San Francisco Is Teeming With Self-Driving Cars And It’s A Mess
Self-driving cars without safety drivers behind the wheel have flooded San Francisco streets. In August, two of the leading autonomous vehicle companies, General Motors-owned Cruise and Alphabet-owned Waymo, were granted permission to expand operations, allowing people to hail a driverless car like an Uber. But the launch has been plagued with issues. In October, California’s Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruise’s permit to operate the company’s driverless fleet in the state, citing an incident in which a Cruise vehicle dragged a pedestrian for 20 feet after a collision. Cruise had been quickly expanding to other cities including Phoenix, Austin, Dallas, Houston and Miami, but the company paused driverless operations nationwide following the California suspension. Waymo is still operating robotaxis in San Francisco.
Before Cruise’s permit was revoked, CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa took a ride in one of its autonomous vehicles. She also gave Waymo a try and gives a comparison of the two very different rides. She also sat down with San Francisco city officials and Kyle Vogt, CEO of Cruise, to explore how the launch of robotaxis has been going for the city and what’s next.
Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
03:30 - Robotaxis go driverless
09:10 - A rocky start
17:70 - Future expansion
Produced, shot and edited by: Andrew Evers
Reporter: Deirdre Bosa
Senior Field Producer: Laura Batchelor
Supervising Producer: Jeniece Pettitt
Additional camera: Sydney Boyo, Katie Brigham, Marc Ganley
Additional footage: Cruise, Waymo, Aurora, Zoox, Getty Images, NBC News
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San Francisco Is Teeming With Self-Driving Cars And It’s A Mess
It's baffling how US cities don't try to improve public transport instead of trying to increase cars on the road
What sized city? Public transport is not as convenient as driving your own car except where congestion and parking are factors. In small-town USA, that’s not generally a problem. In many larger cities in the US, buses - and to a lesser degree metros - are populated by drunks and thugs …
That's only true if you aren't properly staffing your trains. Large cities like SF should not be encouraging more cars but they should be building out more metros and trains to the suburbs so I really wonder what kind of a stranglehold the car conglomerates have on big cities to prevent them from investing in public transportation. @@Clyde-2055
Agreed. Public transport would pretty much eliminate all aspects of traffic.
Public transportation is over.
People with no alternative and poor people use public ttransit, this is taxi service.
Self driving cars are an example of a technology where 90% of the problems have been solved but the other 10% is going to take decades if at all.
The problem isn't with technology is with people. The cars are safer than humans, let the cars drive
@@alpz6295yeah that's a problem with automation in general. even the smallest amount of human intervention can really mess up your architecture
That last 10 percent is probably where most serious accidents happen too
@@taylortoggaf8543 Exactly.
I think that interaction with the guy who kicked the car underscores how many problems are left to solve in this realm. A human driver would have intuitively understood the guy wanted to parallel park and either would have backed up or gone around him. Many situations require understanding the intention of humans, which seems like a much harder problem to solve than recognizing lanes and obstacles.
I think it's reasonable that emergency services should be given a "master key" so they can jump into any autonomous taxi and move it.
Excellent idea !
While that is a good idea, that still takes precious time away from the emergency responders. If anything, the vehicles should be programmed to stay clear of Emergency vehicles at all times.
@@dr_pibby That too yes. I think it's emblematic of their reckless attitude that they didn't put that near the top of their to-do list. Human drivers know to get out the way of emergency vehicles.
I was thinking more inline of using trackers and signals already installed in emergency vehicles. Not sure how much data is transfered but from what I know ambulances do send signals to traffic lights to change, so it could be used with AV to send "avoid".
@@Stratos1988 Yes. And of course it should be relatively easy just to detect sirens and certain colours of flashing light. That's what some traffic lights do.
Her "He kicked the car, he just spat on the car." Customer service "Do you feel safe?" Her "yes" this must happen alot in san fransico.
Honestly that part felt like a parody/comedy bit, she treated the guy like an NPC or something. People loathe those self-driving cars for a reason, she's a reporter, so why doesn't she at least try to talk to the guy? Instead she's basically shooting a commercial for big-tech
@@BdR76 it seems drivers there are not much better than these self driving cars. The first thing that guy should do is signaling that he wanted to park. With drivers like him, no surprise he is that stressed.
@@BdR76 I wouldn't feel safe with his behaviour and totally understand why she kept the windows up. She was critical of the ride saying it was like a student driver and that they got honked at 4 times. She basically said it wasn't ready for prime time. Doesn't sound like a commercial to me.
@@BdR76Why would talk to a disgusting person that behaves worse than an animal? What can they teach you? 😂😂
@@BdR76 yeah just roll down your window and be nice. I'm sure he'll be reasonable. OK dude
To be fair, driving in San Francisco is usually pretty similar to that first ride anyway. As a 10-year resident of SF, being stuck behind a jerk with their hazards on every 500 feet, some thug or vagrant spitting on your car or kicking it, and feeling generally uneasy about the next block is on par.
I am not sure I can think of a more difficult city to drive in. You have to "improvise" a lot to actually get anywhere.
@@rfenton19851 most major cities are like that. Drive around downtown Chicago and you'll see the same things; coupled with taxi drivers driving like they are insane.
@@rfenton19851 Check any major city in europe... only lacks the thugs
Yep. It feels stupid to me to have SF be one of the first cities to test this new technology. It should be one of the last places in the U.S. (along with NY) to use this kind of new tech given the challenges of driving there. Obviously there is a lot of money to be earned in SF with a good AV product and a lot of the tech is worked on in the Bay Area. But a city like San Jose would probably be so much easier to test out the product compared to SF if they were going to pick a major bay area city.
Kicking and spitting? Cussing? So the AI was accepted as one of their own?😅
Who is accepting legal responsibility for a death of a person as a result of self-driving car impeding fire or ambulance service?
It depends on what you mean by responsibility. I assume cruise was fined for this in the same way that a human driver impeding an ambulance will also gain you a fine as a human. This would not send you to jail for murder if that is what you mean.
