Cruise Robotaxis Return To the Bay Area Nearly One Year After Pedestrian Crash

Cruise is returning to the streets of Sunnyvale and Mountain View for the first time since it paused operations in the Bay Area after a robotaxi struck a pedestrian in October 2023. From a report: The company said Thursday that it will put "several" vehicles driven by humans in the two cities that will initially perform mapping. The company said it hopes to progress to supervised AV testing of up to five robotaxis "later this fall."

"Resuming testing in the Bay Area is an important step forward as we continue to work closely with California regulators and local stakeholders," the company said in a post on X. "This will allow our local employees to engage directly with our product as they refine and improve our tech through R&D." The decision to bring Cruise's autonomous Chevy Bolts back to the Bay Area comes just a few months after the company reached a settlement with California's Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). As part of that deal, Cruise paid a $112,500 fine for failing to provide full information about the October 2023 crash.

perform mapping? so each area needs to be super ma

[Joe_Dragon]

perform mapping? so each area needs to be super mapped?
and how often does it need to be updated?
And what they super map on road and then the next day work starts to change that road?

Re: perform mapping? so each area needs to be supe

[phantomfive]

Mapping is how most of the self-driving cars work. It's an incredibly detailed map, including details like the height of the curb. Tesla is the notable exception that doesn't use such mapping (but their self driving tech doesn't seem to work as well either).

From what I hear

[rsilvergun]

They are all over Phoenix Arizona now and they work perfectly well. At this point I think we are just waiting to see how long it takes to work out the legal liability issues around self-driving cars. I don't think that'll take more than 3 to 5 years.

We've got around 7 million professional drivers of the light vehicle kind, many of who do it because there are otherwise unemployable.

I'd say within the next 5 years, 10 of the most every single one of them is going to be completely and totally unemployable. Even if we want to pretend there's magically going to be 7 million new jobs for them nobody's going to want to hire them for those jobs any more than they want to hire them for a job today.

We need to start thinking about what we're going to do with 7 million completely unemployable people because if we don't somebody else will and they're going to do bad things to us with them...

Re:

[wairapeti]

You could say the same thing about the longshoremen who loaded & unloaded ships before containerization. They found jobs, shipping got faster and much cheaper, and fewer product is "lost" either through theft or ineptitude. No I'm not worried about huge proportions of society being unemployed when something better comes along.

Sure I will

[rsilvergun]

Here's an article on the effects of 50 years of non stop automation: https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]

The difference here is that was 50 years of slow, steady automation. We at least found shitty service sector jobs for most of them and made up reasons why they rest were disabled. Settling in to permanent 8-10% unemployment and cooking the books to make it look like half that.

We're gonna double that in 10 years instead of 50. While also replacing ton of folks with AI. And with no new jobs on the horizon to replace them.

If we don't do something about it we'll have the same sort of social unrest every country with 15-20% unemployment has. We know this. The only question is what, if anything, we're gonna do about it.

Re:

[CEC-P]

Yeah, deserts are easy mode. Try and this in snow let alone rain. Humans don't even know where the lines in the road are for most of the winter.

So a couple of times a year Uber turns on

[rsilvergun]

and calls in the drivers to take over. Nobody's gonna make a living off that.

Re:

[gweihir]

I agree. Not 10/10 of drivers, there will be specialty jobs and people that pay extra for a human driver. But 9/10 will be out of a job because self-driving cars just perform better and cause less damage. Incidentally, this is not unexpected. Eventually, human drivers will just look like a menace in comparison to self-driving vehicles. They already are in many scenarios, but people are still used to human drivers killing people while they are not used to self-driving vehicles killing far fewer people (by an

Re:

[sixoh1]

I've tried reaching out to local and state politicos and NFIB and other 'small business' interest groups about this - automation would tend to move in the direction of capital because it costs money to purchase a robot or robo-taxi etc. - but the concentration of capital that results from this is toxic in the long run for the community and the businesses that use automation. At some point not only will the low skilled labor jobs disappear, but the next ripple is that the technicians to keep those very self-

so an 1099 is owning/operating/maintaining robo-ta

[Joe_Dragon]

so an 1099 is owning/operating/maintaining robo-taxis and when something bad happens an sub contractor has shell out $$$$ and ford pays 0 for there shit software.

Humans still allowed to drive?

[backslashdot]

A human driver kills another person on a weekly basis in the bay area, yet we still allow humans to drive. No suspension, no forced retraining of humans, nothing. Correct thing to do is every time a human kills someone, all driver licenses must be suspended as punishment and everyone should have to go through training before being allowed on the road.

Re: Humans still allowed to drive?

[phantomfive]

Your post doesn't even make sense as an analogy. Not all self driving cars were banned, just the ones from the company that activity lied to the regulators.

pedestrian chainmail

[awwshit]

I'm taking pre-orders for my new anti-dragging, kevlar lined, chainmail clothing line.

App still not available in SF

[repett0]

At least for myself, the Cruise app is still "offline" in SF.