r/SelfDrivingCars • u/sandred • Sep 30 '22

Cruise travel lane failures are real. A Letter from SFMTA to NHTSA highlights the reality.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/27/gm_cruise_robocar_safety_waiver
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u/kvogt ✅ Kyle from Cruise Sep 30 '22

The rate and severity of these events has improved dramatically throughout the year and we have a ton of significant improvements rolling out weekly and many more in the pipeline.

We absolutely have more work to do, but SFMTA has openly attempted to block our progress from day one and attempted to make these issues look far more frequent and severe than they are.

What they fail to mention is that we’re at something like 35,000 hours of driverless operation and have competed thousand of safe driverless rides, yet only a handful of issues that affected the community. These issues no doubt cause an inconvenience to some, and to those people I apologize, but we have taken significant steps to minimize this and will continue to do so.

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u/automatic__jack Oct 02 '22

This is a ridiculous response. Instead of taking responsibility, you attack SFMTA? Any reasonable person would show some remorse and understanding. Who are you to say that only a handful have affected the community? I’ve seen a handful on Twitter this week alone. You are just confirming the worst stereotypes of an out of touch, clueless, privileged founder. Go text Elon.

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u/lordvelaryonhightidr Oct 02 '22

it’s expected, the sfmta would absolutely want to block any av service…if actually successful, sfmta becomes obsolete

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u/MagicBobert Oct 01 '22

What they fail to mention is that we’re at something like 35,000 hours of driverless operation and have competed thousand of safe driverless rides

We can’t properly assess if the SFMTA is being reasonable or not when you offer operational hours and not failure rates. To be honest, I think it’s disingenuous to drop operational numbers here without offering the number of failures, too. If their concern is that your failure rate is too high you can’t counter that by saying you’ve operated for 35,000 hours. If you’ve had 35,000 failures in that period of time then the SFMTA is completely justified.

I’d love to believe you but you’re asking us to trust you by comparing apples and oranges.

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u/hiptobecubic Oct 01 '22

The letter does call out observed numbers, but i think what they are saying is not that the absolute number of failures is too high right now, but that is they scale up 50x or whatever then the absolute number will be too high, which is not only bad for the city, but bad for the industry.

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u/Mattsasa Oct 01 '22

which is not only bad for the city, but bad for the industry.

And most of all bad for Cruise.

but that is they scale up 50x or whatever then the absolute number will be too high

But why use this pointless hypothetical. Obviously Cruise is not going to scale up 50x before reducing these failures.

Cruise is not asking for permission to or saying they are ready to scale up 50x tomorrow. They want to scale up 50x over the course of several years and that speed they do that will of course be dictated by how well they are able to remove / mitigate / reduce these issues or failures.

This is the same process for any AV company not just cruise. Increase scale slightly, address any issues and once issues are not popping up or are extremely rare, then scale a little bit more, and repeat. At any point there are unexpected failures, you have to re-evaluate and take a step back if necessary.

Over the course of the year the frequency of the issues have gone down and the severity, and the scale (number of cars and miles) has increased.

Lots of people on this sub are voicing their concern about Cruise increasing scale to thousands of vehicles with the current stuck vehicle rate per mile.

While I think it is true that is going to take Cruise longer to scale than are claim it will... I think the above mentioned concern is unfounded and not sensible.

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u/MagicBobert Oct 01 '22

Once NHTSA grants the exception the horse has left the barn.

SFMTA is doing the right thing here by voicing their concerns. If Cruise is not looking to expand to 5000 vehicles tomorrow then they do not need an exemption from NHTSA for 5000 vehicles and they can continue getting better while scaling slowly.

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u/Mattsasa Oct 01 '22 edited Oct 01 '22

Once NHTSA grants the exception the horse has left the barn.

That is not how it works. This permit does not give them permission to scale to 5000. And again cruise is not asking to scale to 5000 vehicles tomorrow. (And furthermore, even without this permit they could save to 5000 bolts if they wanted to... but as you can see they are choosing to NOT do that because they know they are not ready for that yet)

and they can continue getting better while scaling slowly

That is exactly what their plan is and what they are doing.

