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Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

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Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#141

Post by nostrademons »

sebastos wrote: post #120
JamesBarney wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Lets assume a. 1 fatality per 100 million miles driven as an average driver[0] b. .5 fatalities per 100 million miles driven as robo driver c. .25 fatalities per 100 million miles driven as 20-70 sober well rested driver I'm 31yr old male so I have an average life expectancy of 47 more years. That means I lose about .5/100 million * 47 yrs * 365days * 24hrs * 60mins * 60s = 7.4 seconds life lost per mile in robo…

Okay, I've designed a new pill. 1 out of 4 people have adverse reactions to its contents and die instantly, but people who don't live long virile lives until, on average, the age of 100! Your expected gain would be nearly 5 additional years of life! Should I sign you up?

This is a pretty attractive proposition. The long, slow decline during your last decade of life is miserable, on both you and on loved ones.

There are certain strategic times in life where you'd want to take this, though. Ideally after the kids are grown up and don't need you anymore (so you either drop dead painlessly & predictably, or get a nice long life in great health so you can see the grandchildren grow up), or if that's cheating, in childhood or right after college so you haven't invested much into your life yet. Same reason they sell life insurance.

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#142

Post by agumonkey »

nostrademons wrote: post #134
agumonkey wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not zero. Lots of SDV talks mentioned impact of society altogether. Less crowded roads since cars could drive outside of rush hours. Different parking spot locations.

Quite possibly no parking spot locations. A self-driving car service would drop off one passenger and then immediately move to pick up the next passenger. I suppose there'd still be parking lots to handle shifts in aggregate demand over the day, but they'd be well outside the city, in some barren desert land or garage.

You're already thinking two steps ahead. This would mean sharing SDV. I don't know if people still want to own cars or not.

ps: a stream of e-SDV, possibly solar recharged would not be a sad thing for humanity.

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#143

Post by wrsh07 »

protomok wrote: post #137

"Every city has different driving culture, so how will autonomous cars treat these unique conditions. What’s safe in Bangalore may cause a traffic collapse in Boston, etc." This will be a really interesting problem to solve. The ability to turn on a red light for example will require a city specific profile and will change over time - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_on_red

Honestly, I think these special cases for robust systems like Waymo's will be more a matter of custom configuration than something particularly novel.

Yes, they'll run into scaling to every city immediately, but that happens already with software-only technology.

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#144

Post by BorgHunter »

ctdonath wrote: post #76
nickez wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cars == freedom That is a very American statement. For me it is freedom not to have a car.

Understood; different people/cultures hold different axioms for "freedom". This often confuses people. As an old-values American, self-sufficiency is paramount: freedom is the ability to do what/when I want, with practically no reliance on others; to rely on others (say, for transportation) requires their ability/consent, and should that be denied for any reason then my freedom is limited without my choice. That incl…

Curiously, though, travel by car requires one to rely on others just as much as any other form of transportation. It's just that the reliance is hidden away from you.

Take the road that goes past/to your residence. Who built it? Who repairs the potholes? If you live in an area with cold winters, who plows and salts the road when it snows? Then you have to multiply that by every municipality/county/state on your journey. You quickly find that maintaining the road network involves quite a large number of people. It's more of a sunk cost than one that recurs for every journey, yes, but it seems fallacious to say that car travel is independent of the effort of others. That is only an illusion.

You can repeat this exercise for the supply chain needed to get fuel to your car, too. There's an entire hidden network of people enabling car travel in the first place. And that isn't a bad thing; this interconnectedness in the economy is what allows us to specialize and find economies of scale and spend time writing software instead of everyone spending their days growing their own food just to survive.

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#145

Post by theincredulousk »

If it’s true that algorithms are statistically better than drivers then we shouldn’t let people to drive."

It is difficult to decide if this statement is idealistic, naive, or written by an algorithm. I love motorcycles, as do many millions of other people, despite the obvious safety risks. This may come as a shock, but minimizing risk isn't the sole goal of everyone's life on earth. By this logic, we shouldn't "let" people play sports because purpose built robots would be statistically better.

