I doubt that the companies are not measuring these things. What is true is that they don't publish them. The crash numbers are published due to a reporting requirement.
However, I think society very, very much wants them to focus on the crashes and injuries. It just thinks that these other items are also important. They are of course important, but much less important. But not knowing how frequent they are, we focus on anecdotes, not data, which is always a mistake. Even so, as these companies turn the dial between conservative no-injuries driving and good road citizenship -- and yes, there is almost always such a dial -- the message to them has been very clear about how to tune it, and you're going to get more bad road citizenship as a result. We want them to reduce injuries first, and all these other incidents second, and I can't imagine us wanting anything else -- other than wanting a magic wand that gives both of them together.
I would be shocked if the companies aren't eager to reduce these incidents, and working hard on it. That mistakes happen is not evidence against that, unless perfection was your standard. But again, we would much rather they suck at this than risk injuries, so we don't want them to prioritize it more than they reasonably can. Which I strongly suspect is already a *lot*.
Except on the 4th one, watching the streets. Here, the lack of eyes is a two-edged sword. Do we truly want these cars turning into 24/7 eyes on our streets? I am pretty sure we don't, but that means you won't get certain police state friendly features. Indeed, these companies could easily turn this power onto things like following home the vandals who have attacked their cars--as you walk anywhere in SF these days a Waymo records you several times a minute. They have declined to do that, because they know we won't like where that leads, in spite of their strong self interest in catching these folks.
Hi Brad - we generally agree. We believe they are measuring some here and certain companies like Waymo already show an ability to act on some of these. However, Waymo won't be the only entrant, and its important that we as informed public stakeholders make sure these angles are part of the discussion. We want to holistically improve.
Regarding the watching the streets, it's quite nuanced. And to your point, some of the findings and discussion around Flock highlight this quite acutely.
My concern about your 4 points is to ask, just what actionable steps would you proposed to deal with these concerns? I think it's very unlikely the teams are unaware of these issues, and also unlikely that they haven't resolved them because there is an easy resolution they are just not motivated to do.
What is your actionable advice for:
1) Getting in the way. They will presumably state that they should not do this and these are the result of errors. Is the advice to just not have errors? Or to shift priority on fixing errors away from reducing crashes and more to not blocking traffic?
2) Riders need human assist. This is a challenging one, when a central element of such service is to have no human. Our liability rules strong discourage any plan that would not call 9-1-1 in an actual emergency, which means they are pushed to call it in a maybe emergency. I can see how people might develop better ways to tell, do you have ideas in that area?
3) No way out: Zoox's bidirectional car does have an edge here, and I have often told them they should make their cars also able to reverse and drive backwards. They are aware of this but have not done it for now. They are reluctant to hand control to passengers; what do you do with unlicenced passengers? Make suggestions here.
4) As noted, more surveillance is actually bad, certainly not an unalloyed good.
I doubt that the companies are not measuring these things. What is true is that they don't publish them. The crash numbers are published due to a reporting requirement.
However, I think society very, very much wants them to focus on the crashes and injuries. It just thinks that these other items are also important. They are of course important, but much less important. But not knowing how frequent they are, we focus on anecdotes, not data, which is always a mistake. Even so, as these companies turn the dial between conservative no-injuries driving and good road citizenship -- and yes, there is almost always such a dial -- the message to them has been very clear about how to tune it, and you're going to get more bad road citizenship as a result. We want them to reduce injuries first, and all these other incidents second, and I can't imagine us wanting anything else -- other than wanting a magic wand that gives both of them together.
I would be shocked if the companies aren't eager to reduce these incidents, and working hard on it. That mistakes happen is not evidence against that, unless perfection was your standard. But again, we would much rather they suck at this than risk injuries, so we don't want them to prioritize it more than they reasonably can. Which I strongly suspect is already a *lot*.
Except on the 4th one, watching the streets. Here, the lack of eyes is a two-edged sword. Do we truly want these cars turning into 24/7 eyes on our streets? I am pretty sure we don't, but that means you won't get certain police state friendly features. Indeed, these companies could easily turn this power onto things like following home the vandals who have attacked their cars--as you walk anywhere in SF these days a Waymo records you several times a minute. They have declined to do that, because they know we won't like where that leads, in spite of their strong self interest in catching these folks.
Hi Brad - we generally agree. We believe they are measuring some here and certain companies like Waymo already show an ability to act on some of these. However, Waymo won't be the only entrant, and its important that we as informed public stakeholders make sure these angles are part of the discussion. We want to holistically improve.
Regarding the watching the streets, it's quite nuanced. And to your point, some of the findings and discussion around Flock highlight this quite acutely.
My concern about your 4 points is to ask, just what actionable steps would you proposed to deal with these concerns? I think it's very unlikely the teams are unaware of these issues, and also unlikely that they haven't resolved them because there is an easy resolution they are just not motivated to do.
What is your actionable advice for:
1) Getting in the way. They will presumably state that they should not do this and these are the result of errors. Is the advice to just not have errors? Or to shift priority on fixing errors away from reducing crashes and more to not blocking traffic?
2) Riders need human assist. This is a challenging one, when a central element of such service is to have no human. Our liability rules strong discourage any plan that would not call 9-1-1 in an actual emergency, which means they are pushed to call it in a maybe emergency. I can see how people might develop better ways to tell, do you have ideas in that area?
3) No way out: Zoox's bidirectional car does have an edge here, and I have often told them they should make their cars also able to reverse and drive backwards. They are aware of this but have not done it for now. They are reluctant to hand control to passengers; what do you do with unlicenced passengers? Make suggestions here.
4) As noted, more surveillance is actually bad, certainly not an unalloyed good.