “infinitely altruistic”, no matter what lies behind the strawman. It doesn’t refute my statistics but rather tries to make me look like I make an extremely silly argument I’m not making, which is the defintion of a strawman argument.
The data you cited comes straight from manufacturers, it’s not independent. So no it’s not a straw man argument to claim that you’re putting inordinately faith in manufacturers, because that’s exactly what you did.
We can’t audit the code for humans, but we still let them drive.
If the output for computers driving is less than for humans and the computer designers are forced to be as financially liable for car crashes as humans, why shouldn’t we let computers drive?
I’m not fully in either camp in this debate, but fwiw, the humans we let drive generally suffer consequences if there is an accident due to their own negligence
And I’m not denying it. However, it takes a very high bar to get someone convicted of vehicular manslaughter and that usually requires evidence that the driver was grossly negligent.
If you can show that a computer can drive as well as a sober human, where is the gross negligence?
ObiAlso we do audit them, it’s called a license. I know it’s super easy to get one in the US but in other countries they can be quite stringent.
Because there’s no valid excuse to prevent us from auditing their software and it could save lives. Why the hell should we allow then to use the road if they won’t even let us inspect the engine?
Why the hell should we allow then to use the road if they won’t even let us inspect the engine?
How do you think a car gets approved right now? Do we take it apart? Do we ask for the design calculations of how they designed each piece?
That isn’t what happens. There is no “audit” of parts or the whole. Instead, there is a series of tests to determine road worthiness that everything in a car has to pass. We’ve already accepted a black box for the electronics of a car. You don’t need to get approval of your code to show that pressing the brake pedal causes the brake lights turn on; they just test it to make sure that it works.
We don’t audit the code already for life critical software already. It is all liability taken on by the manufacturers and verified via government testing of the finished product. What is an audit going to do when we don’t it already?