Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Everyone will have 5 years to get their car off the road or sell it for scrap

autonews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 50 posts

Re: Everyone will have 5 years to get their car off the road or sell it for scrap

#21

Post by dsfyu404ed »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #9

Ridiculous predictions. Human drivers legislated away in 20 years max? Please, as if the police or public services would trust their transportation to an algorithm, publicly. More likely the insurance companies will aggressively raise premiums on drivers who insist on retaining their option to drive themselves. Markets will price people out of the driver’s seat and into the passenger’s. And the idea that people would…

>More likely the insurance companies will aggressively raise premiums on drivers who insist on retaining their option to drive themselves. Markets will price people out of the driver’s seat and into the passenger’s.

Or not. The people who want to stare at their phone will self select the autonomous option leaving only the "good" drivers

Re: Everyone will have 5 years to get their car off the road or sell it for scrap

#22

Post by bryanlarsen »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #9

Ridiculous predictions. Human drivers legislated away in 20 years max? Please, as if the police or public services would trust their transportation to an algorithm, publicly. More likely the insurance companies will aggressively raise premiums on drivers who insist on retaining their option to drive themselves. Markets will price people out of the driver’s seat and into the passenger’s. And the idea that people would…

"More likely the insurance companies will aggressively raise premiums on drivers who insist on retaining their option to drive themselves. Markets will price people out of the driver’s seat and into the passenger’s."

The dedicated self-driving lane with its 150mph speed limit beside the manual drive lane with a 60mph speed limit will also convince a lot of people to buy/rent a self-driving car.

Re: Everyone will have 5 years to get their car off the road or sell it for scrap

#23

Post by sandworm101 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #5
mindcrime wrote: post #3

These transportation companies will be able to order modules of various sizes — short ones, medium ones, long ones, even pickup modules. But the performance will be the same for all because nobody will be passing anybody else on the highway. That is the death knell for companies such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi. That kind of performance is not going to count anymore. If he's right, kill me now. I really don't want…

"kill me now" That's exactly what's happening now. 37,000 deaths per year just in the US. But it won't be the deaths that will cause the change to happen: if the US actually cared more about preventing fatalities than "freedom" it'd regulate guns. The trigger for outlawing manual driving in cities and on freeways will be the convenience factor: 150mph travel without slowdowns for congestion will cut travel time to le…

>> 150mph travel without slowdowns for congestion will cut travel time to less than half.

Yes, just as the shift to supersonic air travel radically reduced flying times.

>>If you want to drive manually, go to the track

"Take it to the track" has been chanted for decades. It has long been possible to build cars physically or electronically unable to break speed limits. No such product has ever been brought to market.

>>The trigger for outlawing manual driving in cities and on freeways will be the convenience factor.

No. The convenience of me parking my car 20feet from my door, being able to hop in and out of it without planning, is far more convenient than having to call a car via an app on my phone. The knowledge that I have a car available 24/7 cannot be replaced by a promised car delivered via a cellphone.

Driving is not hard. It isn't even remotely dangerous compared to many jobs (I'm wear camo to work). They will have to come up with something far better than a 0.01% decrease in my risk of dying before I trust Uber to get me to work each morning.

Counterpoint: Motorcycles are exponentially more dangerous than cars, yet they persist. Driving is not a purely rational act.

Re: Everyone will have 5 years to get their car off the road or sell it for scrap

#24

Post by filesystem »

This will happen within 15-20 years? I don't think so. Maybe the self-driving tech will be there, but the infrastructure overhaul required to support these "high speed trains" would be massive and produce traffic delays in the existing system. Not to mention the cost of testing this at production-scale.

Re: Everyone will have 5 years to get their car off the road or sell it for scrap

#25

Post by mindcrime »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #5
mindcrime wrote: post #3

These transportation companies will be able to order modules of various sizes — short ones, medium ones, long ones, even pickup modules. But the performance will be the same for all because nobody will be passing anybody else on the highway. That is the death knell for companies such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi. That kind of performance is not going to count anymore. If he's right, kill me now. I really don't want…

"kill me now" That's exactly what's happening now. 37,000 deaths per year just in the US. But it won't be the deaths that will cause the change to happen: if the US actually cared more about preventing fatalities than "freedom" it'd regulate guns. The trigger for outlawing manual driving in cities and on freeways will be the convenience factor: 150mph travel without slowdowns for congestion will cut travel time to le…

if the US actually cared more about preventing fatalities than "freedom" it'd regulate guns

Guns are regulated in the US. See: Gun Control Act of 1968, Volkmer-McClure Amendment, mandatory Instant Background Check for most gun purchases, etc.

That said, I don't understand your mindset. Why do you think that we'd want to "care more about preventing fatalities than 'freedom'"?

From where I'm standing, it seems that Freedom is the most fundamental principle of all. What's the point of living without freedom? Maybe you've heard the phrase "live free or die"? That's more than just some marketing slogan to a lot of people.

