California Suspends Cruise Robotaxi Operations Over 'Risk to Public Safety'
Hypx@kbin.social to 
thedrive.com
General Motors' driverless Cruise taxis can no longer operate on California roads without a safety driver, effective immediately.
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Honest question: aren't they already (despite and including their problems) safer than human drivers? They expectations shouldn't be perfection (especially at their beginning point), but simply better than us... Which shouldn't be hard.
In ideal conditions they are. In less than ideal, they lack the flexibility required to adapt to a situation. Cruise in particular got caught blocking traffic for no good reason preventing emergency vehicles access.
The best an automated vehicle will do when unsure is stop. A human at least could listen to direction from a person of authority, even if those directions are counter to the rules (e.g. turn around in a one way street). It’s like a reverse Asimov’s law of robotics.
I am just remembering when I was still on a learners permit. There was an accident in front of me and a cop instructed me to make what would normally be an illegal turn. I was 16 and remembered the rule "instructions from a police officer overrule any road rule". So I made the turn.
part of humans learning to drive safely is knowing that flouting traffic laws increases your chance of being stopped, fined, or if you're not the right demographic, worse things. we calibrate our behavior to maximize speed and minimize cops, and to avoid being at-fault in an accident, which is a major hit to insurance rates.
autonomous vehicles can't be cited for moving violations. they're learning to maximize speed without the governor of traffic laws. in the absence of speed and citation data, it's hard to measure how safe they are. there is no systemic incentive for them to care about safety, except for bad press.
We don't know, because the data isn't being released to the public.