Friday, Nov. 10, 2023
44th
edition of the 11th year of SmartDrivingCars eLetter
Under Fire Over Robotaxi Safety, GM Halts Production Of Cruise Driverless Van
C. Farivar, Nov. 6, “Reeling from a month in which the California DMV yanked Cruise’s permits for its self-driving robotaxis and the company paused all operations, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt held an all hands meeting Monday to explain how the company was planning to address concerns that its autonomous vehicles are not yet safe enough to operate. One of the very first announcements: pausing production of a fully autonomous van called the Origin, which Cruise parent company GM was planning to ramp up in the imminent future.
According to audio of the address obtained by Forbes, Vogt remarked on the company’s recent decision to halt driverless operations across its entire autonomous vehicle fleet, telling staff that “because a lot of this is in flux, we did make the decision with GM to pause production of the Origin.”? …”
Read More Hmmmm…. Pausing is fine and likely a good decision; although, pauses necessarily incur additional cost; else, we would all pause all of the time. What is fundamentally troubling here is that one incident that could easily be characterized as a situation in which “the good actors”, while doing everything right, unfortunately tried to do even a little more good, which unpredictably set off a chaotic effect, well-known in the mathematics of non-linear dynamical systems as Chaos theory.
What just happened? What have we learned? The ironies abound.
San Francisco is turning into THE “Training Set” of both what to do and what not to do for those building AI models for “The Real Case for Driverless Mobility” and for those struggling to do good for society.
The biggest lesson that is staring us in the face is that it is really important for all in this business to be able to collaborate and share as much as possible and safety related information including safety scenarios and approaches to being able to safely address those scenarios. These companies should NOT be competing on safety, because safety is a necessary condition. Unsafeness of one reflects poorly on all. The first legislation that Congress should pass of this technology should focus on anti-trust immunity to this industry related to safety. Safety is everyone’s responsibility. We’ve benefited enormously by cooperating on safety in the airline industry. Alain
Oct. 10, 2023
Oct. 2, 2023
Sept. 26, 2023
Sept. 20, 2023
Sept. 12, 2023
August 31, 2023
August 25, 2023
August 21, 2023
August 12, 2023
August 07, 2023
July 31, 2023
July 24, 2023
July 14, 2023
June 26 2023
June 26 2023
June 21 2023
June 14, 2023
June 2, 2023
May 19, 2023
May 12, 2023
May 4, 2023
April 20, 2023
April 6, 2023
March 24, 2023
March 19, 2023
March 13, 2023
March 8, 2023
March 03, 2023
February 17, 2023
February 3, 2023
January 24, 2023
January 13, 2023
December 30, 2022
December 25, 2022
December 17, 2022
December 11, 2022
19, 2022
6, 2022
October 30, 2022
October 23, 2022
14, 2022
08, 2022
August 22, 2022
August 6, 2022
June 11, 2022
May 28, 2022
April 30, 2022
April 23, 2022
April 15, 2022
March 31, 2022
February 4, 2022
This list is maintained by Alain Kornhauser and hosted by the Princeton University LISTSERV.