[kvogt]

Cruise founder here. This is kind of confusing. Short version:

- Cruise permit is for robo-taxi service, available to public (fully driverless, nobody in the car)

- Waymo permit is for robo-taxi service, available to public (human safety driver behind the wheel at all times)

- Nuro permit is for robo-delivery, available to public (no human passengers)

[unityByFreedom]

Is this because you specifically asked for a driverless permit? From the post,

> Cruise has had state authority to test autonomous vehicles on public roads with a safety driver since 2015 and authority to test autonomous vehicles without a driver since October 2020.

> Waymo has had state authority to test autonomous vehicles on public roads with a safety driver since 2014 and received a driverless testing permit in October 2018.

[kvogt]

Yes. It's a very different permitting process. As you might expect, the bar is very high to jump from driverless testing to operating a driverless service available to the general public.

More info at the DMV's website (although it's a lot to digest): https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/auto...

[gitfan86]

What happens when the car runs into a problem that it cannot address (Damage to car, blocked by obstacle in road) Does the passenger call you, or are you monitoring the car remotely for problems?

[RC_ITR]

Feel free to repost this, but here’s what happens in AZ

https://youtube.com/watch?v=zdKCQKBvH-A&feature=share

[lanternfish]

presumably all cars are persistently monitored 24/7 anyways.

[MichaelZuo]

Are there any extra conditions for the company or for riders? Like pre-vetting, or special responsibilities.

[ra7]

Congrats! Curious why Cruise got a permit to operate only between 10 PM and 6 AM? Is it a DMV decision because you applied for driverless operations or did Cruise specify operating conditions?

[Method-X]

10PM to 6AM sounds like a great time for testing a new technology.

[paxys]

I'm not looking forward to the self-driving AI vs drunk driver battle.

[foepys]

I on the other hand am looking for the drunk person taking the robo-taxi instead of their own car situation.

[Method-X]

Can I ask why? I know you didn't say otherwise, but I think that would be a good thing.

[sangnoir]

There's actually great synergy(sorry) between self-driving AI and would-be drunk drivers. The only downside may be the need for additional investment in cleaning services.

[oceanghost]

I was wondering if it could be my job actually to go to a bar, get intoxicated, and take a Cruise home.

[ra7]

Definitely. But just wanted to know if this restriction is self-imposed by Cruise to start cautious or if it’s imposed by the DMV.

[booi]

Easier to dispose of the bodies maybe

[devoutsalsa]

I wonder if we'll ever get to the point where robo drivers will report suspiciously shaped carryon items (e.g. "CA-SF-69420 reporting in. passenger spotted carrying human shaped object wrapped in a tarp. bleep bloop."

[KorematsuFredt]

This is not reddit or 9gag bro/sis/them/their/nb.

[syntaxing]

Super awesome seeing you on HN! As a previous Cruise employee, genuinely happy for you and the team on this great milestone!

[jacquesm]

'No human passengers' -> except for those in all the other vehicles on the road; for cruise it is 'and the passengers of the vehicle'.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you that your service won't kill someone?

[belltaco]

Hope we apply the same metric to human drivers as well and don't allow anyone on the roads till they prove they are attentive 100% of the time and can maneuver like F1 drivers at all times. Monitored cameras every 100 feet would be a good start to find who's driving badly, and also a required driver face camera that records to a blackbox like device that cops can get the video from, and which the driver has no control over.

>Fatalities from Crashes

>In 2016, over 33,000 traffic crashes resulting in fatalities, major injuries or minor injuries were reported on Bay Area roadways.

10% of the crashes resulted in more than minor injuries, so 3.3K serious crashes.

[jacquesm]

Yes to the being attentive, no they don't need to maneuver like F1 drivers because they are not in a race.

Drivers in the USA are - sorry - absolutely terrible, the driving license requirements are ridiculous.

[enraged_camel]

Your profile says you’re in the Netherlands, which is a completely different place.