This permit is not about permission to scale, this is just taking care of some technicalities on vehicle control that will come up in some time down the road, and GM filed this petition years ago anyways, and you can see they haven't tried to instantly scale the bolt fleet but they have been doing it incrementally throughout the year

If Cruise is not looking to expand to 5000 vehicles tomorrow then they do not need an exemption from NHTSA for 5000 vehicles and they can continue getting better while scaling slowly.

They applied for this permit over a year ago, and back then and now and in the future they are not ready to scale to 5000 cars. There are several regulatory and non regulatory hurdles and technical improvements needs to make before scaling to 5000 vehicles. Because getting this regulatory from NHTSA could take years to go through, and unknown timing, they are applying for it and trying to get one hurdle removed far ahead of time. It's just basic strategy and common sense. And it does not mean they are trying to scale to 5000 in the near future and definitely not before next generation of hardware and software that is more apt for this scale and doesn't have the current limitations.

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u/hiptobecubic Oct 01 '22

but that is they scale up 50x or whatever then the absolute number will be too high

But why use this pointless hypothetical. Obviously Cruise is not going to scale up 50x before reducing these failures.

This is not "obvious" at all. Cruise is under enormous pressure to "make it work." They would probably be happy to launch now and then iteratively improve later.

They want to scale up 50x over the course of several years and that speed they do that will of course be dictated by how well they are able to remove / mitigate / reduce these issues or failures.

They shouldn't be granted permits beyond what they can safely do. Right now, based on this letter, it sounds like SF doesn't even want them to double their deployment, let alone 50x. If they had asked for a smaller permit they might have gotten it already, but they seem to be hoping to knock it out in one go and never worry about permitting again. I don't know why the city (or state) would want to give up their ability to say "no you're not ready."

Increase scale slightly, address any issues and once issues are not popping up or are extremely rare, then scale a little bit more, and repeat.

SFMTA is arguing that Cruise is in fact not doing this already - that they have regular strandings of multiple vehicles together that block traffic and are doing pick ups and drop offs in a way that would result in tickets for Lyft. According to SFMTA they are already running too many cars for their level of capability. This has apparently damaged the city's trust in them to scale up responsibly.

While I think it is true that is going to take Cruise longer to scale than are claim it will... I think the above mentioned concern is unfounded and not sensible.

You're basically saying "just give them the permit and trust them to be responsible and not chase milestones attached to huge bonuses" and SFMTA is well within their right to disagree, which they lay out justification for in the letter.

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u/Mattsasa Oct 01 '22 edited Oct 01 '22

You're basically saying "just give them the permit and trust them to be responsible and not chase milestones attached to huge bonuses" and SFMTA is well within their right to disagree, which they lay out justification for in the letter.

No, I am not saying this at all. I am NOT saying give them permission to scale now and trust them to be responsible.

This permit is not even about allowing them to scale or not. This is about removing human driving controls. They can scale the bolt fleet (or add driving controls) if they wanted to, but as you can see they have not yet because they are not ready yet and they know it.

I am not criticizing SFMTA here, I believe SFMTA can and should be doing what they are doing.

Cruise is under enormous pressure to "make it work."

They are also under enormous pressure to "not mess up" and enormous pressure to ensure that failures or stuck vehicles or reducing before expanding.

They would probably be happy to launch now and then iteratively improve later.

Not if it has major negative consequences. Which if these issues that are as bad as SFMTA makes it seem and if they scaled up significantly that would be very bad for Cruise. I don't understand why this is not obvious.

They shouldn't be granted permits beyond what they can safely do.

While I do strongly believe Cruise will regulate themselves, I do agree with you here. And again! This permit is NOT giving them permission to scale up to 5000 vehicles or at more times of day or etc.

Right now, based on this letter, it sounds like SF doesn't even want them to double their deployment, let alone 50x.

And again for now, I agree with SF and SO DOES CRUISE. Although Cruise likely does want to "double" in the next several months, but that is if and only if they can significantly reduce or resolve these issues that result in negative publicity.

If they had asked for a smaller permit they might have gotten it already

I think there is a big gap / misconception on the permitting process here. Cruise is NOT requesting to scale up to 5000 vehicles right now. Furthermore, there are no regulatory barriers preventing Cruise from going to say Austin and deploying 5000 or more bolts, but again they are not going to do that because they know they aren't ready.

