
Uber will not re-apply for self-driving car permit in California - ExcelSaga
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/27/uber-will-not-reapply-for-self-driving-car-permit-in-california/
======
jballanc
I enjoy hating on Uber as much as the next person, but this honestly just
sounds like shrewd focusing of effort in light of recent events on Uber's
part. Their permit was expiring, and there was going to be a load of paperwork
along with probably lengthy boardroom meetings with authorities explaining
what went wrong and why it won't happen again, if Uber wanted to renew.

I see no reason (in this article, at least) to suspect that Uber won't re-
apply at a later date when they have a better handle on what went wrong in
Tempe.

~~~
keyle
Well it's not like they made a booboo, and some bugs caused some inconvenience
to a few or many people. Someone died.

~~~
Rapzid
If Uber is not found legally at fault which seems likely given the
circumstances and based on opinions from people with legal expertise in these
cases, I highly doubt they will let themselves got derailed completely by
this. Too much money is at stake.

Further, we don't stop using trains, or buses when a pedestrian makes an error
and gets killed because they "could have not been hit, maybe". For those who
have paid attention to those other accidents(even though the local transit
isn't as sexy to hate on as Uber, and they didn't involve AI), it can actually
be quite shocking how little of a blip it causes in the transportation system.

~~~
CydeWeys
Self-driving cars have to be _at least_ as safe as human-driven ones for them
to ever become accepted and thus widespread. Realistically, they need to be
many times safer than human-driven cars for acceptance. It doesn't matter
who's technically at fault; they cannot cause more deaths than human drivers.
Everyone makes mistakes and they don't deserve to be killed by an algorithm
for it.

~~~
Consultant32452
I'm going to say something that I suspect many will quietly agree with but may
not be willing to say out loud.

I'm confident that self-driving cars will eventually be safer than human
driven ones. I'm not confident that this can be realistically achieved without
killing some unfortunate bystanders in the process of getting to that point.
That doesn't mean we should accept these cars running amok killing people all
over the place. It doesn't mean I think this specific case involving Uber is
"reasonable" either. I just think, in a general sense, a realist has to be
able to try to find some balance between short term lives lost and long term
lives saved.

~~~
gambiting
The thing is that any other industry that works like this(we have to accept
some people will be hurt/die to achieve progress) - like the medical testing
industry - is extremely heavily regulated and most crucially, all participants
in testing are consenting to being tested. Letting autonomous cars on public
roads is testing it on people who have not consented being tested on. If I get
hit by an autonomous car I really don't care that thanks to this
Uber/Google/Waymo/Whoever gets to improve their algorithm. I don't care how
they want to do it - but I don't want them testing this stuff on public roads.

~~~
kolinko
Can you give an example of an industry that began with regulation?

Medical industry is heavily regulated now, but regulations appeared _after_ it
has grown in size. Similarly transport, construction, and anything else I
could think of.

The reason it happens this way is that it's hard to set up standards and
practices for something that is entirely new - when you set them up too soon,
they may end up impossible to achieve, and block innovation altogether.

~~~
notahacker
Funnily enough, the automobile industry is one of them. The Locomotives on
Highways Act predated the car by decades in the UK, and its regulations were
_extremely_ onerous. The relaxation of speed limits from 4mph to 14mph and
removing of the need for a human escort on foot helped, but we had functioning
automobile manufacturing in the UK before then. The speed limit on UK roads
was 20mph or lower until the 1930s, and Britons built a thriving domestic car
manufacturing industry and even broke land speed records several times in that
period.

(Similarly, and less comically in retrospect, crash testing regimes resulted
in a lot of safety improvements that would have been unlikely as a result of
purely commercial considerations)

~~~
mavhc
The horse and railway industries lobbied for that act of course.

The 14mph and no red flag escort was only for machines <3 tonnes, in 1896,
probably only a few 100 machines on the road then anyway

------
walrus01
for those who haven't seen it, the manufacturer of the lidar system believes
their hardware was functioning normally, and the problem is in uber's
software: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2018/03/23/lidar-
ma...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2018/03/23/lidar-maker-
velodyne-baffled-by-self-driving-ubers-failure-to-avoid-
pedestrian/#56a42cec5cc2)

------
askafriend
Just because they will not re-apply in California now doesn't mean their
efforts are stopping - and it doesn't mean they won't apply for permits in
different states or just re-apply in California at a later date.

