Ubers self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco

[Recursion]

Source: TechCrunch

Uber’s self-driving cars are making the move to San Francisco, in a new expansion of its pilot project with autonomous vehicles that will see Volvo SUVs outfitted with sensors and supercomputers begin picking up passengers in the city.

The autonomous cars won’t operate completely driverless, for the time being – as in Pittsburgh, where Uber launched self-driving Ford Focus vehicles this fall, each SUV will have a safety driver and Uber test engineer onboard to handle manual driving when needed and monitor progress with the tests. But the cars will still be picking up ordinary passengers – any customers who request uberX using the standard consumer-facing mobile app are eligible for a ride in one of the new XC90s operated by Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group (ATG).

There’s a difference here beyond the geography; this is the third generation of Uber’s autonomous vehicle, which is distinct from the second-generation Fords that were used in the Pittsburgh pilot. Uber has a more direct relationship with Volvo in turning its new XC90s into cars with autonomous capabilities; the Fords were essentially purchased stock off the line, while Uber’s partnership with Volvo means it can do more in terms of integrating its own sensor array into the ones available on board the vehicle already.

Uber ATG Head of Product Matt Sweeney told me in an interview that this third-generation vehicle actually uses fewer sensors than the Fords that are on the roads in Pittsburgh, though the loadout still includes a full complement of traditional optical cameras, radar, LiDAR and ultrasonic detectors. He said that fewer sensors are required in part because of the lessons learned from the Pittsburgh rollout, and from their work studying previous generation vehicles; with autonomy, you typically start by throwing everything you can think of at the problem, and then you narrow based on what’s specifically useful, and what turns out not to be so necessary. Still, the fused image of the world that results from data gathered from the Volvo’s sensor suite does not lack for detail.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/14/ubers-self-driving-cars-start-picking-up-passengers-in-san-francisco/

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On the plus side, a Republican administration gets to take the heat for the massive job reductions this is going to mean over the next few years.

[DiverDave]

1. Nope, nope

NOPE.
Never.

[politicat]

6. If my grandmother had a self-driving car, she wouldn't be housebound.

She's 92. Knows she doesn't have the reaction time or vision to drive. She lives in a car-dominated southwest megapolis and relies on my father for rides. She's incredibly independent, so hates having to ask, hates being an imposition, and therefore doesn't. If her car, or a car service, would drive her where she wants to go, she'd go out a lot more.

My sibling teaches at my elder nibling's school. Elder nib has a zero hour class, and sib has zero hour prep, so they both have to be at school at 6:30. Younger nib attends the middle school next door, which doesn't start until 8:30, but younger nib has to go with my sibling and elder nib because younger nib can't drive, there's no safe walk/bike route from their house to school, and the district only buses if the student lives more than 3 miles from school. With a self-driving car, younger nib could sleep a little later, be a lot less cranky, and still get to school on time.

Spouse and I have two cars because I'm responsible for my other grandmother. If she has a medical emergency, I have to go to her nursing home, and Spouse and I work in different parts of our city. With a self-driving car/car share service, we could have one and still have my on-calol availability.

My friend never learned to drive, and their abusive parents' attempts at teaching them have left them with extreme driving anxiety (among other issues). Public transit is fine for most of their needs, except in winter, when the buses sometimes just don't show up. Having access to a car share service would materially improve their life while reducing their chances of hypothermia, frostbite or serious illness.

My city has acres of parking that is vanishingly rarely ever used, not even on Black Friday. It's a waste of space, contributes to the urban heat island problem, and exacerbates storm water runoff problems. A fleet of self-driving cars means we can reduce the zoned parking requirements to a fractional reserve parking system instead of building parking for peak potential use. Which means more area for walkable retail, office and light industrial, as well as more human-scale appropriate zoning, including housing.

You are welcome to abstain, but for real people whose circumstances and abilities limit their access to transportation, self-driving cars have the potential to give them agency over their own lives. Your experience is not universal.

[moonscape]

27. As someone with macular degeneration, I'm all for

self-driving cars for the same reason. One day, MD will take my functional vision and I'll have to give up my license. That will restrict my life incredibly long before I'm your grandmother's age.

I live on the Central CA coast and we have truly awful public transport that in no way could get me where I need to go.

[KittyWampus]

28. If your grandmother had a functioning society around her, she wouldn't be housebound.

This is solving a problem by not addressing larger problems.

[brooklynite]

2. Isn't it a shame when we invented cell phones and you didn't need an operator to place a call?

Isn't it a shame when we got rid of steam engines and you didn't need a "fireman" on board?

Progress.