@@arturodelarosa4394 are you saying if a faulty algorithm, sensor, camera, etc in a self-driving vehicle causes death of a person, the penalty prescribed by current law is a fine for the company that manufactured the vehicle or one operating it?
@@rok1475 The company that operates the vehicle. Not the manufacturer. Although depending on what it is, in this case night be one and the same. But it is not out of the question that if a particular sensor falls repeatedly and causes issues for Cruise, then after they take the responsibility and pay for it. They in turn might sue the manufacturer. But that is just legal action. Although in a way is cruise morally shifting the blame but not the responsibility in the eyes of the law.
The business pressure to push these should be a giant red flag. This is about saving money paying people not making the roads safer. Public transportation would be a much bigger effect on safety.
Drivers or AVs who drive "carefully" but are also largely oblivious of road conditions and don't drive well with traffic flows may cause collateral incidents or accidents that aren't counted in the safety statistics of that driver. Such as a driver getting confused and stopping dangerously may cause another car that then veers around it to get into an unnecessary crash. So I think saying these cars are safer because of their crash statistics when they're clearly being observed as driving badly and causing traffic interruptions is probably misleading
Correct. AVs can drive very conservatively with an extremely low risk tolerance, but such a driving style may not integrate well into the current urban traffic conditions.
@@laod7192 Just a consequence of DMVs all over issuing permits to monkeys. I'd bet AVs will do extremely well in places such as Germany where the bar is just a tad bit (much) higher for drivers. They don't just hand licenses to anyone
That's true. I've driven in 20 countries in 4 continents, and have by far one of the worst driving experience in Cali.@@Demopans5990
If people start veering around other cars and performing dangerous manoeuvres to get around a car, that's their fault!
You should always be able to stop before you strike a vehicle in front of you... What you are describing is irresponsible driving.
What the fire chief doesn't understand is that the people who invested billions of dollars in these cars, WANT THEIR MONEY BACK. They're going to push these out whether they are ready or not.
yes yes indeed
@@doords the fire chief is not asking google or gm to shut the idea down simply delay it or make the tech more realiable
They can want what they want, but it's THEIR commercial risk. No way a public service has to bow for commercial actions. And at the end of this story also still is the courtroom where a complete company can be taken down after a lawsuit. THAT's also a reality.
I must say, the performance of the Waymo vehicle was impressive. I didn’t know quite how far this tech had evolved. As somebody who is visually impaired and will never be able to drive, I do hope for the day when these will be readily available without the requirement for a physical driver. In the meantime though, San Francisco and other big metro areas have incredible mass transit! We should all be doing our part and using that whenever possible
Waymo is not scalable imo.
Mass transit sucks …
honestly its not worth the damage they will cause and the losses of jobs it will create.
@@queeffersthrlnd1620 well, first we need to establish exactly how much damage they cause as compared to human drivers. We definitely need independent, properly controlled studies not conducted by the companies themselves lol. I think these will be a net benefit for society though if we get the regulations right to make sure it’s safe. Like I said, as somebody with a disability that prevents me from driving, this could be incredibly helpful to many people
@@queeffersthrlnd1620I agree mostly, but it’s nice to not have to put up with the b/a of some of the taxi firms in the Uk. I have had a drug driver once and he was drifting off. I’ve had the quoran offered twice lol - and a few homophobic rants (not aimed at me) to listen to. These latter examples were for early morning trips to airport - I’d hate to see how elderly or vulnerable feel about these imbeciles 😂
Waymo uses proprietary technology that allows for human personnel to remotely control the vehicles in the rare case that the automated system needs help.
Thanks for that. I was about to ask about remote driving.
Given that human intervention is needed every 5 miles it seems a stretch to call this autonomous driving.
This feature is what keeps Waymo moving through all the hurdles of SF while Cruise gets stuck behind a cone in the road causing mass traffic buildup.
Something like a driver? So they need a driver to control a self driving car?
@@NyanyiCpopp
After seeing that man kick the car I'd rather not visit San Fransisco at all.
boohoo someone kicked a rental car 😭😭
16:58 - Cruise CEO goes "I think we are doing a great job there..." as they're showing a clip of their vehicle straddling between 2 lanes LOL.
I bet you *think* a lot of things, bro...
It would be good if more emphasis was made in the differences between the two companies. All of the issues shown and discussed in this segment involved Cruise vehicles. They're the ones sprinting out the gate, who's permit was pulled and decided to slow down and pause operations. Meanwhile, Waymo has slowly and quietly operated under the radar, without incidents, which I think says a lot. Yes, both companies operate autonomous vehicles but I think comparing the two would be like night and day.
Such bias’s waymo also has the same issues
Yep, Waymo has only killed one dog, had 2 major crashes and 18 minor fender benders. If you ignore that, it has been smooth sailing.
You miss the point, Yes Waymo is doing a lot better. But the issue is not in normal operation, but in rare cases that are not included in training data and normal operations. Like the emergency services cases. Or just a road clossure that the system is not aware of getting stuck causing traffic jams and so on.
@@davidbeppler3032I mean... Compare that to the amounts of accidents by humans after the same amount of kilometers - I am pretty sure waymo wins in regards of the statistics. And that at the beginning of the implementation in actually complex scenarios - give it 10 more years to develop, and we will be talking about restricting humans to drive, and that for very good reasons
@@ac0rpbgand that's the amazing thing - one accident, and it is learning data for all other automated cars. Unlike with humans, where each one has to make the same experience on their own. Will autonom cars be perfect? Never, that's not realistic. The goal is to be significantly better than human drivers, statistically speaking.
She was in the car for 5 minutes. Got kicked, spat on, and honked at three times, almost got in an accident and had to calk for help. Crazy.
USA !!!! Nothing new here !
@@supa3ek I live in the USA and no one's kicked my car or spit it on, interesting 🤔
Well it doesn’t happen if your only neighbours are bears in the forest.
