diplomat33
Average guy who loves autonomous vehicles
Why would they just put the Origin on a few campuses when they have autonomous driving that can handle the entire city of San Francisco? Makes no sense.
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GM's Cruise tweets cryptic message, plans announcement on January 21
- Thread starter willow_hiller
- Start date
Why would they just put the Origin on a few campuses when they have autonomous driving that can handle the entire city of San Francisco? Makes no sense.
You have to email them for it now. But they had 60 crash incidents in 2019, I sampled 10, and none were caused by the AV system. However, as we have found out, that doesn't stop people who run into Cruise AVs from suing the company. Cruise paid the at least one settlement we know about in 2018 when an at-fault driver sued them for existing.
diplomat33
Average guy who loves autonomous vehicles
During the unveil, Vogt said that Cruise autonomous cars can do coast to coast equivalent of city driving without a fender bender, that's about 3000 miles of city driving without even a fender bender. That's pretty good autonomous driving, if you ask me.
Technically, they should have set up Sacramento for the taxi service. Wait, don't lynch me yet. Sacramento voted themselves The CIty Of The Future, which was no surprise. I think there were 10 better choices on the balloting and they chose themselves. So Sac gets extra Green Bucks for EV infrastructure and programs. What better way to win the Heart and Minds of the Legislature? To provide politicos with a billion dollar taxi service would insure their future. SF would be the second best location due to it's out-of-proportion influence at the national level.
Politics, not technology, is going to be the biggest struggle with AV adoption. We will have to reform the liability laws like we did with airbags and airliners to allow for potentially dangerous technology that is advantageous for civilization. We will have to reform taxi laws. And we will have to reform traffic laws to give AVs a quasi-schoolbus status. One of the struggles will be if a homeless/intoxicated person gains access to one and won't leave, will Cruise have the right to call law enforcement to have them removed?
1,000,000 miles divided by 60 crashes is ~17k miles per crash. If Cruise much shell out ~$20k per fender bender assuming no At-Fault incidents, no insurance company will take them on, and the business model will collapse shortly after the first At-Fault fatality. Which will always occur at some point.
Daniel in SD
(supervised)
If you get into an accident every 17k miles you are either extremely unlucky or you are in fact not driving safer than the average human even if all the accidents are technically not your fault. This could be one of the reasons why Cruise says they’re “on track” and not actually ready for wide scale deployment.
diplomat33
Average guy who loves autonomous vehicles
Probably Electrify America. They have a growing network of fast chargers that span from coast to coast:
"More and more DC fast chargers are being built across the United States. By the end of 2019, Electrify America is expected to complete over 480 charging stations, with more to follow in the future. Our network alone will cross 42 states along major routes from coast to coast. Our 50kW to 350kW chargers will be available at charging stations near highways, and 50kW to 150kW chargers will be available in metropolitan areas."
Home | Electrify America
You might be thinking freeway or mixed driving. Urban Warfare is a bit different. MBT's fear urban streets, and so do I.
If you solely drive in a very congested poorly engineered high density city, with many unlicensed/suspended drivers, that's probably not unreasonable. Somebody who does that daily, probably does not drive more than 5,000 a year, because your average speed is seldom 20mph point to point.
One thing I recall about Paris and Rome, is that nearly all the cars had dents in them. I haven't bothered driving through SF in perhaps 30 years and is was awful back then. But I imagine the dents are more frequent than in the suburbs.
Cruise must report even love-taps. Many of these non-damage events normal people don't report.
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Daniel in SD
(supervised)
That's certainly possible. Accidents rates are definitely way higher in cities and that's reflected in insurance rates. I'm still very skeptical that a "love tap" every 17k miles isn't above average.
You still haven't explained why Cruise vehicles should be treated differently than UPS drivers from a liability standpoint?
Bear with me. One of the biggest problems with getting airbags mandated into cars was that there will be injuries or fatalities caused by the airbags. And the manufacturers know this and have documented it. So they could not put them in cars without a great risk of a Class Action, like when Ford knew that a very small % of their Pintos could catch fire in a collision.
So our federal government limited the liability concerning airbag deployment injuries or deaths. Ironically, when the automakers came up with 2-speed airbags, the NHTSA said they could not use them until approved. Over 200 people died in airbag deployment injuries during the approval process, but neither the automakers or NHTSA could be sued.
Now, automated cars WILL kill people. The manufacturers know this. But they will save more lives than they take. However, if there is no legal protection, and the manufacturer documented that they KNEW this technology will kill people, they are liable for punitive damages which have no limits.
The NHTSA or Congress needs to step up and address this now. However, Wash DC is crippled. They cannot even move along EV incentives for American automakers. They are too busy marketing themselves and their brand.
Firing the US Congress, and hiring engineers would be a good thing.
Daniel in SD
(supervised)
This analogy doesn't make sense to me. UPS drivers DO kill people. Should UPS be exempt from liability?
AV technology is a safety system, UPS trucks are not.
If in the future Tesla documents the FSD faults and allows it to drive in AV mode when they document it's safer than humans, there is no limit to their liability. Saying it's safer than humans won't cut in At-Fault incidents since they knew it possible.
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Daniel in SD
(supervised)
How would Tesla's liability be any more than UPS?
This is our fundamental disagreement. I believe autonomous vehicles should be treated the same way as a company owned and operated vehicles. If they're safer then they will cost less to insure than a human drivers. Companies will have an incentive to make their AVs drive as safely as possible in the same way they currently have an incentive to make sure their employees are driving safely.