[rug]

3. Music to Puzder's ears.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/12/08/donald-trumps-pick-for-labor-secretary-has-said-machines-are-cheaper-easier-to-manage-than-humans/?utm_term=.24e77bfb914f

[Recursion]

5. Agreed, but the transition can be painful (nt)

[KittyWampus]

29. You think cell phones are 100% beneficial? They are the modern day lead pipes.

Yes, lead pipes lead to sanitation improvements. But they poisoned the people drinking the water.




“Despite the obvious benefits that these advances in technology have contributed to society, the social and physical implications are slowly revealing themselves”



“In similar ways that photography transformed the lived experience into the photographable, performable, and reproducible experience this phantom limb is used as a way of signaling busyness and unapproachability to strangers while existing as an addictive force that promotes the splitting of attention between those who are physically with you and those who are not”





“…personal devices are shifting behaviors while simultaneously blending into the landscape by taking form as being one with the body”





http://www.boredpanda.com/portraits-holding-devices-removed-eric-pickersgill/

[brooklynite]

30. It's also a shame how people with cell phones tune out the world around them...

...as opposed to the good old days when people engaged with each other...

[KittyWampus]

31. Smart phones reach a different part of the brain than reading. Your ignorance of how cell phones

effect our brains and our brain chemistry and biological responses is appalling. But typical of most people.

#1. All those people reading are not distracted by an outside environment. Just like talking on the cell phone while in the car is different than talking to a passenger.

#2. Responding to phone calls causes chemical changes in our brains. Part of it is dopamine.

[former9thward]

32. "But typical of most people"

Right, we are all ignorant except you. You who are fighting any modern technology.

[KittyWampus]

34. Acknowledging the double edge of the sword is what a reasonable person does.

Fools pretend there is only benefit, even as the negative aspects lead to more problems that become more deeply rooted.

And there are quite a lot of people who know more about the deleterious effects smart phones than I. Scientists.

[safeinOhio]

4. If you drive a car, bus or truck

for a living, you are screwed.

[DiverDave]

7. I DO drive a truck.

Let me ask all of you a question. Do you want an 80,000 pound vehicle to be next to you while some kid in his mom's basement is trying to
hack the software?
Not me.
Autonomous vehicles are dangerous until they are 100% unhackable, not 99.9%. ONE HUNDRED PERCENT.
I know the rich corporations don't care if people die, you know, for profits.
They have admitted as much.

[Mika]

8. No one cares. They're too busy comparing you to buggy whips and phone operators and such. n/t

[angrychair]

16. Your not being realistic

You do realize you drive a computer, right? It's just as hackable.
As an IT professional I can tell you nothing is 100% unhackable. All information technology, from cars to toasters, has a vulnerability that could be exploited. To manage that you do your best to make that as complicated and time-consuming as possible. The vast majority of hackers prey on soft targets. By making it difficult you manage the risk. Everything we do has some risk of death, from taking a shower to taking a hike. You manage that risk as best you can but at the end of the day you cannot eliminate all risk.

[DiverDave]

23. so, you work for uber? google?

Girl, you will never convince anyone that a self-driving car = a human operated car.
the people that want to create havoc WILL hack a computer driven vehicle.
So take your corporate loving behind somewhere else.
I see a truck with no driver, I will find where it parks and I will see it doest leave.
PROFITS never equal even 1 life lost.

[marybourg]

25. A friend of my DH saw 90% of his

co-workers fired and computers/robots brought in to take their jobs. He swore then the same kind of thing you are swearing now, and from that day to this (maybe 30 years) he's never had a computer of any sort. Apple is still thriving. He's not.

[angrychair]

33. Do you attack long haul human drivers???

I work for state government and I'm a union shop steward. I am many things but I am the opposite of a corporate shill.

Globally, we have a 9/11 a day in car accident deaths (roughly 3,200 a day) and millions are injured a year in traffic accidents.

Trucking, long haul trucking, causes a great many accidents itself. It's also a very demanding and inherently unhealthy line of work.
Self-driving trucks could get goods to a location faster and safer and operate 24/7.

Automation and technological developments always results in job loses. I use to work for a shipbuilder and it use to employ hundreds of people who designed and drew the plans by hand. It could take hundreds of hours. Now a computer, CAD software and a plotter allow a single person to do the same work faster and better than a hundred people.

[safeinOhio]

38. Good bye long haul drivers.

Intermodal rail is making trucking local only.

[SubjectiveLife78]

22. Same as an plane, or some computer running security in a building?

Or a bank? Or a Presidential campaign? When have humans ever waited until a technology is 100% fool proof? We've got a fetish for it. We're religious about technology.

All the autonomous vehicle needs to do is have fewer accidents than human driven vehicles.

[citood]

26. Trust me - you'll be long retired before this replaces truck drivers

For a variety of technical reasons, I'm not at all worried about drivers being replaced.