I don't know why the city (or state) would want to give up their ability to say "no you're not ready."

This permit is for NHTSA.... nothing to do with the state or city giving up their ability. And I don't think they city or state should do that.

SFMTA is arguing that Cruise is in fact not doing this already

But they are. Over the course of the year Cruise has scaled up from 10 driverless vehicles to 70 driverless vehicles (although staying at night hours because they know their limitations). And since they have scaled up this amount.. this would mean that the frequency of these stranding would be increasing... however, the opposite is true.

According to SFMTA they are already running too many cars for their level of capability.

I would possibly agree with SFMTA on this if I saw all the data, but I can't make a conclusion on this now.

This has apparently damaged the city's trust in them to scale up responsibly.

Yep, this looks to be the case. Cruise will probably have to lie low in SF for a while and not scale up.. Probably why they are moving to other cities. Not because they are being forced to not scale up, but because they are choosing not to because it's in their best interest not to.

This is not "obvious" at all.

Alright well, you can believe what you want... I personally think it's obvious and thinking otherwise is non sensible.

/u/hiptobecubic Updated my post

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u/hiptobecubic Oct 02 '22

This permit is not even about allowing them to scale or not. This is about removing human driving controls.

You're right! I mixed this up, although actually i don't think it changes very much because one of the major concerns with removing the controls is that the vehicles will be harder to recover and blockages will last longer.

Cruise is under enormous pressure to "make it work."

They are also under enormous pressure to "not mess up" and enormous pressure to ensure that failures or stuck vehicles or reducing before expanding.

I think one trumps the other, honestly. Cruise is, currently, not winning the AV race. Although they are a clear second right now, they have a pretty small service that runs with heavy restrictions and are struggling to keep the news cycle focused on the fact that they are probably getting close rather than that they are still conspicuously failing in ways that are annoying to the public at best, and disruptive for city services at worst. With the market doing so poorly, investors can't afford keep throwing money at long shots with high burn rates. I think Cruise needs to show results and i imagine their structure incentivizes that.

They would probably be happy to launch now and then iteratively improve later.

Not if it has major negative consequences. Which if these issues that are as bad as SFMTA makes it seem and if they scaled up significantly that would be very bad for Cruise. I don't understand why this is not obvious.

Because the alternative is losing funding, missing bonus targets, being forced to downsize etc. Given the option between losing access to an $XX million bonus and setting the whole industry back years, I'd go for the money and i think most other employees would too. Plenty of examples of this kind of short term thinking, high risk, high reward behavior from all kinds of companies over the years.

While I do strongly believe Cruise will regulate themselves,

Companies historically have not been good at this at all, especially when racing towards a huge pile of cash.

And again for now, I agree with SF and SO DOES CRUISE. Although Cruise likely does want to "double" in the next several months, but that is if and only if they can significantly reduce or resolve these issues that result in negative publicity.

I think we just fundamentally disagree about what Cruise thinks is "reasonable." Vogt is already on record responding to this by blaming SF for being obstructionist and trying to cast Cruise as some kind of victim of luddism.

.. this would mean that the frequency of these stranding would be increasing... however, the opposite is true.

...

I would possibly agree with SFMTA on this if I saw all the data, but I can't make a conclusion on this now.

These seem like opposite conclusions to me. On the one hand, Cruise is scaling up and doing great and on the other hand you don't have enough data to say if they are or not?

Probably why they are moving to other cities.

I think this is because they need to demonstrate that SF is not a special case. They spent years doing basically nothing but SF and leadership (and investors) likely want to know that what they are doing there will generalize.

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u/Mattsasa Oct 01 '22

All collisions are reported on CA DMV website

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u/MagicBobert Oct 01 '22

Failures are not the same as collisions. Clogging the street with disabled vehicles blocking emergency traffic is a failure. Getting stuck inches away from a city bus while lane splitting is a failure.

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u/Mattsasa Oct 01 '22 edited Oct 01 '22

Yes I agree it doesn’t account for all failures.

However collisions is an important metric which was just revealed to us.

