
Uber’s autonomous cars drove 20,354 miles and had to be taken over at every mile - panarky
https://www.recode.net/2017/3/16/14938116/uber-travis-kalanick-self-driving-internal-metrics-slow-progress
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sokoloff
They _averaged_ more than one intervention per mile, but did not "have to be
taken over at every mile".

I worked on a Daimler-Benz autonomous vehicle back in 1991 and our bus could
drive many highway miles at a stretch without intervention. What Uber is doing
is many, many times harder than what we were doing, but I have to imagine that
they had many clean, fully autonomous miles (and many others that had multiple
interventions per mile to offset).

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adrianmonk
Not only that, but if I were in charge of picking routes for autonomous test
vehicles to drive, I'd pick scenarios that the cars have trouble with.

Except for a small amount of regression testing, not much point in sending it
out to deal with scenarios I know it can already handle. I'd want to gather
data on whether my software improvements have given it the ability to handle
scenarios it previously failed on.

Point being, it's probably not a random sample of possible routes. It's
probably skewed. So the statistics probably aren't very meaningful.

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convolvatron
just last week I saw an uber 'self driving car' in front of me get radically
confused about the presence of a bike line to its right. i think it may have
been trying to take a turn.

turn signal on, hew over into the bike lane. stop abruptly before it hit the
curb. try to back up. slew to the left back into the car lane and stop again.
turn signal off. repeat.

as a software person, I can't understand why any corporate lawyer would let
these massive liability exposures run around a city with bikes and pedestrians
and other erratic drivers.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
_I can 't understand why any corporate lawyer would let these massive
liability exposures run around_

A 'lawyer' isn't something stamped out by a cookie cutter. Just like humans,
they're all different. Uber can simply acquire their lawyers straight out of
Hollywood villain central casting:

    
    
       Job interviewer: What should we do about all these
          pesky laws that regulate taxi services?
    
       Prospective Uber lawyer: err ...
          move fast and break things?
    
       Job interviewer: Congratulations, you're just the
          type of employee we're looking for!
    

Until very recently that's worked out pretty well for them.

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Justsignedup
Her "one year ago" piece on tipping culture has literally the same 2 ending
paragraphs. I am not going to give her praises for journalism, but I do agree
that her anecdotes are true, and have experienced similar things. At least she
didn't have to worry about getting canceled on when the driver noticed you're
not white.

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babesh
How generically do these bugs get fixed? How do these bugs get fixed?

