
GM Cruise to delay commercial launch of self-driving cars to beyond 2019 - drkimball
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gm-cruise/gm-cruise-to-delay-commercial-deployment-of-self-driving-cars-beyond-2019-idUSKCN1UJ1NA
======
amirhirsch
Cruise cars drive like a drunk grandma stopping short all over the place and
regularly failing to take a protected turn at a green turn light because some
pedestrian has a foot edging into a crosswalk.

The biggest safety issue associated with these cars is that everyone else
honks and swerves aggressively to evade them when they stop short for dumb
reasons like someone in the road waiting in front of their car for traffic to
pass so they can get into their car —- these are actions I witness multiple
times every day and if you look at every accident report associated with these
cars you’ll see almost every case seems like a driver frustrated about being
stuck behind it trying to swerve around it.

What isn’t recorded is all the accidents involving the cruise cars that don’t
actually impact the cruise car. Like when someone swerving around a cruise car
side swiped my neighbors car on Fulton. I almost saw a biker on 14th street by
Valencia get hit in a similar manner when someone trying to evade the cruise
car in the left lane swerved quickly into the right lane while the biker was
avoiding a car in the right lane trying to turn right onto Valencia.

They almost certainly don’t collect statistics on accidents caused by other
drivers who just want to get around these cars that clearly don’t need to be
tested in a way that makes everyone’s commute just a little bit more
obnoxious.

~~~
ebg13
> _The biggest safety issue associated with these cars is that everyone
> else..._

...drives dangerously and therefore illegally?

That's an indictment of human drivers, not self-driving vehicles.

So start aggressively ticketing all of the reckless humans and maybe that
behavior will stop.

If you have to swerve, then you're not following at a safe distance. If you
swerve without having to, that's also recklessly dangerous. Both behaviors
_should_ be penalized.

~~~
johnbrodie
There's more to it than that. Traffic is as safe as it is (I won't call it
flat-out "safe"), in no small part because people can anticipate other
drivers. A _predictable_ driver is a safe driver. Having self-driving cars
randomly stop short is a quick way to rack up a lot of "not legally at fault",
but perhaps morally at-fault, accidents.

FWIW, if you've ever done car/bike track days, this is a huge reason why it's
so safe. People are split into groups according to skill level, with
restrictions on passing (normally "only on the straights") for the lower
groups. Much of the "skill level" here is actually just being predictable, not
being outright fast. Someone can be in a Miata getting passed with a 50mph
speed differential on a straight _because everyone is being predictable_. That
same Miata might pass the same car with a huge speed differential at 90 mph in
a turn, and it works because everyone is predictable.

~~~
rhino369
>Having self-driving cars randomly stop short is a quick way to rack up a lot
of "not legally at fault", but perhaps morally at-fault, accidents.

And I'm pretty sure, in most jurisdictions, slamming on the breaks
unexpectedly and for no good reason, will get you at least a portion of the
liability for an accident. The person who rear-ends you will get some too, but
its not always true that you can't be at fault when you get rear-ended.

As you imply, no safety system should rely on others doing their job
perfectly. That is an inherently unsafe system.

~~~
JamesBarney
If there was an accident and the cops ask you "why did you break suddenly?"
and you say something reasonable that's not "to commit insurance fraud" you
probably won't be at fault. It's the responsibility of the person behind you
to keep a safe following distance.

~~~
karthikb
I have had the "pleasure" of driving alongside and behind Cruise's vehicles on
many occasions here in San Francisco. They will stop dramatically in the
middle of a block (empty, no traffic, no pedestrians), edge forward,
dramatically stop again, go halfway through the intersection and
again...dramatically stop.

It feels to me like whoever has written their braking algorithm is using bang
bang control.

------
fizx
As a cyclist, I can't wait for self-driving cars.

I'll take a small chance of being accidentally killed as a systemic,
correctable mistake over the small chance of being killed by the 5% of people
who are consistently impatient, inconsiderate dangerous jerks.