HN seems to be jumping to radical conclusions on the level of Reddit these
days but I get that everyone is a bit emotional around Facebook / Uber during
this news cycle...

~~~
ExcelSaga
My guess is that they don’t want to be seen asking for something they’ll
publically fail to get. At this point, outside of the world of tech, people
who were downright alarmed by SDV’s now have a place to hang their hat.
Politicians follow the direction of popular sentiment, and they’re not going
to risk the next Uber fatality having their stamp on it. They’ll be thinking
the next corpse might be a child’s as well, and how that would hurt their
prospects for re-election.

On HN there are a lot of Vulcans who have stats ready to go about human driver
fatalities, but that’s far out of touch with the average voter. Fear =
Dread/Sense of Control, and most people think they have a high degree of
control as the driver of a car. I’m not arguing that they’re right, but
they’re the majority.

~~~
toomuchtodo
If I wanted to put Uber, Waymo, and other self driving companies out of
business, I’d run on the platform of not allowing Silicon Valley technocrats
deciding which kids in the street ate going to die the next time their
reckless attempt at disruption goes astray.

It doesn’t matter if you’re being intellectually disingenuous if you think you
can win on the platform.

~~~
afarrell
But you'd be out-voted by elderly people who are afraid of losing their
mobility when they lose the ability to drive a car.

~~~
ExcelSaga
Ever been to FL or AZ? The oldest people you’ve ever seen are still driving,
slowly, dangerously, and happily. No one is taking their licenses with the
AARP, around. Meanwhile you may be overestimating the love very old people
have for automation, the prospect of being killed by an SDV, or being driven
around town by a machine.

~~~
umanwizard
I’m from AZ and there are plenty of people there who don’t drive because
they’re too old to.

~~~
toomuchtodo
My grandmother is 86, lives in Florida, and the state renews her license
annually with no qualms.

~~~
umanwizard
I wasn't talking about whether the law forbids it. There are plenty of people
who get too old and frail to drive, and stop driving of their own accord,
without the government forcing them to.

------
cletus
Something is real fishy with Uber and the Arizona fatality. If you believe
Uber's dashcam footage it was dark and hard to see the woman. Several people
in the area posted comparison dashcam footage showing it just wasn't that dark
[1].

This raises a bunch of questions:

\- Was this the unprocessed footage from a dashcam in the Uber car?

\- How bright were the headlights?

\- What other sensors could've and should've detected an object to be avoided
on the road?

I honestly don't know why this view seems to be so unpopular here (probably
because of the optimism for self-driving cars, which I share) but why isn't
criminal negligence for Uber a possibility here? Apparently they also disabled
one of the safety systems in the Volvo XC90 designed to avoid this sort of
thing.

If it does come to light that Uber misrepresented the conditions of the crash,
tampered with the evidence in any way or even tampered with other safety
measures then shouldn't a criminal case be a consideration?

[1]: [https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/police-chief-said-
uber-...](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/police-chief-said-uber-victim-
came-from-the-shadows-dont-believe-it/)

~~~
grzm
At this point we really don't have enough information to know what happened
other than the car hit and killed the pedestrian. We don't know how or if this
dash cam video played into the control systems of the car. The accident is
tragic and of course should be looked into. The NTSB is investigating[0] and I
assume will have access to a lot better information than we have at this
point, including all of that you're interested in. Lots of arm-chair
quarterbacking at this point, given the paucity of information available right
now.

As for "I honestly don't know why this view seems to be so unpopular here",
there are opinions _all over the map_ , including those very similar to yours.
This discussion has been going on for days in multiple submissions, and again,
based on very little information.

[0]: [https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-
releases/Pages/NR20180320.as...](https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-
releases/Pages/NR20180320.aspx)

------
kozikow
There should be a way of increasing safety driver attentiveness.

E.g. make drivers labelers. E.g. driver have to label any pedestrians they see
on a special HUD. Add financial incentives for labeling pedestrians quickly.

Some variation of this idea may reduce data acquisition costs and improve
safety drivers.

~~~
Piskvorrr
Munroe, R., [https://xkcd.com/1897/](https://xkcd.com/1897/) [XKCD]

------
mpreda
I'm thinking about this simple trick to keep the safety driver focused: at
random intervals, the software would provide a stimulus (such as a red LED
light projected on windshield), and the person would need to react as quickly
as possible by pushing a button. Thus the person would know she has to expect
the need to react quickly, and the software can measure the level of
attentiveness.

~~~
make3
there are deep learning solutions that classify super well wether the driver
is paying attention or not.

you could just play a buzzer when that happens, and tell them they will get
fired if it happens too often (after human review of the tapes ofc)

~~~
slivym
This seems like a misunderstanding of the problem. The problem is that it's
very difficult paying attention to something you have no control over or
interaction with. To stick in a prod to punish people isn't going to make it
easier. You'll end up just firing a lot of drivers. What would be better is to
give the human something to do. For example you could put a set of input
devices in the car for the human: Tell them to record their 'level of
confidence' so you can check that against the cars confidence levels, or input
suggesting steering adjustments to gauge where the car is differing from
normal human behaviour.

That way when your driver has become an active participant (albeit probably
useless) in the driving.