You may know this already but here in the US, even though driving is technically a “privilege”, in reality it is a requirement in most locales due to lack of consistent and reliable alternatives. That’s part of why getting a drivers license is fairly easy.

It’s also why your “I’ll have my son shred my license after I turn 70” wouldn’t work unless you were living in a place like NYC or Chicago, or were totally okay with having little social life (dependent on your kids’ and friends’ ability and willingness to drive you to places).

[jacquesm]

Collectively you decide what kind of country you want to create and individually you have the choice to move. FWIW I spent years on the Canadian/USA border and have driven there quite a bit.

[Sargos]

These autonomous cars do maneuver like F1 drivers so I guess they are a big improvement already

[Retric]

Only the same way a Boeing 777 is like a fighter jet.

F1 cars can break 7g’s cornering where street legal cars have trouble hitting 1/3 of that. They do 0-120 mph faster than most cars can hit 0-60.

[raldi]

On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you that you'll never kill someone while you're driving?

[jacquesm]

Pretty good. With well in excess of a million km driven, a valid driving license (something which no software product so far has been able to achieve), zero alcohol, zero drugs and no smartphone to distract me while driving. I see driving as a 'full time occupation'. My vehicle(s) (and that includes by bikes) are kept in tip-top condition, no expense spared, I'm fully aware that it isn't just my life that's on the line. I also have a standing order to my eldest that he is to shred my driving license when I turn 70 no matter how much I protest, and that's only 14 years away.

I'm all for self driving cars and I believe they are the future. I also believe they will be a decade or more in the coming and that we need at least one more level-up before AI sofware/hardware combos are solid enough that your typical self-driving solution will outperform an experienced driver.

[raldi]

Ah, then a fair question to ask might be how confident Kyle is that there won’t be an at-fault crash in the first million km driven.

(Or even better, what he predicts will be the distance driven per serious at-fault crash.)

[jacquesm]

Fair enough.

[jensvdh]

70 isn't too old to drive.

[jacquesm]

Neither is 71, 72, 73, 74 and so on, and then one day you really were too old to drive. In a country where driving is a necessity there is no way around this so you get a lot of people driving who really shouldn't be. To play it safe I've set the limit at 70 for myself because I think that if I don't put a hard line down I will always think 'one more year'. This avoids the gray area entirely, exactly because 70 isn't too old to drive.

[bcrosby95]

I know a 62 year old that shouldn't drive. And I know a 76 year old that is fine. It really depends upon the person, but our dmv isn't fit to detect this.

[katbyte]

I know people in their 20s/30s who probably shouldn’t drive…

[paul7986]

He's trying to be one of the pioneers of robot cars ... does he care how many people his robot cars are going to kill (drivers of them to the innocent drivers driving alongside them) in the name of progress? PUtting them on the road and learning and improving the AI is the progress needed to perfect them over Years, but its going to be deadly... unlike creating and fixing bugs on a videogame live streaming site.

Maybe he does care, but how much?

This is not to be flippant (i appreciated and used Justin.TV a ton back in the day..canceled Cable TV cause everything was there for one to watch ... 24/7 marathons of your favorite shows) but what I view of the harsh reality of putting these things on the road as Uber's self driving car already killed a pedestrian. Personally, I'm not sure I could in good conscious work for a robot car company (just was being recruited by such a company).

[leesec]

Tho no one is behind the wheel, do you still have people operating the car remotely when there are issues?

[civilized]

Why the difference Cruise vs Waymo?

[tialaramex]

Two questions: 1. How do we see this detail about permits, such as for example that Cruise are permitted to have "nobody in the car" while Waymo are required to have "human safety driver behind the wheel at all times") ?

2. Where are Cruise's testimonials etc. for the presumably successful San Francisco non-commercial testing of this "fully driverless, nobody in the car" system you now have commercial deployment for?

[killion]

Thanks for the clarification! For the Cruise rides will they be booked through services like Lyft or the Cruise Anywhere app?