But there are still a lot of people that love to drive. This can be a fun recreational activity but we just don’t need those people on the road.

No, what we don't "need" are Autonomous Cars. We need food, water, and shelter. We want autonomous cars the same as any other modern technology. And by the way, marginalizing the interests of millions of people with language like "those people" typically does not go over well. And whom is "we"? Because it sounds like Rick's spaceship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0PuqSMB8uU

(There is also a highly relevant Futurama episode that satirizes this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2-D_Blacktop.)

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#146

Post by aninhumer »

sgustard wrote: post #111
aninhumer wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect the option to own a self-driving car instead of taking taxis will exist, and various people it will be worthwhile (e.g. people in more remote areas). However, I expect this to be quite a bit more expensive overall, and I think a lot of people might not care so much about owning a vehicle once they see that cost difference.

I'd love to see that cost comparison. I lease a Fiat 500e for 100/month and insurance plus electricity costs the same for 1000 miles of monthly driving as one Uber to the airport and back, and I don't live in a remote area. Obviously urban areas with expensive parking are different but are already served by public transit.

But we're talking about hypothetical self-driving taxis, not the existing Uber. Once you no longer need to pay for a driver, you're comparing with mostly the same costs, but with the overheads amortised over many users.

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#147

Post by maverick_iceman »

olalonde wrote: post #21
gambiting wrote: post #3

"If it’s true that algorithms are statistically better than drivers then we shouldn’t let people to drive. But there are still a lot of people that love to drive. This can be a fun recreational activity but we just don’t need those people on the road." I don't know who "we" is in that sentence, but thanks for making the decision for everyone. "we" as a society also absolutely don't need smokers, drinkers and people w…

"Smoking, drinking and extreme sports" are not great comparisons because they only put yourself at risk (for the most part). Driving, on the other hand, can endanger other people's life on the road.

Second hand smoking puts others in risk too.

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#148

Post by dclowd9901 »

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #38

On V2V / V2X Wireless Communications > The major concern here is a protocol compatibility and efficiency of communication since the decision should happen in milliseconds and there is no time for extra computation related to differences in a communication “language”. And again, security is NOT ON THE LIST. How destructive do you think it would be if I were to multiply my velocity vector by -1 while traveling on the f…

Being that cars operate in physical reality, my guess is the machine would ignore your obviously incorrect spike of data and rely instead on its LIDAR and cameras.

Frankly, I see V2X as basically useless outside of coordinating complex maneuvers (high speed, high efficiency car trains on freeways or stopless intersections). But why even have it if the sensors are already aware of what's going on to a reasonable degree of 1-2 seconds of future reality?

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#149

Post by wrsh07 »

alkonaut wrote: post #118

Let's talk about how we can't make nearly anything "smart" in the world of "IoT" and "smart things". We don't even have a decent robotic lawnmower in 2017 but we want driverless taxis within 10 years? I'm sceptical.

In your opinion, how many orders of magnitude more difficult is driving than mowing the lawn?

I honestly don't have a strong sense of the scale of ability here.

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#150

Post by coldtea »

MR4D wrote: post #99
CPLX wrote: post #19

I find it odd the way people talk about moving through the levels sequentially without really acknowledging there's a massive phase change that happens somewhere between level two and four, where a self-driving car could easily be way more dangerous than the average human driver. That comes as soon as you have a situation where the automation has to be able to handle all foreseeable scenarios without failing because…

Imagine some drunk guy hops into his car in bad weather. He taps the auto-cruise button and then passes out. Snow, rain, construction, - something - hinders the ride somewhere along the way home. Car cannot process the issue correctly, and slows to a stop, alerting the driver. Driver, being sound asleep, cannot hear the annoying alert tone. Alert continues, and possibly after some time, alerts authorities of it's dis…

>I'll bet that in the near future (next decade or so), there will be rising incidents of traffic being blocked due to a stopped automated car who's driver is not responsive, but the computer couldn't handle some construction or weather, and went into fail-safe mode, simply slowing down and stopping (but not pulling over due to lack of space).

Obviously "do not stop in the middle on the road" will be high on the priorities of self driving algorithms...

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