~~~
pmcollins
I'm not a cyclist, but I want to be. I don't bike because doing so is way too
dangerous with the number of drivers who are paying extremely close attention
to their phones and not to driving. And yeah, some drivers are rude too.

I think the most dangerous time to be a cyclist or pedestrian is right now.
Smartphones are ubiquitous, distracted-driving enforcement is very weak (non-
existent in my area), and self-driving is alpha quality.

~~~
chubot
There's some truth to that, particularly the point about phones, but FWIW most
cities have drastically increased the number and quality of bike lanes in the
last 10 years.

SF is a completely different experience for bikes than it was 5 years ago, and
10 years before that it was even more different.

Ditto for NYC. You can ride up and down Manhattan in big separate big lanes
very quickly.

It's obviously a personal choice, but I think cycling is a safe choice now.
When I started 10+ years ago I would sometimes get off the road when
conditions/traffic looked dangerous, and you should always keep that option in
your back pocket. (i.e. don't insist that 100% of the route has to be
bikable.)

But I don't feel the need to do that very much now. The exception is when
there's unusual traffic and no bike lane.

It's even safer now that there are more cyclists on the road. Drivers do take
some time to get used to cyclists.

~~~
seltzered_
I think the anecdote applies for some cities committing to Vision Zero plans -
for example NYC has data showing fatalities decreasing (page 13:
[https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/visionzero/downloads/pdf/vision-...](https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/visionzero/downloads/pdf/vision-
zero-year-5-report.pdf) ), though injuries might be the same or increasing (
[https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/02/04/bloody-january-
cyclis...](https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/02/04/bloody-january-cyclist-
injuries-and-fatalities-soared-last-month/) )

But it isn't perfect - SF fwiw has had more pedestrian fatalities this year
though they've had reductions in the prior couple years (
[https://www.visionzerosf.org/wp-
content/uploads/2019/07/06.2...](https://www.visionzerosf.org/wp-
content/uploads/2019/07/06.2019Fatalities_JuneSummaryMemo.pdf) )

Also average vehicle miles travelled in the US is up (
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M12MTVUSM227NFWA/](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M12MTVUSM227NFWA/)
), and so are nationwide pedestrian fatalities:
[https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/01/23/the-bible-belt-
should...](https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/01/23/the-bible-belt-should-
really-be-called-the-carnage-corset-for-pedestrians/)

Ride-hailing usage over transit may be part of the problem:
[https://steps.ucdavis.edu/new-research-ride-hailing-
impacts-...](https://steps.ucdavis.edu/new-research-ride-hailing-impacts-
travel-behavior/) ) .

------
Tiktaalik
The sad thing is that vapourware and the promise of technology to easily solve
our problems has real impacts on delaying progress by other means.

Cars are the number one killer of children in America. Political action to
reduce this number by redesigning cities to limit human/car interactions and
providing safer transportation alternatives is stymied by opponents to who
point to assuredly safe autonomous cars as being just around the corner.

See also Hypertube vs high speed rail and carbon capture vs carbon taxes.

~~~
WhompingWindows
Your examples just show our political system is corrupted by big money, it's
not about tech and vaporware.

-Cars have power due to historical considerations: car lobbyists and rich car owners getting their environments designed for their own car-use.

-Hyperloop has almost nothing to do with high speed rail failing in the USA, it is a brand new concept and there were decades of destruction of trains by the auto industry and by the US's poor geographic make-up for trains.

-Carbon capture is just a fake-out by fossil fuel industry, there is no economic potential for CCS. Carbon taxes can't even pass in liberal WA in two referanda. Carbon taxes are simply extremely unpalatable, due to massive fossil-fuel lobbying against them and to subsidize fossil fuels. Therefore, most Americans are ignorant of just how much their fossil-fuel habits truly cost, since their other taxes and politicians ensure they are cheap and readily available with no taxation. Big moneyed interests have mortgaged our planet's future to keep gas at $2.50/gallon.

------
pwinnski
Wise move. Self-driving cars are likely to need a year more of testing for the
next quite-a-few years.