[aripickar]

Is there a timeline for when you will be rolling out the availability to ride in one of your vehicles to the general public?

[thehappypm]

I’m rooting for you!

[guiomie]

will you not have a robo-taxi service with human safety driver at first?

[kvogt]

We have been running one for employees on and off since 2017.

[vntok]

So is that a yes or no to parent's question?

[arthurcolle]

How could you interpret it anything other than a 'yes' ?

[adriand]

Actually, answering “yes” to that question would have been extremely confusing given how the question is worded! Which makes the snarky request for a binary response even less reasonable.

[dang]

I take your point but it might not have been snarky - for example, HN has a lot of non-native English speakers and different languages handle affirmation-of-negation very differently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes!_We_Have_No_Bananas

[vntok]

Running a program "for employees" is pretty different than running it "for everyone"

[itisit]

Serious question: how much death are you budgeting for over the next 18 months?

[dylan604]

wow. just wow. in the words of Archer, "phrasing!!"

there's a way to ask a serious question to get a serious answer, and then there's your way.

[itisit]

Yes, the direct way. I'm sure it's in the budget. Would love to know the figure.

[dylan604]

While I can appreciate that, let me rephrase my post:

There's a way of asking a question without being a total dick, and then there's your way.

Being direct doesn't mean being an asshat. I have plenty of experience of doing it the wrong way, and yes, I'm suggesting yours is not the right way.

Edit: "I'm sure it's in the budget."

Actually, I'm guessing this would be covered in the liability insurance. So it's probably a much smaller line item in the budget than you are so dramatically inferring it to be.

[nexuist]

It's a useless question anyways, because the company gains nothing by "budgeting" for death, and loses everything by settling on a real number. It's like asking Boeing how many families they expect to send payouts to in any given quarter. The only answer is zero, and any answer above zero is itself negligent.

[dylan604]

It's not exactly useless, as it is a serious business concern. However, asking it the way it has been phrased is useless, as you've stated, stating from the start that you are planning on paying out fees like this is just dumb. It is good business planning to be aware of the fact that it is a >0% chance of unintended bad things happening, so let's take out an insurance policy to cover for that contingency. There's a difference between planning for the fact that an accident is possible vs planning to cause an accident.

[manquer]

Exception events like are usually covered by Insurance.

However companies do provision for payouts in potential cases whether private/ class action or government regulatory ones , they are legally required to do so and disclose it in their filings.

[manquer]

That is really for the insurance companies covering them.

The actuaries at Insurance Co do that kind of analysis for all products for life/ medical to workplace/ product safety this would probably fall under.

The courts also have fairly well known tables/methods for calculating cost/value of life used to compute compensation for injury/death.

[coding123]

You know back in CS class we had to go over the THERAC25 problem a lot. It wasn't so much about the specifics of the incorrect code, but more about the hubris that it "couldn't have been the code".

It seems like with self driving, it's like 45 companies just started making clones of the THERAC25 where they "are pretty sure it's fixed now, this is easy". It's the same damn ego.

[tryitnow]

Thanks for the clarification, but is there any public resource I can point people to in order to confirm the difference between Cruise and Waymo permits?

I believe you, but skeptics won't be persuaded by "the founder said so on HN".

[ed]

It's literally the post you're commenting on

[notyourday]

> Cruise founder here. This is kind of confusing. Short version:

> - Cruise permit is for robo-taxi service, available to public (fully driverless, nobody in the car)

We need to have fewer executives talking about their awesome safe technology and more executives being forced to use their awesome safe technology.

It is extremely unfortunate that as the condition of the permit the DMV did not force dogfooding requiring that every executive of a company applying for driverless robo-taxi permit and executives' families, including their children, were mandated to give up their drivers licenses and all other modes of transportation ensuring that those executives and those executives families are the constant test subjects of the technology.

Same goes for the likes of Musk.