I think they paid that guy to do that
Now in many cities in China like Shenzhen, Wuhan, Beijing and Shanghai, there are lots of self-driving taxis already (called 萝卜快跑), welcome to have a try and the experience is much better than this one. Also it's very very cheap (about $0.5 for 10km)
I was recently teaching my step-son how to drive. Almost none of my tutoring was about the general rules of driving, 99% of what I was teaching him was how to be prepared for the stupid stuff people might do. As a programmer myself, I don't see how you can make a proper self driving car without having a true artificial intelligence that can literally process thoughts (like a human) on it's own. Referring to a database of similar scenarios is never going to be sufficient because people can do some pretty random things
Ideally, the problem shouldn't exist to begin with, but considering the average American driver, and them remembering half of the US driving population is worse than that... Probably just bolt the tech onto buses. At least they run a predictable route, sometimes on dedicated lanes
Just load the database with Jacksonville drivers for a few weeks, and every situation will be covered. Or China for about 15 minutes.
@@B3Bandfor real , jax speeders go 100+ and weave in and out of traffic, no matter the vehicle
I disagree with you, driving in London expose you for very predictable behaviour, people opening door , bicycle passing too close, lines that merge, speed cameras, kids coming out of the bus and so on. In the past 3years there had been an expansion of 20MPH zone , with that speed I recon selfdriving car can get you to destination but probably will cause more traffic because it will stick to rules and be extra cautious.
@waltzsofa1602 they do understand that, but the problem is that the stupid stuff people might do is infinite, way beyond the general rules of driving and thus any standard algorithm is going to be unprepared and inefficient to respond to infinite possibilities. You really need something like general AI to replicate an appropriate response to the stupid stuff people do while driving.
The question is not if we are endangering humans by letting robots drive cars, but rather if we are endangering the robots by letting them drive in San Francisco. No robots should have to go through that!
Lol
Agree - humans can be unpredictable and dangerous. Clear example shown at the start of the video with the guy kicking the car for no reason. Jokes aside, was putting the rider in danger. He was just being rude for no reason.
GM initiated the program in SF on purpose. Cali has or had friendly regulations toward tech, and SF is notoriously hard to drive in. The explanation I heard was "if we can make robotaxis work in SF, we can make them work anywhere."
I feel bad for the robot that got kicked and spat on, even though he blocked that guy from parking in the spot..
There is a legal problem. Under CA law, drivers can be punished for breaking the law, but companies can't - they can get off scott-free
I saw one of these run a red light in Houston. No joke.
so it was simulating what real drivers do. 😅
@@jackbteachingIt makes sense to me. It was trained on many experiences of real (human) drivers and if any of the drives didn't perfectly follow the rules of the road it would adopt that mindset to its driving. Not too long ago I saw a Waymo not using its turn-single when I was behind it on the road. I'm very skeptical about this technology and it's gathering of road driving data.
@@ourfamilyaccount I agree! I also feel the newer technologies, from EVs, hybrids, to autopiloted vehicles, need to be placed or focused on use cases that maximizes benefit. For example if auto makers, or law makers focused efforts on urban use/ commutes and smaller EVs, as complimentary vehicles for suburban homes;for postal and package deliveries -that would have been a good start, logical, and likely less push-back and hostility from those folks who feel threatened that the gov't is trying to take away their ICE vehicles. So those all or nothing mandates to me are misguided and ineffective. Especially when tech is evolving, to make such mandates that by xxxx year we should have xx% of EVs on the road takes away the potential of better technologies competing in this space. EV pickups make zero sense. We don't need these tremendously heavly, super fast trucks as everyday vehicles, they have short range when doing 'truck stuff' like towing, I feel hybrids, using smaller battery packs, less weight, to increase efficiency and per tank range would have been a great solution. Anyways, my soapbox...
As a pedestrian in San Francisco, I breathe a sigh of relief if I see a Waymo car when I'm crossing in the crosswalk. They don't blow through stop signs, unlike many of the human drivers here. I don't have to worry about being hit by a driver that's not paying attention, because they're talking on their phone or texting. Having ridden twice in a Waymo, you can see that their situational awareness is far beyond what's possible for a human. They have a little screen in the back console that shows you their understanding of the physical space around them. At night, half way up the block, behind a tree, it will spot 5 humans walking - a human would never be able to detect that.
👍
Perceiving the environment and making good judgment calls reliably based on that are two different things.
The fire chief is one of the most reasonable public officials I've ever listened to.
I am beyond confuse why anyone would honk at a driverless car. You get nothing out of it.
I'd hope driverless cars take honking as input into their system, just as a human drivers would interpret it as 'hazard', 'slow down' or 'provide extra space'. Certainly at least taking number of honks as a course-grain statistical metric
People who honk are idiots 90% of the time.
Because they can do it without consequences. Good luck acting like that in another country, hell, good luck doing it in another state.
@@ericgol7 In many countries, honking without "active danger present" is a trafic violation. (In most countries, honking is defined as warning others from DANGER. Nothing else.)
chimps
Would love to see one of these autonomous cars drive in a snow storm ☃️
There is a reason they chose California first. One of tge sunniest places on earth
unless they have 4wheel drive they will get stuck
@@ashleyshim2078It's much worse than that, skidding around slippery corners, failing to accellerate sufficiently to get through a patch of snow, failing to drive in lanes appropriately when lines are not visible, or the worst case scenario: confusing snowflakes for obstacles or failing to detect obstacles appropriately due to interference in the images and sensor by snowflakes.
@@agilemind6241or even a rainstorm.
I was thinking the same thing. Besides the reduced visibility, the cameras & sensors will be covered with a randomly changing layer of muck. Us humans have to keep moving our head around to see through the snow-covered windshield. Cameras & sensors are stationary. I expect that AI can deal with the slipperiness reasonably well, but not the navigation.
I Love that Deirdra is doing field reporting now! Seeing her on this report is a pleasant surprise! Can't wait to see you on the next one, Deirdra! 👍🏾👍🏾
What's the point? These should be cheaper because there's no driver to pay, but they're going to charge the exact same amount and pocket all the extra profit. What's the value proposition for the consumer?