~~~
coldpie
Yeah it's been pretty entertaining to watch this shoe drop. I feel like 2
years ago the self-driving car manufacturers were releasing crazy deadlines,
like full self-driving in 5 years. But they seemed very confident, so I
believed them, despite my skepticism. Now they're walking all that back and
removing any definite-ness from their timelines, which falls back in line with
my picture of reality.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
> I feel like 2 years ago the self-driving car manufacturers were releasing
> crazy deadlines, like full self-driving in 5 years.

Everything is _always_ five years away. That's the sweet spot for getting lots
of funding while allowing time for the wow factor to wear off so you can
backtrack on what you really intend to deliver (if anything at all).

~~~
dmix
This isn’t unique to car AI, every software project looks doable at the start,
you can even get “90%” there where it looks and feels like a real solution.
But then real life usage testing starts or the implementation process exposes
a thousand small problems you didn’t except in the last 10%, or your own
original design wasn’t flexible enough for some constraints requiring a
significant rethinking of that 90%. Just ask Jeff Hawkins.

This is going to be a huge business opportunity for car manufacturers and
software companies, two industries with access to plenty of capital. So the
not being left behind risk (FOMO) is naturally going to be high.

Combine that with potentially saving hundreds of thousands of lives from car
accidents and being able to look at your phone instead of driving (freeing up
countless human hours) and you have the recipe for extreme optimism.

The only important question is whether x company overpaid in the short term
for acquisitions or scaling up ... and/or lack a runway to really achieve
their goals. Otherwise it’s pretty par for the course, especially for
software/innovation at this scale.

It’s quite possible we’ll hit these goals sooner now that industry went full
bore on solving these problems and we’ll benefit as a society in many ways
besides transportation from the AI work.

Most importantly, who cares if some pension funds and wealthy investors
involved in high risk capital investment lose some money in the short term.

~~~
irq11
_”This isn’t unique to cars, every software project looks easy at the start,
you can even get “90%” there where it looks and feels like a real solution.
But then real life usage testing starts or the implementation process exposes
a thousand small problems you didn’t except in the last 10%, or your own
original design wasn’t flexible enough for some constraints requiring a
significant rethinking of that 90%.”_

Yep, and in silicon valley, anyone who seriously plans for the consequences of
this is dismissed as insufficiently futurist.

It’s hard to thrive as a responsible engineer when there’s always another
huckster around the corner, willing to promise that 5-year future today.

------
hn_throwaway_99
Perhaps someone with more self-driving car knowledge can help enlighten me,
but from everything I've read it seems like the biggest problems are from
unexpected behaviors in urban environments (e.g. cyclists going the wrong way,
stopped delivery vehicles that folks behind must scoot out into the oncoming
traffic lane to drive around, police officer directions, etc.) and I just
don't see how those problems can be solved without artificial general
intelligence, which is a long ways off.

For restricted access roads (i.e. highways), though, the technology seems
ready to go. I know there is a lot of concern about the "hand-off problem",
but that doesn't really seem like an insurmountable issue. If say 35 mins of a
45 min commute is on a highway, and only the last 10 mins are in a city, that
seems like it would be a huge noon to tons of people if the car could take
over, completely, on the highway. Are manufacturers likely to take this middle
step first?

~~~
eclipxe
Yes, see Tesla Autopilot...

~~~
JustSomeNobody
... run right into the side of an 18 wheeler.

~~~
notatoad
once. they still crash less often than human drivers crash their cars on the
highway. I don't want to say Autopilot is good, but everything else is also
terrible.

~~~
rainyMammoth
those are bullshit stats.

They compare overall crashes in all kind of normal highway environment and all
kind of drivers and vehicles with the very selective places where the Tesla
users decided to enable autopilot. Tesla users are also more educated and have
better vehicles which has been shown to reduce the comparative crash rate by a
lot.