~~~
bkor
Train drivers are expected do just that. Driving a train has way less
interaction than a car. They managed to setup a system (at least in
Netherlands) where they do pay attention. Specifically hiring people based on
personality/skill, various things in the train, checks, suspension when you
miss a red sign, etc.

It seems Uber did none of that. It's super obvious the safety driver isn't
paying attention. Why wasn't this noticed? Why wasn't a system setup to handle
this? It feels like they cut corners.

------
lewis500
The self driving car program seems like reaching for immortality. Just because
your company identifies something that will eventually kill it on a long
enough timeline doesn’t mean you need to develop that product yourself. Wonder
how much better off they could have been if they had focused on tweaking
aspects of their current service.

~~~
skellera
Their business model would be destroyed by the first company to do self
driving. The costs of paying drivers is a big part of the fee paid by riders.
It was the natural progression for Uber.

It just seems like Waymo is doing a much better job. The internal problems at
Uber are going to have lasting effects even if the problems have already
ended.

~~~
ineedasername
Yes, but there's a big difference between perfecting the tech and implementing
it for a use case. Uber would have the logistics and infrastrcuture to
implement it, that's an easy call to license the tech from someone that has
the tech down pat but no interest in being a taxi company. Heck they could
probably have partnered with Google as a testing partner.

~~~
galdosdi
Well, but leverage matters. Whoever owns self driving patents will take close
to 100% of the profit margins involved in taxis for the life of the patents.

For example, Apple gets most of the margin out of an iPhone. Apple could
switch hardware vendors. The hardware vendors can't find anyone else who sells
the iPhone OS.

Same thing here. If you have the self driving tech, the logistics and a shiny
app and the dumb car hardware are the easy part you can buy for the lowest
price available from many competing vendors (or conversely, license your
technology exclusively to whoever pays the highest price -- either way, you
have total leverage here and they have none, because without self driving tech
there is no business)

Anyway, Waymo does not seem at all disinterested in the taxi business,
probably because they realize that's the easy part. Alphabet engineers can put
out a decent dispatch app in a fiscal quarter easily, and it markets itself.
Or they could create a bidding war between Uber, Lyft, Via, etc.... Even with
massive investor subsidies, nobody will be able to beat the rock bottom prices
of a true driverless taxi service.

Uber investors know this, which is why Uber was forced to pretend to develop
driverless tech, because if they don't, then Uber stock should be selling at
earnings multiples more appropriate for a steel mill, not a software company.

------
richardknop
I think this might be the bursting of the Silicon Valley's self driving car
bubble. People are starting to realise tech is nowhere near to make self
driving cars feasible on scale. We still might be decade or more away from
tech being advanced enough to consider going in this direction.

~~~
FreakyT
_> "tech is nowhere near to make self driving cars feasible on scale"_

To be more specific, _Uber 's_ tech is the one that's nowhere near feasible.
According to recently leaked data, Uber's self driving system is literally
orders of magnitude more failure prone than Waymo's[1].

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/technology/uber-self-
driv...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/technology/uber-self-driving-cars-
arizona.html)

~~~
bkor
From what I understood elsewhere, the numbers in that article are about
different measures (apples vs oranges comparison).

Article states:

> 5,600 miles before the driver had to take control from the computer to steer
> out of trouble

Apparently they have a number for a) number of miles per intervention and b)
number of miles per intervention to prevent an accident. Waymo's number is
measure b, Uber's number if measure a.

------
bitmapbrother
In related news Nvidia has also suspended its self-driving car tests in the
wake of the Uber crash. Uber uses Nvidia’s self-driving technology in their
cars.

------
username223
Uber could actually be a viable business if they gave up on being a unicorn.
Right now, you can step out of an airport in a new country, pull out your
phone, type in an address, and someone will drive you there. They're a
universal ride-hailing service, and they could probably even charge a premium
for that versus local taxis. Unfortunately, they're probably in too deep to
become a medium-sized business.

Also, building their own fleet of robo-taxis is insane when their current
business model relies on (underpaying for using) people's personal cars.

------
pure_ambition
Has anyone asked how many hours or miles that self-driving car drove
autonomously before the fatality? It could very well be that the accident
proves that, while horrible, self-driving cars are much less susceptible to
fatal accidents. To date, I have not seen this data anywhere...

~~~
stetrain
I think those statistics are difficult to get a complete picture on.

