9 thoughts on “Uber self-driving car running a red light”
Uber said it was under human control at the time of the incident in question and there was no passenger.
I’ll bet Uber’s already calculated how many in-the-field failures like this they can commit before public outrage and regulatory backlash catches up with them. This incident is merely one component of their machine-learning flowchart. And their legal team is already standing by to make any personal injury cases go away as quietly as possible.
Gruber was being kind when he used the word “arrogance.”
There is some number of accidents that self-driving cars are going to cause. Even if Uber’s 10x worse than Google and Uber’s were banned from the road, there are still some people going to die as we get self-driving cars working well.
I don’t know how we’re going to decide to live with that once it starts happening. Things like a self-driving car running a red light… I see multiple human drivers do that almost every day. It’s interesting when it’s a self-driving car, even news, but we can’t treat it as a media spectacle if we want to get safe self-driving cars out there. On the other side of it, we’ll have much safer cars. But we need to go through that death zone first.
And Uber probably already realizes that self-driving cars for delivering goods is a horrible idea. Because you’d still need someone to run to the porch or into the office, possibly negotiating escalators, stairs, elevators etc. And robots are nowhere near that stage yet.
And if a robot could do all of that, as well as or better than a human, then it could drive a conventional car anyway.
Yes, but you’d need to present the deliveree with just that one package. So they can’t grab multiple packages etc.
So a flying drone would be better in some cases, say for dropping a pkg onto a target in the deliveree’s backyard. But what if it’s raining really hard? Waterproof packaging? Ultra-high-performance drones for handling high wind and heavy rain?
But there’s a strong argument against perfecting self-driving cars. If you’re an entrenched automaker who wants to keep selling millions of cars to consumers.
Really good car automation -> less personal car ownership -> lower sales for automakers. I’d rather not own a self-driving car. I’d rather rent one for however many minutes I actually need to ride one. Lower total cost for me, more efficiency for society.
I’d also not need 24/7 auto insurance, I’d never need to take a depreciation hit again, I could effectively have a bigger house by eliminating the garage and driveway from the architecture, ad nauseam. All while avoiding “public transportation.”
So automakers just might not want self-driving cars to succeed. And you only get one chance to make a first impression. Bad first impression for self-driving cars might help automakers “stay the course” for a few more decades.
This is especially bad in San Francisco where it is a pedestrian and mass transit city. One huge problem already is many people have come to San Francisco recently from cities without pedestrian traffic and they are constantly threatening pedestrians with their cars. So you add Ubers where the driver is not actually driving? Just great.
Keep in mind that a so-called “self-driving car” is actually being driven by the person who is in charge of making the self-driving software. Same as you understand that a Beyoncé audio file is not self-singing, that it is a recording of Beyoncé that is being played back, you should understand that somebody in a cubicle is attempting to drive cars from there by recording the various moves the car has to make and figuring out when to playback those moves. The car will drive as badly as you would think if you understand how bad most software is. Especially software from a company with the demonstrated ethical problems of Uber. They were sued for failing to protect client data. You used to be able to sign up as an Uber driver and the first day you could track your ex-girlfriend’s ever Uber ride.
Also, if there is no driver in my future Uber, what is to prevent me from stealing the car, or vandelizing it? Even on a bus with a driver there is vandalism. Same for big rigs — the driver is what stops them from getting hijacked. So is Uber risking lives right now to make a show for investors of something that might never be practical?
Would you buy a $50,000 self-driving car and loan it to Über for $12 an hour, so the car can come back after the first night full of piss and vomit?
Never, every eliminate the garage. The garage is American (or French). The garage can do so many things. The garage could allow your band to practice. The garage could be used to store some things. The garage could even be man space! I understand some major companies were even started in a garage! Maybe get rid of your car – if you wish. Never get rid of your garage!
Uber said it was under human control at the time of the incident in question and there was no passenger.
I’ll bet Uber’s already calculated how many in-the-field failures like this they can commit before public outrage and regulatory backlash catches up with them. This incident is merely one component of their machine-learning flowchart. And their legal team is already standing by to make any personal injury cases go away as quietly as possible.
Gruber was being kind when he used the word “arrogance.”
There is some number of accidents that self-driving cars are going to cause. Even if Uber’s 10x worse than Google and Uber’s were banned from the road, there are still some people going to die as we get self-driving cars working well.
I don’t know how we’re going to decide to live with that once it starts happening. Things like a self-driving car running a red light… I see multiple human drivers do that almost every day. It’s interesting when it’s a self-driving car, even news, but we can’t treat it as a media spectacle if we want to get safe self-driving cars out there. On the other side of it, we’ll have much safer cars. But we need to go through that death zone first.
And Uber probably already realizes that self-driving cars for delivering goods is a horrible idea. Because you’d still need someone to run to the porch or into the office, possibly negotiating escalators, stairs, elevators etc. And robots are nowhere near that stage yet.
And if a robot could do all of that, as well as or better than a human, then it could drive a conventional car anyway.
Yes, but you’d need to present the deliveree with just that one package. So they can’t grab multiple packages etc.
So a flying drone would be better in some cases, say for dropping a pkg onto a target in the deliveree’s backyard. But what if it’s raining really hard? Waterproof packaging? Ultra-high-performance drones for handling high wind and heavy rain?
But there’s a strong argument against perfecting self-driving cars. If you’re an entrenched automaker who wants to keep selling millions of cars to consumers.
Really good car automation -> less personal car ownership -> lower sales for automakers. I’d rather not own a self-driving car. I’d rather rent one for however many minutes I actually need to ride one. Lower total cost for me, more efficiency for society.
I’d also not need 24/7 auto insurance, I’d never need to take a depreciation hit again, I could effectively have a bigger house by eliminating the garage and driveway from the architecture, ad nauseam. All while avoiding “public transportation.”
So automakers just might not want self-driving cars to succeed. And you only get one chance to make a first impression. Bad first impression for self-driving cars might help automakers “stay the course” for a few more decades.
This is especially bad in San Francisco where it is a pedestrian and mass transit city. One huge problem already is many people have come to San Francisco recently from cities without pedestrian traffic and they are constantly threatening pedestrians with their cars. So you add Ubers where the driver is not actually driving? Just great.
Keep in mind that a so-called “self-driving car” is actually being driven by the person who is in charge of making the self-driving software. Same as you understand that a Beyoncé audio file is not self-singing, that it is a recording of Beyoncé that is being played back, you should understand that somebody in a cubicle is attempting to drive cars from there by recording the various moves the car has to make and figuring out when to playback those moves. The car will drive as badly as you would think if you understand how bad most software is. Especially software from a company with the demonstrated ethical problems of Uber. They were sued for failing to protect client data. You used to be able to sign up as an Uber driver and the first day you could track your ex-girlfriend’s ever Uber ride.
Also, if there is no driver in my future Uber, what is to prevent me from stealing the car, or vandelizing it? Even on a bus with a driver there is vandalism. Same for big rigs — the driver is what stops them from getting hijacked. So is Uber risking lives right now to make a show for investors of something that might never be practical?
Would you buy a $50,000 self-driving car and loan it to Über for $12 an hour, so the car can come back after the first night full of piss and vomit?
Never, every eliminate the garage. The garage is American (or French). The garage can do so many things. The garage could allow your band to practice. The garage could be used to store some things. The garage could even be man space! I understand some major companies were even started in a garage! Maybe get rid of your car – if you wish. Never get rid of your garage!