Imagine having a self driving taxi take someone directly into an active bank robbery. It just parks right in front of the getaway car…
AI can sense trouble
A human driven taxi could do the same thing unless you’re really paying attention.
How often to banks get robbed where you live?
Chat GPT could spot the robbery and decide to stay away from it very well. So it's not far future.
@@XOPOIIIO chatgpt would say that the bank robbers aren't felons, just like it said that jeffrey epstein wasn't a felon until a few months ago.
Nobody else thought that the guy arguing with the autonomous car was pure comedy!
Thanks for this excellent reporting! I was curious about the latest in self driving cars.
Great job by Deirdre to show the pros and cons! I think the companies need to have people working 24/7 with the city FD/PD so that if/when these issues come up, it's a quick resolution because there is someone available from Waymo or Cruise to handle it and not have to call a toll free number and explain it all. Yes, there is a cost with that, but it will quickly reduce these stupid issues of the car "getting confused". Those things also need to be addressed by the companies involved.
When the car gets "confused" it should just quickly drop out of autonomous mode and go into remote control mode, and someone in a 24 hr call center somewhere else can immediately remotely control the car away from the situation. Why is this so hard?
Absolutely! 😊 Deirdre did an incredible job highlighting the pros and cons of the situation.
What's the point of hiring more for that? The point is to severely limit the amount of people you can hire to maximise the profits of automation. The people they hire for dispute resolution probably get paid more than the Taxi or Uber drivers.
Just like how they turn off traffic lights in real time as a fire truck meets its destination.
All of these cars are non-Tesla, Waymo cars. Keep that in mind.
Cruise is just bad. Waymo has a much more mature and refined system. And they have done a much better job at being extremely careful about their rollout and cares a lot more about being 100000% positive on their systems reliability and safety before making it active. These other companies like Cruise, Aptiv and Tesla are making a bad name for autonomous driving unfortunately. The NHTSA needs to catch up and regulate this more properly.
How does tesla give it a bad name
I thought they gave up on it. This is all news to me
@@SigFigNewton Didn't Tesla actually deliberately remove radar-based parking sensors from their cars and make an active decision to just rely on the cameras? I'm sure I remember reading that and thinking it was a ridiculous decision.
I'm surprised a man wearing a purse acted so aggressively 😭😉
Why?
Its that time of the month...
It would be interesting to see how autonomous vehicle compare not to the average driver, but to professional drivers. Since this technology is supposed to be used as taxis, it should be compared to human operated taxis. It's good to know that robo-taxis experience 75% less collisions than the average driver (whatever that is), but I want to know how do they compare with human-driven taxis in the same operation areas.
I bet Tesla fanboys hate you …
Taxi drivers are about as shocking as these autonomous vehicles. It would probably pass that test easily.
word is still out on whether people who drive for a living crash less or more than an average driver. I couldn't find anything conclusive stating either way. If the tech is better than your average driver by an obvious margin, it's probably better than a professional driver too.
Who is asking for this technology exactly? Can we please just perfect the automatic sink, soap, and towel-dispenser situation in every bathroom everywhere first?
Sure seems like the issues are with Cruise, not "driverless cars". All the issues seem to be centered around Cruise, not Waymo. I think it's important to differentiate. Waymo doesn't just go without you having your seatbelt on. You have to tell it to go. Personally I've taken Waymo more than a handful of times, and it has navigated emergency, construction, and "irregular" scenarios and situations pretty well.
Who owns/runs Waymo? Also who do you call for when there's a misstep or its not moving out of the way when emergency vehicles and public works need them to move but don't?
Waymo is not conscious either. Even the video pointed out how they were randomly bunching up in a dead end street all day every day 🫣 It’s a dumb 4-ton robot no matter how trendy it looks
@@robertlee8805 Waymo is owned by the same company that owns youtube.
@@richardchoi Thanks for pointing that out 👍
%100
That could have ended badly! Thanks for story&stay safe!
The ability to take orders from a Cop, Firefighter, or Paramedic is required for a driver. It's technically a requirement for everyone in a country regardless of whether or not they are driving. Self-driving cars will probably need full AI so they can understand orders from Emergency Personnel.
Can't the companies have an employee take control over the car remotely? They could detect sirens or excess honking or let the passenger press a button and move it out of the way quickly.
@@michabrzozowski1486 In the video, that didn't work.
Self-driving car "robo-taxis" are a _"solution"_ in search of a problem. 🙄
Rideshare driver here. Paying us is the problem for their bottom line. YW
So the story of the 2 autonomous vehicles blocking an ambulance is extremely sad. But lets not forget that the pedestrian who died was hit by a car most likely driven by a human. As glitchy as these ai cars are, they will undoubtedly be safer than the average human driver in the long run. I think we're putting these autonomous cars beneath the microscope because people are naturally distrustful of new technology like this.
There will be unforseen consequences to self-driving cars. We should first do everything possible to regulate or train or re-train the human to drive slower and with purpose. A lot of city lights and city traffic are predictable. And they are predictable only if you drive slow. With an AI yes they can learn these patterns. They can learn the human pattern. As human drivers we learn with experience the human driver's pattern. The aggressive driver. The nuance of how they accelerate, brake, and whether or not they know how to "Cruise." Most drivers don't know how to be their own cruise control. And maybe that can be fixed by better designing our vehicles for the person. I think we should focus more on the human before we jump to the machine. When the machine takes over the streets, the human who cannot afford to ride in a driverless car will then show new aggression. They will drive more erratic and more unpredictable around the machine. They will learn how to attack or disable the machine. And then take advantage of it. That is something we cannot ever train this driverless vehicle to do. To confront the aggression in male drivers. We've poured so much resources towards Ai that we sort have forgotten the driver. That driver is an idiot. And it starts with how annoyed they are when they have to stop. Those idiots want green lights all the time. But they don't realize that the car they drive is giving them too much power. Too much speed. And so they are perpetually always stopped or stuck behind traffic. In the human idiot's mind. The enemy is the car regardless of Ai or Human driven. When you remove the human, the man will attack the machine MORE.
god forbid someone doesnt think that the pedestrian could have been at fault right??? people just walk in front of cars its like they forgot to think about a big chunk of heavy metal is coming thru.
we need to retrain the human to not walk into cars too. come to vegas, i see this a dozen times a day. no care or concern and they just freely walk into streets with cars coming at them. @@pianobench6319
2 autonomous vehicles out of around 100 vehicles. A pedestrian got hit by a human driver but there hundreds of thousands of human drivers. You need to adjust by the number on the road and the conditions being driven by those vehicles.