But, since you are a truck driver...can I ask a few logistical questions about driverless cars?

Don't drivers do a whole lot more than drive on the highway...as in tarping down or strapping loads (and checking this every time you stop), checking the tires and lights, manifest and logbook crap, weighing in and out at a delivery point, fueling, paying tolls, putting on tire chains, etc.

Are there certain things that you 'feel' as a driver (or learn over the radio) that a machine couldn't...thrown tread, empty trailer blowing around, brakes not feeling right, crap in the roadway that might hurt the tires?

[DiverDave]

45. I may be retired

But it seems to me that machines in a factory can't kill my kids, if they are not in the factory.
a self driving truck can.
can a computer program see that someone is moving inside a vehicle? , can they see they are TEXTING?, putting on makeup?
I once saw a guy pass me at 70-75 READING A BOOK.
No, a machine will never be able to see those and dozens of"man, I gotta watch THAT guy" situations

[xor]

49. Tired humans have the ability to kill your kids too.

Last edited Wed Dec 21, 2016, 01:51 PM - Edit history (1)

The better solution is to ban all trucks and other vehicles.



Eventually, these automated vehicles will be all over our roads, and they will reduce the total number of accident deaths on our roadways. Will you be against them then too? Yearning for the days in which human error and inattention was responsible for thousands of deaths?

[FrodosNewPet]

51. Will they save more lives than the number of people who die from poverty?

Hopefully, as they are tested and further developed, they WILL be safer than humans. Right now, no, they are not. The self driving Ubers all have to have safety drivers to take the blame for SDC errors (I mean monitor and correct for safety).

The question becomes: Is our greedy nation able to provide either replacement jobs or welfare payments to all the truck, taxi, bus, and Uber drivers who would become obsolete? What good is saving 30,000 lives a year if 50,000 people a year die from destitution or suicide?

This issue is a lot deeper than the so far dubious life saving potential.

[LanternWaste]

41. Do you apply that consistently to the human driver as well... 100% safe, not 99.9%?

"Autonomous vehicles are dangerous until they are 100% unhackable, not 99.9%. ONE HUNDRED PERCENT..."

Do you apply that consistently to the human driver as well... 100% safe, not 99.9%? Or are you holding the human to a lower standard to better validate your own biases?



"Do you want an 80,000 pound vehicle to be next to you while some kid in his mom's SUV is trying to
talk on the phone, send a text and tune the radio? Not me."

Six of one, half a dozen of the other...

[DiverDave]

44. the sun doesn't weigh 80k

[jberryhill]

15. If you have any number of disabilities, you are already screwed

[kimbutgar]

9. I am a native San Franciscan and have lived here my whole life

It has always been a crazy place to drive. I call it urban guerilla driving. My hubby sometimes wants me to drive downtown because it is so crazy. Put a mix of driverless cars is a recipe for disaster. If I saw a driverless car I,d pull over and stop until it was not anywhere near me.

[Recursion]

10. That's silly; they're safer than human drivers

You should do the opposite: pull over around any human-driven cars

[kimbutgar]

11. Have you been around a self driving car?

It is still new technology. No thank you.

[Recursion]

12. I knew 8 people killed by human-driven cars

I've had just about enough of them

And, yes: I've been around all kinds of autonomous vehicles. You probably have too.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

13. I had a run in with one last week.

I was downtown and I was on a 3 lane one way street in the left lane getting ready to make a left turn. In the lane to my right was one of the Uber test cars. As I went to make my turn, the Uber car made a left hand turn -- from the center lane -- right in front of me, with me almost t-boning the damn thing. The person in the driver's seat did not have control of the car at the time, that move was ALL Uber technology.

There is not a chance in hell I am interested in 1) riding in such a vehicle and 2) driving on the roads with such a vehicle.

[angrychair]

17. So funny

Because of a single incident with a self-driving car it makes the whole concept unacceptable.
Globally over 3,000 people are killed in human operated car accidents a day millions are injured or disabled a year in car accidents with human drivers. We literally have a 9/11 every day. Yet you still drive? Yet millions still drive. Why? Because everything in life has inherent risks. You manage that risk as best you can but every action or inaction has a certain level of risk.

[orleans]

35. so why not add more risks and make it even more dicey to drive

by putting auto cars in the center lane making left hand turns into drivers in the left turn lane trying to make a fucking left hand turn... right?

[Hassin Bin Sober]

42. The human monitoring was probably texting.

[jzodda]

14. lol no they are not being outfitted with super computers

there are no supercomputers in any car

[IronLionZion]

18. They deliberately chose hilly difficult cities to test it

Pittsburgh was also a test site.

We're all going to die of something some day, so why wait?

