from Hacker News

San Francisco is getting cold feet about self-driving car tests

by chris_overseas on 2/1/23, 9:07 AM with 60 comments

  • by nzoschke on 2/1/23, 11:50 AM

    Driving home the other night an empty Cruise car with no driver was stopped in the center lane on Fell street. A little off center in the lane with no hazard lights on.

    Does Cruise have remote operators that are watching for weird stuff and can take some manual intervention from afar?

    Like someone to remotely turn on the hazards and to dispatch a person to go move it if it’s malfunctioning.

    I’m very pro self driving cars but obviously there are some “bugs” to work out still.

  • by fragmede on 2/1/23, 9:36 AM

    The self-driving car almost running over hoses thing? That's a problem. The obvious answer to me is an emergency stop button mounted on the hood behind glass like fire alarms have.

    I took a ride in a Cruise self-driving car. I used the Cruise app, told it where to pick me up and where to drop me off, and then a car showed up. I used the app to unlock the doors and then got in, and then got to my destination, in awe. There are ton of nits I could pick about the trip, and it was a bit contrived because I'm not in the service area, but holy shit I got from point A to point B without a driver in the car and it wasn't a ride at Disneyland.

    I'm sure there will continue to be growing pains. Uber killing the bicyclist is simply terrible. My un-expert opinion is it'll take years longer to arrive, but the self-driving car future is coming, ever so slowly.

  • by snozolli on 2/1/23, 10:11 AM

    As someone who commuted by motorcycle in SF for several years, I have a hard time imagining any barely-competent self-driving car being worse than those maniacs in the Yellow Cabs.

  • by henearkr on 2/1/23, 12:17 PM

    All the examples of bad interactions are from Cruise, not Waymo.

    So maybe restrict Cruise? Or allow expansion only for companies that show excellency? In my opinion that would be a shame to prevent good implementations from being used because of the existence of bad implementations from competitors.

  • by GaryNumanVevo on 2/1/23, 10:14 PM

    Does the local government have any leverage over a firm that's causing issues on the road? Beyond individual ticketing I mean. Like if Uber is causing issues, what legal standing does SF have to prevent them from doing so?

    Doing drive testing of self-driving cars on public roads is always a risk, but lots of other entities cause road issues.

  • by Tempest1981 on 2/1/23, 9:40 AM

  • by LatteLazy on 2/1/23, 10:28 AM

    There is only one set of stats that matters here: crashes, fatalities, incidents etc per km compared to similar journeys. Everything else is bullshit and emotion and politics.

  • by lost_tourist on 2/1/23, 11:58 AM

    Bring them to Austin, TX, we aren't afraid of technology. I would take a bet anytime that on average these are far more safe and less apt to wreck than the average driver here; drivers here are awful.