We don't know that the robocar blocking the ambulance caused the pedestrian to die, at least from what they said in the video.
I don’t want my taxis to be equipped with recording devices for the company to keep. I saw a video where the company called in through the speaker phone because one passenger didn’t have her seatbelt on. No thank you.
If your taxi had a driver they'd be able to see you and tell you to put your seatbelt on.
Only way self-driving cars would really work is to make it 100% self-driving, not one human behind any wheel anywhere. The chances of that ever happening is... ZERO. TONS of people would refuse to let it happen. And I don't mean just gearheads. and public transportation sucks. In regards to transporting one's self, just like in almost anything, the best way to get the job done the way you want it is to do it yourself.
Zero possibility I’ll be getting into one of these anytime soon (without a backup driver). I and every human driver I know has a self-preservation instinct. These vehicles have none and therefore I have no confidence in their ability to react in a difficult or dangerous situation. My self preservation instinct is creaming “stay away” !
Robotaxis may be safer than human-driven ones for routine and anticipated scenarios, but right now they are at a loss when it comes to unusual situations.
Right. Human behavior is unpredictable
I'll take it. Unusual situations are rare and the companies like Waymo will focus on making them even more so. This is the true power of automating driving -- we can treat problems like we treat aircraft problems and engineer them out of existence.
Yeah but that's fine. Because by definition unusual situations don't happen very often. So by enlarge they are still an improvement in all fronts, including safety. You ban them from the road and how do you expect them to get better? This is a technology that needs to be thrown in the pool so it learns to swim, even if it caused more damage than humans at the beginning it would be worth it on the long run. But it doesn't, it's already safer, by quite a big margin. This is as the CEO correctly called it: "sensational" news.
@@arturodelarosa4394city streets shouldn't be proving grounds
@@mrdeebo313 Why not? and more importantly, how else are you going to test this? They had their controlled environment test, then they moved to having human driver supervisors. now we are here: when they need real world, non-supervised experience. Let's be clear about this: this has been going on for almost a decade, you cannot say we rushed this, it has been done way too carefully if you ask me. And the consequences are for the most part, they are inconveniencing the public but they are still statistically safer than human drivers. By a huge 70% margin of safety. Come on! What else do you want? Perfection? I say letting perfect getting in the way of good enough is a mistake. Specially when we are talking about a technology with the potential to save thirty thousand lives a year, in the US alone. It would be like withholding the covid vaccine for another decade because some people experienced arm pain.
People's have unrealistic expectations, anything new on this scale is going to have growing pains. I found it ironic the part where the ambulance was blocked as it tried to get to an accident caused by a human driven car who had ran over pedestrians critically injuring them.
Don`t gaslight. I support the autonomous cars, they have issues irregardless of who caused them that need to be fixed for them to be safer for all of us.
@@joshuamaka876 True, they have LIDAR. That is a huge issue.
How much time do you need? So much hot air from these narcissistic Silicon Valley psychopaths
My expectations are allowing first responders to easily get to the scene with as little hassle as possible. Clearly, self driving cars can’t handle first responder vehicles, they don’t know what to do. Good on CA for pulling their permits as much more work needs done
A private company can have their growing pains, but not on taxpayer funded roads endangering the public.
I had a terrifying experience with a Waymo driverless car when I was waiting in the middle of an intersection to take a left turn. A Waymo came directly towards me at speed with it's left turn signal one and took a left turn at least twice as fast as a human driver would have..... My heart stopped for a second....
u sound like u work for cruise.
It seems like robotaxis can't replace human drivers
@@pf887u sound like u work for Waymo 🙄
@@lukerinderknecht2982😂😂😂😊
With all Waymo's sensors, it probably detected there's no oncoming traffic that it needs to slow down for the left turn. For regular drivers doing a left turn at an intersection, we have to stop and slowly peek to the left, especially there's a opposite direction car doing a left turn as well (you, in this case).
@Harcorwrestler So true. An autonomous vehicle cannot give a visually impaired person the attention they need during the ride. As a rideshare driver, I always make sure to properly accommodate riders with disabilities. Everyone, please stop basing your disdain for any and every rideshare driver on the actions of a few in number disrespectful drivers.
I do as well but to be fair, disabled pax are like .02% of my rides.
Self driving shuttles would be better than self driving cars
Shuttles? Like a tram or bus?
This technology can easily be moved to bigger cars, trucks, buses etc. Why risk the lives of a shuttle full of people, when you can test it with 2-3 passengers
Isn't it possible to have a few people always on call to remotely control the vehicle when it's experiencing technical difficulties that requires a human driver? That way you fix the 'rare' occurrences that these vehicles run into due to not having human intellect
A family member of mine works for waymo, and they can log into a car and controll it when an issue happens. But the complaint here is how long it takes to get that person to do so. The ambulance argument says 1 minute is too much.