Re: Everyone will have 5 years to get their car off the road or sell it for scrap

#26

Post by cameldrv »

snuxoll wrote: post #11

Self-driving cars are inevitable, but I still feel like everybody is focusing too much on the vision of them being the primary mode of transportation well into our future. Cars as transportation should be dead in the next 50 years, outside of fairly niche (relatively speaking) use cases like construction/maintenance/etc. workers who need to carry large loads or people who live or need to travel well outside of city l…

Why? Mass transit is an industrial age solution to the congestion problem, when we couldn't plan for demand in real-time. Mass transit means that there need to be a lot of people who want to go from the same place, to the same place, at the same time. This is never true, so you have to relax the assumptions: they aren't coming from the same place, so force them all to walk to a stop. They aren't going to the same place, so force them to walk from a stop. They don't want to go at the same time, so force them to wait for the next bus/train. If you're in a very dense city at a busy time of day, this isn't too bad, you don't have to walk too far, and you don't have to wait too long. Otherwise, it's not possible to get enough people that want to make the same trip at the same time without making people walk long distances or wait a long time. On demand Lyft Line style routing, automatically driven, with variable sized vehicles depending on demand in the area, is going to completely replace mass transit in twenty years. The cost will be the same, and the travel time will be half or less.

Re: Everyone will have 5 years to get their car off the road or sell it for scrap

#27

Post by jaredcwhite »

"you'll get in, input your destination"

That right there is a problem I have with this glorious vision of an "autonomous module" transportation future. What if I don't know what my destination? What if I, GASP, just want to go out for a drive?

Some people (myself included) actually like getting in cars and driving. The destination is somewhat irrelevant. The feeling of control and freedom you get when you're at the wheel is not to be underestimated. The notion that human-driven cars will be outlawed at some point in the future scares me. Folks always think it's a good idea to outlaw stuff that's "bad" for people's health or whatever, but guess what? People still smoke, people still drink heavily, and people get high.

Maybe another way to look at it is there could be designated "autonomous module only" zones. Dense urban environments are of course a logical choice. If you want to drive around in the country or suburbs, that's one thing, but once you get towards the city center, human-driven automobiles are not allowed. That seems a more reasonable compromise.

Re: Everyone will have 5 years to get their car off the road or sell it for scrap

#28

Post by mindcrime »

monkmartinez wrote: post #14
mindcrime wrote: post #3

These transportation companies will be able to order modules of various sizes — short ones, medium ones, long ones, even pickup modules. But the performance will be the same for all because nobody will be passing anybody else on the highway. That is the death knell for companies such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi. That kind of performance is not going to count anymore. If he's right, kill me now. I really don't want…

I suppose people that were into horses felt the same way when automobiles were first introduced. They knew the bloodlines and "genetics" of a good horse. The emergence of autos made that knowledge less valuable and/or relevant. I do want to live in that world and I live in the suburbs of vanilla tract homes, charter schools, and club soccer. Vehicles are expensive in either time, money or both... I recently did the b…

I suppose people that were into horses felt the same way when automobiles were first introduced.

But nobody was told "you have five years to trade your horse in on a car, or send it to the glue factory". Horse are still legal and used to this day, they just mostly lost out to market forces... that is, cars are simply a better mode of transportation for most people most of the time.

But you can still ride a horse if you want to (albeit probably not on freeways, but certainly on country roads). Now, if the proposal was that certain limited access, high-speed highways are restricted to only self-driving cars, I might be able to accept that, even if somewhat grudgingly. But outlawing human driven cars completely, even on backroads? I just can't see it.

Re: Everyone will have 5 years to get their car off the road or sell it for scrap

#29

Post by bryanlarsen »

sandworm101 wrote: post #23
bryanlarsen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"kill me now" That's exactly what's happening now. 37,000 deaths per year just in the US. But it won't be the deaths that will cause the change to happen: if the US actually cared more about preventing fatalities than "freedom" it'd regulate guns. The trigger for outlawing manual driving in cities and on freeways will be the convenience factor: 150mph travel without slowdowns for congestion will cut travel time to le…

>> 150mph travel without slowdowns for congestion will cut travel time to less than half. Yes, just as the shift to supersonic air travel radically reduced flying times. >>If you want to drive manually, go to the track "Take it to the track" has been chanted for decades. It has long been possible to build cars physically or electronically unable to break speed limits. No such product has ever been brought to market.…

"No. The convenience of me parking my car 20feet from my door, being able to hop in and out of it without planning, is far more convenient than having to call a car via an app on my phone. The knowledge that I have a car available 24/7 cannot be replaced by a promised car delivered via a cellphone."

Nothing in the article or in my reply said you cannot have that. You'll still be able to buy self-driving cars. They'll cost tens of thousands of dollars, just like cars do today.

Re: Everyone will have 5 years to get their car off the road or sell it for scrap

#30

Post by alooPotato »

jaredcwhite wrote: post #27

"you'll get in, input your destination" That right there is a problem I have with this glorious vision of an "autonomous module" transportation future. What if I don't know what my destination? What if I, GASP, just want to go out for a drive? Some people (myself included) actually like getting in cars and driving. The destination is somewhat irrelevant. The feeling of control and freedom you get when you're at the w…

Yes you are free to do things you want like smoke, drink, or drive a car manually. But you should also have to pay for the externalities you create. Hence why it makes sense that cigarettes are taxed so heavily.

If you want the "freedom" to drive yourself, you should pay for the extra cost you cause society (i.e. roads that wouldn't otherwise have to exist, hefty insurance premiums for accidents you may cause, etc.).

Post reply on HN