In california at least the manufacturers have to log miles driven in
autonomous mode and the number of disengagement events over those miles.

That can be misleading though, since a car could log thousands of miles on a
nice smooth stretch of interstate over and over, then spend significant amount
of time disengaged in areas with pedestrians, cross walks, and stop signs.

The same pinch of salt should be applied to stats that someone like Uber
themselves makes claims on, about how many miles they have driven autonomously
with no incidents.

We could probably draw conclusions about safety per mile travelled on highways
but probably not in trickier surface street scenarios without a lot more
detail from the manufacturers.

------
hashkb
> “We proactively suspended our self-driving operations, including in
> California, immediately following the Tempe incident,”

They mean "reactively", not "proactively". Pathetic.

------
gringoDan
Uber is a dying company that is bleeding out.

 _Uber 's current business model:[1]_

Uber is the middleman in a two-sided marketplace. It connects drivers with
passengers, and takes a cut for this service.

Uber's competitive advantage is that it had the capital to attract drivers -
with lots of drivers on its network, costs & wait times are lower for
passengers, so passengers use Uber. Cue flywheel metaphor.

BUT Uber is still not profitable.[2] Unlike Amazon, there are no economies of
scale in this business. Cities are local markets - Uber's dominance in A
doesn't help it in B. And, as Uber acquires more customers, its cost of driver
acquisition increases. Uber is so big that in many cities, it is churning
through drivers and needs to incentivize the current drivers to stay on the
platform.

Counterpoint: This is all a short-term concern! Once drivers are eliminated
from the equation, Uber will be insanely profitable!

Wrong.

 _Once self-driving cars go mainstream:_

Uber's competitive advantage completely disappears. As a passenger, all I care
about is getting from point A to point B safely, quickly, and cheaply.

As a manufacturer of self-driving cars, why would I sell or lease them to a
middleman (or if we're getting extreme, even to consumers!) to take the
profits in this space? As Tesla, GM, etc. I am going to pump out a fleet of
self-driving cars and have consumers pay for a subscription plan (X number of
minutes / miles per month on my fleet). Because this is a very capital-
intensive business, the government will then grant local monopolies to
different providers and regulate them as utilities, much as it does today with
telecoms.

Uber provides no value in this scenario. The winners in this space are going
to be car manufacturers and the developers (licensers) of the self-driving
software that get legal approval (and it seems extremely unlikely that this
will be Uber).

[1] Full disclosure, half of this is a repost of what I wrote on another
thread earlier today.

[2] [http://www.businessinsider.com/ubers-losses-narrowed-
in-q4-b...](http://www.businessinsider.com/ubers-losses-narrowed-in-q4-but-
theres-still-work-to-do-2018-2)

~~~
xapata
> no economies of scale

Brand is scalable. Company processes are scalable. There are many reasons to
be a large company serving many cities.

~~~
gringoDan
Fair points. Perhaps I should have specified that the unit economics don't
scale with expansion to new cities.

------
yorby
Which state/area is next on the list?

------
webkike
Is this the death of Uber?

~~~
cryptoz
I personally don't believe they can survive with human drivers (unit
economics) and I personally don't believe they will catch up in engineering
and technology of self driving cars, especially after this (but I never
thought they would, too far behind from the start). So I would say maybe yes.

But there are probably ways out of this for them. They will probably chug
along for at least a decade and in that time anything can happen.

~~~
phil21
Curious why you don't think they can survive with human drivers? Every
financial report I've been able to get hard data out of seems to show them
very close to operational profitability. Somewhere within 10-20%.

I personally don't feel there is that much price sensitivity in the market to
make a 15% price increase cause volumes to dip substantially. I could of
course be wrong, but it seems to me Uber is at a point they could be
"instantly" profitable if they simply decided to be and decided to stop
expanding.

~~~
dannyw
Uber is already doing pretty well with price segmentation in the US (the Uber
Express POOL comes with a forced 2 minute wait); they can certainly:

\- raise prices of uberX, price sensitive riders can still use POOL or Express
POOL \- reduce marketing and growth expenses; reframe KPIs and targets in term
of "dollar ROI" instead of new rider/driver targets

Uber absolutely works from a unit economics perspective. How do you think
taxis exist?

~~~
geofft
Taxis are usually a bit pricier and also don't subsidize a large team of
software engineers at Silicon Valley salaries.

~~~
CydeWeys
Here in NYC, the mortgage on a taxi medallion costs a lot more than the total
salary of all Uber developers divided by the number of Uber drivers.

There are other costs that go into taxis that Ubers don't have. Taxis have
back-office support staff too (the people you call up to order one to you).

------
jackconnor
Good.