Ah I see, it should be possible to improve the response times though 🤔like if you have maybe 1 person to monitor 25 cars since these occurrences are rare. The passenger can just hit an emergency button to let the person in monitoring that vehicle to take it over. Another way to improve speed for emergency vehicles is to give those government agencies the ability to see all driverless cars currently on the road so they can either alert the people monitoring the cars of their route or change their route if they can. Of course this would only be a temporary solution since someday in the future most if not all cars might be driverless but by then emergency vehicles and driverless vehicles should be advanced enough to communicate with each other and all vehicles on the emergency route would be notified a few minutes before the emergency vehicle even gets close to the driverless vehicle
That seems reasonable, what is not reasonable is banning them off the road.@@phantasyphotography3813
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"Cruz did their own study and found we're actually really good a driving. Honest we wouldn't lie"
Way back in July, I sent Cruise a video and filled two online complaints about what i witnessed in regards to their vehicles and a problem i know would turn into sometime getting hurt if not corrected immediately. They promised me in their response emails. I'm a professional driver, Class A with Class B passenger endorsement. Drove big rigs across the country, and city bus in upstairs New York. I drive Uber in SF. A month goes by and i notice the problem still persists. I contact them again. Then i see that they're pulling all of their vehicles off the road. I offered to train their Cruise trainers FOR FREE. I was ignored. Waymo hasn't had these problems. The big issue i saw was that when people are in the crosswalk, the Cruise vehicle would pull to within a foot of the pedestrian, wheels turned and aimed right at them. If a vehicle hits that Cruise from behind, the pedestrian is going to get hit. I saw this behavior every day so day from their vehicles. Each individual vehicle is trained by a person, and I've seen the trainers making bad decisions, and i see exactly why the vehicles act the way they do. It's not the technology, because Waymo doesn't have these problems. It seemed that Cruise care more about hiring issue that knew the city, than they did prior that would drive correctly when training the vehicles. All they needed were people that knows the rules of the road and that you cannot rush pedestrians and you cannot sin your vehicles towards them. In addition, they need street supervisors to keep an eye on both the vehicles, and trainers. Now they pulled all of their passenger services until further notice. I could have saved them time and money. They were too busy counting the pennies, that they ended up losing the dollars.
Jeez, the idea of vehicles being that aggressive around pedestrians is horrifying. I am not comfortable with a car stopping within 2 YARDS of me. I would feel like I was going to be hit every single time. That also makes me trust them less when people are crossing anywhere other than a crosswalk. Would they even try to stop before it is too late?
In drivers Ed they told us to never turn the wheels to turn if we’re stopped, wait to do it when you can start moving. I’m surprised they aren’t programmed that way.
probably because they can't recognize the human in time. prolly a sensor problem because it has to distinguish people walking on the side walk and people crossing the sidewalk.
The cars' behavior are not "trained" individually. They are mostly designed and programmed, though researchers have been exploring the ideas of vehicles imitating human drivers behavior but still the "training" or imitation is done "collectively". You might have confused a remote vehicle operator who monitors and occasionally takes over vehicle control as a "trainer". The performance disparity between Waymo and Cruise indeed shows a safety culture issue within certain companies.
Why are you offering free labor to a company that has millions of investors money? … training people for free is crazy
Every elevator has a switch for the fire rescue to take over in emergency. Apparently it is too difficult for the geniuses working on the self-driving technology to come up with a similar system for robotaxis. The best they could come up with is 1-800 number for the emergency to call, in a situation where every second counts…
Not like it would've even mattered in this situation. The car was dragging the person long before anyone thought to call fire rescue people.
@@alexCh-ln2gw there were several situations described in this video. If the self driving car stops and blocks the traffic, having an override switch could help. It would not do much for a stupid algorithm for handling a collision that programmers without any knowledge or experience in collision analysis came up with.
My friend recently began work at Cruise I feel bad for him because the CEO sounds like a chucklehead I hope he doesn’t get laid off I’ve had both Cruise and Waymo driverless vehicles do some crazy maneuvers in front of me One made a left in front of active traffic (no protected left) Another got stuck at a passenger crossing signal
All things humans are also guilty of. What's the big deal?
The only human I can think of getting stuck in a pedestrian crossing is Rain Man.
Who doesnt sound like a chucklehead these days in the bay area. It's the culture here.
Down with self driving cars! Aside from the safety issues and the excuse to employee less people, it's a technology we don't need or want! Just implement mass transit, especially electric trains and trolleys.
Emergency crews should be able to move robotaxis out of way remotely
No
indeed it could be done with some sort of predictive geo-fencing, making the vehicles pull over in advance. the destination of the firetruck is also known in advance so just fit a GPS in it and it can be done remotely. National standards and V2V communication would help in this sense, so that all fire emergency vehicles are fitted with the same system and can communicate with the same protocols.
Imagine being stuck in a car within a city where someone can kick the car to make it stop, and then just assault you as they please while you can't do anything manually to make the car move. If you're driving your own car, you can just turn them into a speed bump.
Good point
Modern AIs could spot the danger very well and react accordingly and fast. Ask Chat GPT what it will do theoretically in such situation.
@@XOPOIIIOgood point
If I was the driver and someone kicked my car. I would probably call the cops but most of the time I would get into a fight with the other dude.
allready solved: watch Protect Summer
I've taken a Waymo during a business trip to San Fran. I was impressed, and I am a electrical engineer that works on embedded systems. I was not aware how advanced some of these autonomous vehicle companies have become. Tesla dominates the conversation in autonomous cars, yet they are so far behind the curve compared to these companies. I wish the public was more aware of these advancements. This story has a very negative tone, yet, the autonomous cars are probably driving far safer and more considerate than the average real driver. They will just be judged on a much higher level.
Why don’t these guys have remote workers who can be ready to immediately take over in case of a slip up? That one guy could have taken his anger out on the reporter!
Can we just have decent public transit please lol
only if you live outside north america
No. See the beauty of private companies doing this research for profitable private transportation, the tax payer doesnt need to pay a penny
Sorry but N. America unfortunately has repeatedly failed at having decent public transit despite throwing hundreds of millions of dollars per year at it non-stop. The culture, climate, high labor cost and low urban density makes N. American public transit an inefficient money pit. kzhead.info/sun/Y9KsgKuFpoqni2g/bejne.html kzhead.info/sun/YL59ith6iYavmIE/bejne.html AV taxis (all EVs of course) are the way to go because it uses shared infrastructure and provides key door-to-door service wherever you are and wherever you're going. Most N. American transit systems are built on a hub-and-spoke model (downtown hub + suburb spokes) which makes traversing between sub-urban spokes so much inefficient with long travel times. Private companies are mostly footing the bill for the AV taxi R&D too.
