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San Francisco is full of driverless cars that are working fine

Published on 37 Comments on San Francisco is full of driverless cars that are working fine

The Washington Post reports that San Francisco is jammed to the gills with driverless cars these days:

Automated cars, programmed to follow traffic rules, are a relief for some residents.

Andrew Harding doesn’t own a car and commutes almost entirely by bike and public transportation. He moved with his family to San Francisco from Atlanta last year in large part because the city fit his car-free lifestyle. The 47-year-old technical architect said he’s had positive experiences sharing the road with Waymo and Cruise cars, which are programmed to give bicyclists the proper amount of clearance when they pass, or to slow down and stay behind.

“They’re the only thing obeying the speed limit in the Sunset, they’re the only thing respecting cyclists,” said Harding, referring to the neighborhood. “Speed is what kills people. That’s why I continue to be positive.”

Meanwhile, Cruise just announced driverless taxi service throughout the entire city 24 hours a day:

We're getting there. There are still problems, and the Post article specifically mentions one in particular:

Even more dangerous, the cars struggle at emergency sites. At one active fire, a firefighter had to break out the window of the Cruise car to stop it from running over a hose. At another, a car ran over a fire hose that was being used, according to the San Francisco County Transportation Authority letter.

This will all get worked out, as will maneuvering in parking lots. Honestly, the biggest gripe about Waymo and Cruise cars seems to be that they dare to obey both the speed limit and traffic laws. But that says more about us than it does about them.

37 thoughts on “San Francisco is full of driverless cars that are working fine”

  1. kahner

    The fire hose issue is such an edge case that if that's the best example of an issue then self-driving cars are in a really good place. And over the long term, speed limits will be adjusted up. They're designed for human drivers who will, inevitably always exceed the legal limit. When self-driving cars take over, the whole speed limit paradigm is going to change.

    1. Crissa

      What it really says is that they should throw out cones to mark it. The AI is not seeing the hose, just like any human might not.

      1. kahner

        well, a human driver can assess the entire situation in a way these AIs are not yet trained to do. you see a bunch of firetrucks and firemen you can infer the hose and avoid the it even if you don't see it initially.

    3. azumbrunn

      I doubt the firefighters or the owners of the burning building would consider the issue marginal. There will be a gazillion of those "marginal" situations to deal with--because AI is A but not I.

      Nobody doubts that self driving cars are possible. The point is that they are a stupid way to expend engineering resources on as long as we do not have an electric grid designed for climate change or a host of other things that must be invented to survive the next few decades.

  2. Alex R

    I read the article, which also mentioned mini-traffic jams caused by multiple driverless cars behaving in the same way in response to an unfamiliar situation. One thing about human drivers is they are all a little different -- maybe adding some of that diversity (or randomness) to the programming of driverless cars will prevent issues like this.

    1. MindGame

      I would think agreeing upon a communications protocol between driverless cars would enable them to quickly negotiate a shared strategy for dealing with such situations.

  3. different_name

    That article is a plant.

    I live here. Cruise is still a pain in the ass, randomly throwing "Cruise conventions" in intersections, mostly at night.

    I had to drive around one last weekend, a pile of them had taken over an intersection and stopped moving. (Otis St. at Mission, for any other locals who might be here.)

    I'm not saying they won't get there eventually. But I want to throw things at them now.

    1. emh1969

      I wouldn't say the aritcle is a plant. I'd say Kevin simply cherry picked the most positive aspects of the article while ignoring most of the negative ones. Imagine that!

  5. skeptonomist

    Well, apparently the cars haven't killed anybody yet, but "working fine" is not an accurate description. There have been many problems. It is unlikely that human drivers will disappear completely (for many drivers, the gas pedal will be taken away from their cold dead foot) so the bots will have to deal with speeding, crazy drivers.

    The cars themselves clearly are not learning from experience as a human would. Improvement has to await a software update, done presumably by human programmers. When the cars can learn and figure out things faster than humans, that will be AI. Or maybe when human programmers are no longer needed to revise the software.

      1. Crissa

        They should start being able to notice traffic, construction, road alterations, so the next car doesn't have to deal with as a novel situation.

  6. uppercutleft

    This “journalism” is clearly an ad. It’s clear that we need a massive and currently unknown technology leap for this to work. There’s no reason to think it will ever be more than 99% effective, which I sent good enough. The “pro” argument, such as it is, is that American drivers are bad and so self-driving isn’t much worse, which is an indictment of American car policy, not a reason for this technology.

    See also(

    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/19/chinese-ev-giant-byd-self-driving-tech-better-for-factories-than-cars.html

  7. jdubs

    Lol, "working fine" except when there are regular weather events, or long buses, or trees or an open car door.

    Lol, Kevin is the driverless car equivalent of the Elon fan boys. No matter what happens, its a success.

    1. Rattus Norvegicus

      I laughed when I read about a bunch of the stopping in the fog because they didn't know how to handle it. We're about to enter fog season in SF. I'm sure that will be fun for the human residents.

      1. Crissa

        ....just like the tourists, do. The driverless cars only stop if their vision is occluded, unlike the human drivers, who will slow down because there's fog *over there* not occluding the road.

  8. iamr4man

    Anecdotally my wife and I drive through the city on 19th Ave (Hwy 1) at least a couple of times per month. There are always a few Waymo cars on the road. About a month ago one of them started drifting into our lane and my wife, who was driving, sped up to avoid getting hit by it and angrily honked the horn. I told her I doubted the horn honking had any effect since the car was driverless, which she hadn’t noticed.
    Does anyone know if horn honking has any effect on driverless cars?

  9. KJK

    Perhaps they should put an animatronic cab driver behind the wheel, like "Johnny Cab" from "Total Recall", to make people feel more comfortable when they see the auto cab go by.

      1. KJK

        It is interesting that Otto the autopilot is now required to be used when flying above 29,000 feet. This is to implement Reduced Vertical Separation Minima (RVSM), vertical separation of only 1,000 feet. The autopilot in needed to assure accurate enough flying to meet this standard.

  10. Wichitawstraw

    I was in a Lyft up in Bernal Heights. It's one of those narrow streets that is two way but really only one car can pass at a time. Our driver came head to head with another car that wasn't going to pull over which they should have. Just one of those unwritten rules with the way cars were parked on the street. Being a Lyft driver he wasn't going to back down and then we all realized it was driverless. Well the Lyft driver was pissed now and no way he was going to back up. After about a 3 minute stand off the driverless car finally backed up and let us by. The Lyft driver said he sees them doing crazy eights in the intersections all the time and has called the police on them, but the police said it's just something they do from time to time.

    I would just like to add that the bar for driverless isn't perfect it's just needs to be as good as human drivers and that isn't a really high bar.

    1. jdubs

      considering there are what....1,000x as many regular cars as self driven cars in SF, and the self driven cars are not allowed to drive at busy times nor in busy locations......I bet the human caused delays are higher.

      If the self driven cars were effective, certainly the companies would have flooded this promotional piece with their supporting data. I wonder why they didnt?

  12. rick_jones

    Just how many autonomous vehicles does it take to fill San Francisco to the gills? …. Perhaps ChatGPT can tell us?

  13. DFPaul

    If these things actually stop at stop signs, that’s a game changer for cyclists and pedestrians. Now, do they also solve the blacked out windows problem? I mean, when stopped at an intersection do they flash the lights at you or something to let you know they “see” you?

  14. painedumonde

    My fantasy is take out that cop car in front of the hydrant...and you wouldn't believe how many patrolmen do it.

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