What’s Happening with Driverless Cars, Good and Bad

Although from a late-teens perspective autonomous vehicles haven’t done much of anything, as I have reported they are succeeding in several cities.  What else has been going on with them?

In what should be good news, “GM restarts driverless car program more than a year after Cruise robotaxi incident” (Greg Wehner, Fox Business, August 11^th).  In a one-off event well before their decision to leave, “a Cruise Origin robotaxi… struck and dragged a woman about 20 feet.”  The automaker claimed here they’re “accelerating the development of autonomous driving technology capable of operating without human oversight,” and per Bloomberg will “be focusing on developing driverless cars for personal use instead of for a robotaxi service.”  As the firm’s “sources… reportedly” said, “the first steps should be to develop hands-free and eyes-free driving with a human inside the vehicle, but ultimately the company is working to have a car that can drive without anyone at the wheel.”  That sounds like returning to where they were, if probably incorporating improvements the taxis have discovered.

Soon thereafter, we watched as “Stellantis hits the brakes on Level 3 autonomous driving tech over soaring costs” (Nora Eckert, USA Today, August 26^th).  That wasn’t defined in the article, except that it “enables drivers to have their hands off the wheel and eyes off the road under certain conditions,” which “would allow them to temporarily watch movies, catch up on emails, or read books.”  That sort of thing seems scarier than it did even years ago, and indeed was “never launched,” but the company “stopped short of saying that the program was canceled.”  Clearly an indefinite delay.

Per Charlemagne in the September 6^th Economist, such technology is important enough that we can call the continent’s slow pace with it “Europe’s Sputnik Moment.”  Robotaxis, which are “starting to feel humdrum in Guangzhou or Phoenix” remain perceived as “science fiction in Warsaw or Rome,” as they are “barely being tested” there, and exemplify “how far the continent has fallen behind” and how “Europe has become too dependent on China and America.”  However, this interpretation is unfair, since cities with robotaxis have new road and highway systems and generally fine weather.  I have heard nothing about them being planned for New York or Boston, in which self-driving vehicles would fare little better than in the much older cities across the Atlantic, and as well have more people walking and using public transportation.

“The one thing that’s free in Las Vegas – but it requires taking a gamble” (Deirdre Bardolf, Fox News, September 21^st) is a ride on a Zoox robotaxi, provided by Amazon.  The vehicles, which distinctively look like “toaster(s) on wheels,” have been available for just over five weeks, before which they progressed from serving “company employees” to helping “friends and family members,” before opening to “anyone with the Zoox app.”  At press time, Zoox was “collecting rider feedback, testing its user interface, refining its pickup and drop-off infrastructure and working to gain the public trust in driverless transportation.”  All strongly positive, even in a city with conditions, as above, unusually well suited to robotaxis.

Forbes, though, printed something called “Tesla’s Full-Self Driving Software is A Mess.  Should It Be Legal?” (Alan Ohnsman, September 23^rd).  In order for company CEO Elon Musk to get “his jaw-dropping $1 trillion pay package,” he must put “1 million Tesla robotaxis on the road and 10 million active (full self-driving) users over the next decade” – a tall order for technology described as “error-prone,” as during an hour-and-a-half Los Angeles test it “ignored some standard traffic signs and posted speed limits, didn’t slow at a pedestrian crossing with a flashing sign and people present, made pointless lane changes and accelerated at odd times, such as while exiting a crowded freeway with a red light at the end of the ramp.”  One observer called it ”just a prototype” and said “it’s not a product,” yet it stays as “driving-assist systems are unregulated.”  The previous paragraph gave; this one took away.  A week later, we saw “Two US senators urge probe of Tesla’s Full Self Driving response to rail crossings” (David Shepardson, Reuters), in response to “a growing number of reported near-collisions.”

“When a Driverless Car Makes an Illegal U-Turn, Who Gets the Ticket?” (Michael Levenson and Laurel Rosenhall, The New York Times, October 1^st).  Two policemen in San Bruno, California, “saw a car make an illegal U-turn right in front of them,” but “a ticket couldn’t be issued,” since, although “California approved a law last year allowing the police to cite autonomous vehicles,” it isn’t in force yet, “did not specify any penalties,” and “citation books don’t have a box for ‘robot.’”  Indeed, “there are no clear rules in California,” although “Arizona has a state law that allows the police to issue traffic citations to driverless vehicles, just as they would to regular drivers.”

What can we make of this motley collection?  One takeaway is that robotaxis, when in their carefully chosen environments, are doing superbly.  Another is that elsewhere they are not, erring with such as obeying signs that I would have thought the software’s 2010s closed-course training would have long resolved.  A third is that those programming and implementing autonomous vehicle technology need to change some things they are doing.  Until the results improve, driverless software will be limited to robotaxis and, with warnings to them to never stop paying attention, in cars with drivers.  Could all that substantially improve?  Maybe in a year, maybe not in ten.  Don’t bet on it – unless the odds you get are good enough.