No not like other parts of the world. Public transit in US won't get better because of what type of people also ride on it. It often gets smelly and filthy and cleaners are hard to keep pace. Yeah it's not a big group and most people are doing great. But that tiny 5% can easily ruin it for all. I really hope public transit become privately operated, but personnel and facilities be federal properties. Any damage to stations, trains, buses and people get charged as damaging federal properties and get those ppl locked up forever.
No not like other parts of the world. Public transit in US won't get better because of what type of people also ride on it. It often gets smelly and filthy and cleaners are hard to keep pace. Yeah it's not a big group and most people are doing great. But that tiny 5% with behavioral and mental issues can easily ruin it for all. I really hope public transit become privately operated, but personnel and facilities be federal properties. Any damage to stations, trains, buses and people get charged as damaging federal properties and get those ppl locked up forever.
What could go wrong? Driverless vehicles that weigh tons… I would like to know what’s the benefit in this? Improved service? A better experience? No, my guess would be: profits. Forget the public: profits. And these companies are so well vested that they will fight relentlessly to avoid financial responsibility. Who allowed this? Money under the table? 🤷🏻♂️
Yes, but also significantly lowers the cost of the transport service, right now companies will opt to pocket those savings, but with competition in time those savings will come to your pocket. The other thing they offer is increased safety of our streets. A very significant increase in safety. Considering car crashes are responsible 46k deaths a year in the US alone, you can see how that is important. Not to mention the savings on property damage, etc.
Amazing thanks for sharing with us
"Drive car drive, there's a carjacker coming." "I do not feel safe shutting down."
I would not lie about feeling safe when someone is kicking and spitting on the car I was in!!
From what i hear this is not uncommon on SF
Safer inside the car than out.
Used to work for Cruise and they do pay well when compared to the other companies such as Google, Tesla, and Waymo, however when it comes to operations it's way too soon. It needs at least 2 decades of a track record in order to see if it will be a success to put it out there for public use.
Let's hope Cruise can continue to grow and prove themselves in the long run! 🚗💨
13:36, so you’re saying *emergency* responders have to call your third party #, during their *emergency* to get one of your cars moved ? As if calling the hotline doesn’t take up a whole bunch of *emergency* response time too 🙄😒.
It‘s actually hella funny to see people road rage against driverless cars. Tells a lot about their intellect 😂
You can determine his intellect just by looking at him …
Really , that's your thinking..my thinking was his dealt with this self driving joke before.. The guy didn't look for no driver so who's the idiots. You!!!
And it dosent matter whether there's a driver or not, damaged panel is a damaged auto panel..And at least you won't get shoot by some americian loon!!!.
It would make sense for police and fire team dispatch to have access to a map where they can just click to block off various roads as needed to cause these cars to avoid getting in the way. If a fire is happening, they can just block off the nearby roads.
That shouldn't be the responsibility of police and fire.
@@mrdeebo313 Maybe it could be, but it would still require integration into the self driving cars' systems for it to actually do anything, so they would still need to cooperate. That said, this is an industry that wants to justify itself, so the burden is on them to ensure that they are _not_ a burden on existing systems. They are much better positioned to develop such a tool than individual first responder programs would be, and in the long run, it would actually be a lot CHEAPER for them to develop it themselves, since if left to police and fire departments, each of them would arrive at their own solutions, and the self-driving cars would need to adapt to ALL of them.
The self driving is just one part of the equation. Good luck managing a nationwide fleet of self driving cars. All those repairs, maintenance, and cleaning every day, hell, every couple hours. Imagine how the general public will trash and abuse these cars. They are about to find out just how hard the cab business is.
Right now it seems that way. But people will adapt, and technology will continue to improve. What we have today seemed inconceivable 20 years ago.
just ban them! its ridiculous
Placing your life in the hands of a computer program, the mere idea gives me anxiety issues.
Who kicks and spits on a car with live passenger(s) and no driver? Animals, that's who.
SF has no shortage of such animals …
Interesting that these companies don’t choose smaller markets first before jumping into big cities.
I agree. My guess is no one would use them if it was a small city. They have to deploy them in tech cities for now
Bigger equals more data
Bad drivers who don’t follow rules or orderly driving are a problem for autonomously driving vehicles. That jerk spitting and kicking a machine to get a result is prime evidence of the ididiocy that permeates our society.
The one parallel parking didn't indicate with turn signal he was about to park in that spot..
Having worked for Waymo under a temporary contract back in 2018, I can say the tech and software has come so very far. I now use it on the regular, and have had many friends and family ride along with, for what almost always seems like a quiet smooth ride. Consider the manuever @7:56, which is no easy feat. I can't explain what's going on with Cruise but Waymo has it figured out.
very far my ass
Waymo is a child on training wheels. Tesla FSD is going to wipe Waymo off the map eventually. It actually interprets what it sees vs. what is mapped.
So if it can't drive like an adult then it shouldn't be allowed on the road. How did they pass if it can't do an proper lane change?
If the cost is the same as Uber (with a driver), what's the draw? I would think cutting out the driver would make the cost lower.
They need to pay for that R&D, but it will be cheaper eventually, fear not. Much cheaper. That is as long as more stupid governments don't keep getting in the way. See china's autonomous vehicles to see what this will be in 5 years.