We don't have data to compare but if I had to take a wild guess on crash rates
I am pretty convinced that Tesla crashes more than the equivalent driver on
the same stretch of highway as of today.

------
tempsy
Not sure if anyone can speak to it but looking through recent Glassdoor
reviews for Cruise suggests a lot of issues with management from engineers...

------
justicezyx
Happy to see this, my reaction is that they are serious about pushing the plan
forward in the long term; and they are careful about managing the risks.
That's the type of innovation I admire and enjoy the most.

------
S_A_P
Just curious to me how so many "experts" called this a solved problem in the
early 2010s, and only just now are realizing the n² * n² * n² edge cases that
seem difficult to handle.

~~~
nolok
Meanwhile Waymo doesn't ask anything to anyone and just do their thing,
repeatedly seeing competitors move ahead through PR move before dropping back
through reality. If there is one company I would bet money on actually getting
there, it's them.

~~~
S_A_P
You may be correct, and they do seem to be making real strides. I hope its not
because they have been lucky until now. (which statistically speaking is
unlikely)

------
mrfusion
Welcome to the trough of disillusionment.

------
HNisCurated
Quite sad, I worked on one of these cars, and spent late nights getting my
part ready on time.

Then I was a GM tariffs sacrifice.

My understanding is that 5G should fix the winter/rain issues, as you can
calculate location more precise.

~~~
nradov
5G won't fix anything. The location precision is worse than what you can
usually get with the latest GNSS receivers. And what happens when the 5G tower
is down because a construction crew accidentally cut the backhaul fiber?

~~~
anchpop
> And what happens when the 5G tower is down because a construction crew
> accidentally cut the backhaul fiber?

I assume the cars would stop and we would have to go back to driving them
manually for a few hours or days

~~~
jimpudar
The goal is eventually to have vehicles without manual controls, so this won't
be an option.

~~~
nradov
Outside of a few limited areas, that goal won't be achieved in our lifetimes.

------
jedberg
To all the naysayers saying, "I told you so!", keep in mind this is a
perception problem, not a technology problem. I've been in a self-driving car
-- it drove better than just about any Lyft or Uber I've ever been in. They're
already safer than human drivers, with fewer accidents per mile than humans.

And if you eliminate Tesla from the category, since they aren't using LIDAR,
you can also point out that a self-driving car has never killed a passenger.

The only reason they have to wait is because they know the public expects
perfection. The public doesn't understand statistics. If a self-driver kills a
person, it would set the entire industry back decades, even though humans kill
people with cars every single day.

People just aren't ready to accept that self-driving cars are safer, even if
they aren't perfect.

Edits to reply to comments:

To those saying "It wouldn't work in my climate", that's probably true, but
they aren't trying to make it work in your climate. All the self-driving
companies are trying to release taxi services that work in cities with good
weather.

To those saying "But pedestrians are important too", yes I agree with you. I
was trying to point out that the fears of being _inside_ a self-driving car
are unfounded, because they are very safe. I still think I'd rather be around
a bunch of self-driving cars _outside_ too, but yes, they have killed people
outside the car.

And on a side note, this is my most controversial comment ever. I've watched
the points on this post as I reply elsewhere go from +3 to -3 and everywhere
in-between. I think this right here sums up the public perception issues self
driving companies have ahead of them.

~~~
mwsfc
>And if you eliminate Tesla from the category, since they aren't using LIDAR,
you can also point out that a self-driving car has never killed a passenger.

Umm, this is leaving out the very relevant fact that a pedestrian WAS killed
near Phoenix by a self driving Uber.

~~~
jedberg
That person wasn't a passenger. My point was that people who are afraid to get
_in_ a self driver aren't looking at statistics correctly.

~~~
majewsky
So you're safe if you're _inside_ a self-driving vehicle at all times? That's
reassuring.

~~~
behringer
That's true of regular cars too. If you're on a road you're much safer in a
car than outside one.

~~~
BurningFrog
Yes, walking on a road is unsafe. Glad we settled that.