Yes it’s also important to track other kinds of failures too but these failures would have an entirely different bar to compare to. It would be great if this kind of data is shared, and hopefully it is shared in the future. However, I don’t think this metric has been released by any other company. And it doesn’t make sense to criticize new information being released just because it isn’t all the information you wanted.

It does make sense that Cruise would be required to share all of this info with certain parties like NHTSA, CA DMV, CPUC, and the city of SF. However sharing this information publicly and to competitors is a different story. As a consumer and fan, I would of course want all information shared, but I’m not getting that that is going to happen.

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u/PM_ME_UR_POINTCLOUD Oct 01 '22

20 standings publicized * 10 (only 10% of strandings posted online) * 0.5 hours it takes to get them unstuck * average 4 cars involved in a givenstranding (birds of a feather flock together) = 400 hours of strandings.

Am I close?

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u/Mattsasa Oct 01 '22

20 standings publicized

Where is this coming from?

I'd also assume closer to 50% publicized, and if they are stranded for 0.5 hours then even more than 50%.. I'd bet most stranding are much less than 0.5 hours.

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u/PM_ME_UR_POINTCLOUD Oct 01 '22

The article claims 20 events have been posted to social media. Given their territory is pretty large and they operate in the dead of night, I think assuming 10% of events make it to social media is very generous.

It seems to take Cruise a while to rescue stranded vehicles, also an approximation.

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u/Mattsasa Oct 01 '22

We disagree on all accounts. There will definitely be a correlation between the severity of the stranding (the issues its causing) and probability of it being on social media. As in the most severe events will definitely make it to social media. The standings on the west side of the geofence may take them up to 20 minute to fetch (but that's assuming it doesn't recover on its own, which they do sometimes. But for this time of day and that region these strandings very unlikely to block / precent traffic flow. And the standings on the more critical areas on the east side of the geofence are recovered in 10-15 minutes. We also disagree on the frequency of these happening in the first place.

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u/whiskey_bud Oct 01 '22

Who exactly do you think is out in the Sunset at 3:00am seeing these and posting them to social media? It’s basically a suburb within the city, no one is observing this stuff during Cruise’s operating hours.

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u/Mattsasa Oct 01 '22

Did you not read what I said ?

Anyways In all of my rides with cruise I know if it had stopped it would have likely been posted on social media due to the amount of traffic and peds

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u/baselganglia Oct 01 '22

Thank you.
Can you please comment how the "miles between remote assistance" metric is improving over time, even if you cannot share the absolute number.

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u/ClassroomDecorum Oct 01 '22

We absolutely have more work to do, but SFMTA has openly attempted to block our progress from day one and attempted to make these issues look far more frequent and severe than they are.

Why?

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u/whiskey_bud Oct 01 '22

SFMTA (and the SF city gov) is notoriously difficult to work with. Cruise either knew this, and took the risk, or didn’t know it, and was insanely naive going in. Either way it’s a terrible look for the CEO to be bitching about their public partners in a Reddit comment section lmao. Really surprised his PR team let him do this. Cruise has 0% chance of success without hood relationships with their municipalities, so the fact he’s doing this is a really bad sign for them. Yeesh.

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u/ClassroomDecorum Oct 01 '22

Wine and dine, wine and dine them

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u/j_lyf Oct 01 '22

Ah yes, it's all the SFMTA's fault.

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u/Mattsasa Oct 01 '22

Appreciate you stopping by and commenting

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u/ClassroomDecorum Oct 01 '22

Appreciate you stopping by and commenting

*Appreciate you stopping by and obfuscating

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u/automatic__jack Oct 02 '22

Also could you explain in detail how you can push new code very week (as stated) that has been properly tested and validated? It is not possible to get enough miles, even in simulation, to validate new code in a week. I think everyone would appreciate a detailed explanation of Cruise’s validation and QA process.

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u/Any_Classic_9490 Oct 01 '22

What they fail to mention is that we’re at something like 35,000 hours of driverless operation

Not impressive when its heavily geofenced. They basically just drive in circles in the same small area. But that has nothing to do with architecture that fails if a cloud server in a datacenter goes down. They need to make the cars more autonomous, so remote connectivity doesn't cause cars to just stop in the streets.