For whatever reason, spitting and cussing at an automated car never seems to have the same satisfaction as if it were a real driver 😂
To be fair, even with a human driver, that Pedestrian might have gotten hit and dragged
AVs need to be held to a higher standard if they are saying it is increasing safety. The fact of the matter is that more vehicles on the road is not a scalable safety solution. Can you imagine how much gridlock would be induced by having a swarm of AVs descend into downtown and circle around, waiting to pickup workers for rush hour? Mass transit and more space/energy efficient transportation (bicycles) are the only scalable solutions to safer streets and more equitable transportation. The only niche I see these fulfilling in any meaningful sense is helping with the last mile of a public transportation trip or filling in the gaps late at night.
Yes but with a human driver they can be punished. Who is responiible when a robo-car does it. Does the company go to jail?
@shrimpflea What does the person going to jail? Have to do with the person living or not. Does the punishment make the pain go away the scarring? Why does someone always have to be punished when it doesn't help or change what actually happened or prevent it from happening in the future.
Sounds like perhaps there needs to be some sort of data integration with emergency services and robotaxi routes. While privacy concerns will emerge from this, this would allow the robo taxi computers to avoid routes actively in use by emergency vehicles and vice versa.
That's a great point! 🤔 Integrating data from emergency services with robotaxi routes could definitely help improve efficiency and safety. 🚑🚒
Totally unsafe.
"One of those damn robotaxis is blocking our ambulance again. Go call the company to move the car!" "Your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line... Your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line..."
Beta testing with human lives
Don't worry the only ones getting hurt are human beings, no corporations were harmed in the production of this technology 😂
Companies need to work together to get this working well. Create a universal framework with minimum hardware requirements that is sensor agnostic that can be modified/extended by individual companies for their specific uses and markets.
There is simply social signals in driving and machine cannot copy it if this is going to work you need to remove all the human element in the equation
@@TheMattsem Completely removing the human element sounds like the ultimate goal. Perhaps start with AV only lanes. Ideally all AV's should communicate with each other visually/wirelessly. Integrate all emergency vehicles, including fire engines, into the AV network with the highest priority.
@@Say-Hello I agree but I don't think this is going to work in America I think we all know why maybe it will work with the three big Asian countries
@@TheMattsemwhat is the “we all know why” ?
@TheMattsem Except Asian countries also have far better metro systems, making AVs something that fills in the gaps left by the other stuff that fills in the gaps. Only smaller Asian cities don't use subway systems, opting for very well maintained busses instead
General Motors (owners of Cruise) is not a software company, and they will never reach the level of sophistication of Google (owner of Waymo). GM probably thinks, "how hard can it be" to create self-driving software. The answer is that it very hard indeed. GM knows hot to build good cars, but they just aren't capable of creating the kind of software needed for self-driving cars. Cruise vehicles should never be allowed on public streets.
Here's why Waymo and Cruise will lose in SF. No one outside of the CEOs are fighting for them to stay. The average citizen couldn't care less if the stay or go. They really don't add anything to the city other than controversy. No one will miss them.
Have you seen humans respond to emergency vehicles sometimes?! And a human hitting a pedestrian and then hit by AI… come on!
We can't even get full self driving with drivers yet companies are getting approved for driverless vehicles carrying people? Makes perfect sense.
Agreed, I ain't waiting 1 sec longer than I have to for an ambulance/fire truck...
To the guy who spit and kicked on a car with no driver: the Nobel Prize committee would like a word with you.
well you mean mensa ?
Love all the honking too, like do ppl expect the passenger to jump into the front seat lmao
This really seems like it's all about Cruise's software not being up to snuff and less about driverless cars as a whole. Especially when Cruise got their permit suspended but Waymo didn't.
Yeah, it does give that impression. 😕 It seems like Cruise's software may need some improvements in order to meet the standards set by regulatory authorities. It's interesting that Waymo didn't face the same permit suspension. Perhaps they have a more advanced or reliable software system. 🚗💨
It also seems like Cruise have a generally rather reckless attitude. _"Move fast and break things."_ might be a reasonable approach to web software stacks, but not human bones.
7:17 Of course it feels more smooth they put her in a Jaguar 🤣
I hope whoever got dragged by the cruise vehicle never has to work again. All these companies care about is money. Safety is secondary
Mr spitter should have his drivers license revoked. This kind of behavior will escalate. He is a ticking bomb.
In San Francisco, he’s considered an upstanding citizen …
Maybe it would be a good idea to get data on smaller towns too. Lower quality roads, darker, more variables too.
Smaller towns are just going to be way easier
Yeah but to maximize the economic and safety impact you need to go the big cities. So you might as well throw this tech into the deep end. No point on screwing around and delaying more.
The stock prices for Alphabet and GM are swapped
In the event of an accident wth casualties, who is legally liable?
Kyle Vogt …
I find it crazy that "this product... known to the state of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm." is transportationing live HUMAN people with a driverless vehicle.
Everything in California has that statement on it...
I just spoke to them yesterday at a career fair. They said the biggest obstacle was their vans don't have any steering wheels. The government is giving them beef on that aspect. But they allow handicapped people to be able to have mobility. This will be normal in about 50 years. Everything that was crazy at first is normal now such as a car, a phone, internet, etc.
As somebody who is visually impaired and will never have enough vision to drive a vehicle, I eagerly anticipate that day, and personally I think the timeline will be more like 10 to 15 years, at this rate. At the same time, though, I don’t want us to get there in a reckless or unsafe way. We need some regulations on these things and these companies need to temper their ambitions with a focus on keeping the public safe
@@luke5100 We might have to up the driving age to make the public safe from each other or stricter driving tests.
i hope much sooner than that. what a mobility boon for seniors!
@@davek1943 Yep!
Not sure how a human operator can move the car in case of an emergency. Maybe they have a controller built in?
Now 64 years old..always drove all my cars around 15 or 20...no way a car is driving me by itself
Im a black American ride share driver in Nashville. This car don't need to come to Nashville. Im gone do what I gotta do to not let an outsider take my job or money.
You’ll still have a job … It’s unlikely that companies will deploy their robotaxis to the ghetto …
Who tf is supposed to be responsible when a self driving car crashes? No driver behind the wheel should be illegal without question. And it’s insane that this is even an argument