Autonomous Vehicles in 3Q24: A Pause, A Scandal, and a Fine

They’re still in the news, so what has been going on with driverless cars?

On July 23rd, we had two stories on the status of one manufacturer’s efforts.  In “GM indefinitely pauses Cruise Origin autonomous vehicle while it refocuses unit” (Daniella Genovese, Fox Business), the word was that General Motors would be “focusing their next autonomous vehicle on the next-generation Chevrolet Bolt, instead of the Origin, which had been facing regulatory uncertainty because of its unique design.”  Later that day, though, we saw that “G.M. Will Restart Cruise Taxi Operations” (Neal E. Boudette, The New York Times), a report that “General Motors said on Tuesday that its Cruise driverless-taxi division has restarted test operations in three Sun Belt cities, using self-driving cars with human safety drivers who will monitor the vehicles and intervene if needed.”  The second half of that sentence is important to note, as is the word “test,” necessary since “the vehicles will not carry paying passengers for now.”  No clear progress here.

How about one of GM’s competitors?  They produced a nuisance, as “Endless Honking of Waymo’s Driverless Taxis Wakes a Neighborhood” (Sara Ruberg, The New York Times, August 14^th).  This was about a Waymo-rented San Francisco parking lot used for the vehicles to “idle in then they weren’t making trips or charging.  But because the vehicles are programmed to honk when nearing other vehicles and then change directions, the more crowded the lot became, the more honks erupted.”  Whoops.  The company has said it has since “updated the software.”  Three weeks later, another piece asked, since “Waymo’s Robot Taxis Are Almost Mainstream.  Can They Now Turn a Profit?” (Eli Tan, The New York Times, September 4^th).  Lost in the autonomous follies has been news that “Waymo is now completing over 100,000 rides in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles – double the number in May.”  That’s highly favorable news, even if “robot taxi services are not profitable right now.”  As for other locations, “autonomous vehicle experts” see potential in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Hoboken, Westchester County, and “even Long Island.”

I’m calling this a scandal since the public was deceived, but perhaps it wasn’t, given the results above: “When Self-Driving Cars Don’t Actually Drive Themselves” (Cade Metz, The New York Times, published September 11^th and updated September 21^st.  The author, a long-time writer on autonomous transportation, reported that he had taken “his first ride in a self-driving car nearly a decade ago,” and then “felt a deep sense of awe that machines had mastered a skill that once belonged solely to humans.”  He realized afterwards that he was wrong, that such cars “could not yet match the power of the human brain,” and as of the article date “they still can’t.”  He checked out a Zoox “command center” which provided “help from human technicians” when “the company’s self-driving vehicles… struggle to drive themselves.”  Among other things, these as-needed operators rerouted impeded cars, and “all robot taxi companies operate command centers like” that one.  We knew about the shortcomings Metz also mentioned, such as the similarly misleading Tesla “full self-driving” technology that wasn’t, but more such misrepresentations will only serve to discourage people from thinking the current state is as good as it is.  Perhaps all companies need to do is to label it accurately.  For now, though, the author has discovered that the capabilities of autonomous vehicles “and so many other forms of artificial intelligence… are not as powerful as they first seem.  When we, the people, see a bit of human behavior in a machine, we tend to think, subconsciously, that it can do everything we can do.  But we should give ourselves more credit,” a point also made in similar-topic article “Self-driving cars have a dirty little secret,” by Frank Landymore on September 14^th in Futurism.com. 

A sad follow-up to General Motors’ problems above was that “Cruise, G.M.’s Self-Driving Unit, Will Pay $1.5 Million Federal Fine” (Jack Ewing, The New York Times, September 30^th).  That was for “failing to properly report an accident in which one of its self-driving taxis severely injured a pedestrian last year.”  That’s not a lot of money in this industry, and I hope it will not slow the company.  We’re still looking at almost 40,000 driver-caused deaths per year, and we need to stay focused on ending that.