[Recursion]

19. Lots and lots of people die from human-driven cars now

About as many as from gunshots

[orleans]

36. so... let's add driverless cars to the mix and see how many more people get killed. it'll be fun! n/

[Recursion]

46. It will mean many, many fewer deaths

Computers don't get distracted, drunk, or sleepy

[FrodosNewPet]

52. They cannot think for themselves or have a survival instinct

And they really suck at real world object identification.

They are subject to lens flaring and sun blinding.

And they do a REALLY bad job of identifying a potential problem a half mile down the road, so they cannot react until whatever may be is within a few hundred yards.

From my reading of the various writings of many top professionals, they can drive better than bad drivers, but not as good as a calm, experienced, middle aged driver who can compensate for "precision" sensors with experience and intuition and old fashioned survival instincts.

[Sunlei]

20. Have you seen South Americas, new public transportation system? didn't cost much at all.

works great and didn't remove any jobs, or effect any streets or change anything about street level public transportation. Added jobs, lots of them.

plus there are new huge public Libraries and brand new public schools right in the middle of every impoverished community.

[oberliner]

39. Which country?

[Sunlei]

40. Colombia, SA. Benefits local communities, connects /w transportation to work & tourists love it too!

[oberliner]

43. That is really cool

I hope to be able to check it out myself some day!

[andym]

21. Do you consider CPUs found in tablets and a Nvidia souped up graphics card as a supercomputer?

which perhaps it is compared with the computers of yesteryear. 1.5 teraflops for "Parker"- less than many gaming GPUs.
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/08/22/parker-for-self-driving-cars/ 6 ARM CPU's. ARM class CPUs are found in cell phones and tablets AND a Nvidia GPU. Assuming they are using "Parker" in these cars.

[Recursion]

24. Most modern clusters are based on a bunch of GPUs

To the extent "supercomputer" still means anything

[Starry Messenger]

37. Already shut down by CA DMV.

They didn't seek a proper permit and one of their fleet ran a red in SOMA.

[xor]

50. I just looked up the stories about the red light running by their cars

In both cases I've read they are saying it was a human driving. I'm not so sure I trust Uber on this. I wonder if they are going to be the ones who totally end up setting back any progress with this self-driving cars because of their possible shadiness.

[FrodosNewPet]

47. Uber admits to self-driving car 'problem' in bike lanes as safety concerns mount

Uber admits to self-driving car 'problem' in bike lanes as safety concerns mount

Engineers were working to fix programming flaw that could have deadly results for cyclists days after Uber announced it would openly defy California regulators

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/19/uber-self-driving-cars-bike-lanes-safety-san-francisco

Sam Levin in San Francisco | Monday 19 December 2016 17.52 EST

Uber has admitted that there is a “problem” with the way autonomous vehicles cross bike lanes, raising serious questions about the safety of cyclists days after the company announced it would openly defy California regulators over self-driving vehicles.

An Uber spokeswoman said on Monday that engineers were working to fix a flaw in the programming that advocates feared could have deadly consequences for cyclists.

~ snip ~

Despite threats of legal action from the department of motor vehicles (DMV) and California’s attorney general, Kamala Harris, Uber refused to back down on Friday, claiming its rejection of government authority was “an important issue of principle”.

~ snip ~

“The fact that they know there’s a dangerous flaw in the technology and persisted in a surprise launch,” he said, “shows a reckless disregard for the safety of people in our streets.”

~ snip ~

[FrodosNewPet]

48. Self-driving cars: Uber's open defiance of California shines light on brazen tactics

Self-driving cars: Uber's open defiance of California shines light on brazen tactics

Intense fight with the state, ignited after cars were caught running red lights, exposed illegal and unethical tactics the company has used for years, critics say

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/16/uber-self-driving-cars-california-illegal-unethical-tactics

Sam Levin in San Francisco| Friday 16 December 2016 06.00 EST

Uber has launched an aggressive battle with California over its controversial self-driving cars, with regulators and consumer advocates accusing the corporation of flagrantly violating the law, endangering public safety and mistreating drivers.

The intense fight with the state – which ignited hours after numerous self-driving cars were caught running red lights in Uber’s home town – has exposed what critics say are the unethical and illegal tactics that the company has repeatedly used to grow its business.

~ snip ~

The abrupt rollout in San Francisco and subsequent suspensions has led some California drivers to question whether Uber will toss them aside when the technology malfunctions or drivers aren’t properly trained and make a mistake.

~ snip ~

“Uber itself is a very unethical company,” said Travis Taborek, a 26-year-old Bay Area resident, who drives full time for Uber and its competitor, Lyft. “If you launch technology like this on the scale of a city, then you need to go through proper channels. That’s how people are protected.”

~ snip ~