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Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

reuters.com

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Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#151

Post by abecedarius »

larkery wrote: post #82
lorenzhs wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Driverless trains have been here for a while. They're great. With platform-edge doors, nobody can fall or jump onto the track, not to mention that they increase brake cooling efficiency and decrease air resistance (less air to push). But of course you weren't talking about trains. I see this sentiment a lot on HN that self driving cars are going to fix everyone's transportation woes, but I'm not convinced that they w…

I agree with your scepticism about solving the commute traffic with a self-driving silver bullet. The research for traffic flow [1] says that, with human driven cars, a slice of a 4m wide lane will pass about 1000 people/hr in cars, about 7000 people on foot or bicycle, and about 10,000 people by bus. That means that to get competitive flow with buses, self-driving cars need to deliver a tenfold improvement in flow.…

Outside of NYC, in the U.S. public transit in my experience takes two or three times as long to get you where you're going. Until the typical experience gets better or people get poorer, the resource efficiency won't matter.

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#152

Post by erikpukinskis »

devwastaken wrote: post #107
mgleason_3 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a simple explanation: You’re getting older, more conservative and more averse to change. It’s ok, it happens. As part of this you’re also likely over-estimating the danger and underestimating the benefits. I’m sure every self-driving car death will (and should be) scrutinized heavily. But remember there’s between 30,000 and 50,000 auto deaths every year. I’m betting self-driveing cars will do better.

"I’m betting" Thats the problem. How do you know? When you have family, and people you care about, thats not 'conservative'. Thats the reality of being human. If 'change' means that consumers become the testing grounds for unsafe technologies, then yeah, I'll be plenty 'adverse to change'. These technologies do not require people to die to be made.

> "I’m betting" Thats the problem. How do you know?

I don't know why I have to point this out, but: betting is different than knowing.

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#153

Post by StudentStuff »

abecedarius wrote: post #151
larkery wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your scepticism about solving the commute traffic with a self-driving silver bullet. The research for traffic flow [1] says that, with human driven cars, a slice of a 4m wide lane will pass about 1000 people/hr in cars, about 7000 people on foot or bicycle, and about 10,000 people by bus. That means that to get competitive flow with buses, self-driving cars need to deliver a tenfold improvement in flow.…

Outside of NYC, in the U.S. public transit in my experience takes two or three times as long to get you where you're going. Until the typical experience gets better or people get poorer, the resource efficiency won't matter.

The common American is getting poorer, but just like junk food and lack of exercise, people still drive. Other modes of transit may be much safer and healthier, but unless the common person is encouraged (whether that be with incentives to not drive, or tolls for driving) quite a few people will still drive.

There are a number of US cities that get most workers into the urban core besides NYC despite poor to middling infrastructure at best, but driving infrastructure dwarfs everything else, bike lanes are added only to diet roads usually (resulting in shitty lanes), and most areas see 60% to 70% of their land tied up in (mostly empty) parking, which is a disaster for every mode of transport.

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#154

Post by StudentStuff »

iainmerrick wrote: post #100
nsgi wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what rail services are like where you live, but in the UK it's about 50/50 whether it is faster to travel between major cities by car or by train. Trains can go faster but this is often counterbalanced by needing to slow down to come to a stop, etc. There will always be places that can't be reached with public transport and even in cities like Paris renowned for their public transport it is often necessary t…

I'm confident in saying there's zero chance that self-driving cars, on their own, could replace the London Underground. Zero. The Underground (and commuter rail that feeds into it) carries a vast number of people every day. There's just not enough road space to get that many cars in and out, even if they were 2x or 4x more efficient. If you want to fix the Underground (although it works fairly well so it's not clear…

Where a train can move 20k+ people an hour in each direction, a standard road moves around 1k. Self driving cars will only make sense as chauffeur replacements for Uber, Lyft and Taxis, as even with a tripling in capacity, you'd still be wholly uncompetitive with rail. Nevermind the inefficiencies of enlarging roadways :P

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#155

Post by StudentStuff »

johncolanduoni wrote: post #150
dragonwriter wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Americans need cars because American urban planning has been for many decades built around cars. This, of course, is a solvable problem. (It has nothing to be with how big the US is, it has to do with how US communities are deliberately engineered.)

Solvable by what? Demolishing the suburbs? Building new cities in the middle of nowhere? A time machine?

Definitely. Many suburbs need to return to farmland, we have paved over most of our prime farmland for shitty, rent seeking suburbs.

Dense cities are cheaper to live in, cost less to maintain for everyone involved, and give people back time that is currently stolen from them during the average commute. You also end up with better infrastructure, lower taxes, and usually a healthier and happier population in dense cities.

Suburban and exurban slum development with 1 to 3 stories and a 1 to 2 hour commute is destined to die, its just a matter of how and when. Detroit is one failure mode, while Livingston, TX is another (tax base could never support the infrastructure built), though the latter case is very common.

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#156

Post by eru »

xr4ti wrote: post #85
eru wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google says they want to be on the hook for their self-driving cars. (And they don't want humans to be able to take over in the first place.)

Sure. That way they can partner with insurers to offer lower rates to people who buy their tech. Pretty sound business strategy. I understand that this is a pretty cynical view, and to be fair all the Googlers I've spoken with are true believers in their tech (perhaps a little too much). But don't underestimate the power of ego and financial incentives to constrain ethical/moral calculus.

Oh, it makes perfect business sense for Google to ask to be on the hook: less hassle for the customers means a bigger market for the product.

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#157

Post by loeg »

johncolanduoni wrote: post #150
dragonwriter wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Americans need cars because American urban planning has been for many decades built around cars. This, of course, is a solvable problem. (It has nothing to be with how big the US is, it has to do with how US communities are deliberately engineered.)

Solvable by what? Demolishing the suburbs? Building new cities in the middle of nowhere? A time machine?

Some improvement can come from just improved planning in the cities we already have. Relaxed zoning for density, exclusive corridors for mass transit, etc.

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#158

Post by oarsinsync »

iainmerrick wrote: post #100
nsgi wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what rail services are like where you live, but in the UK it's about 50/50 whether it is faster to travel between major cities by car or by train. Trains can go faster but this is often counterbalanced by needing to slow down to come to a stop, etc. There will always be places that can't be reached with public transport and even in cities like Paris renowned for their public transport it is often necessary t…

I'm confident in saying there's zero chance that self-driving cars, on their own, could replace the London Underground. Zero. The Underground (and commuter rail that feeds into it) carries a vast number of people every day. There's just not enough road space to get that many cars in and out, even if they were 2x or 4x more efficient. If you want to fix the Underground (although it works fairly well so it's not clear…

> If you want to fix the Underground (although it works fairly well so it's not clear why drastic changes are needed)

The population of London continues to increase. Central, Northern, Jubilee lines are often difficult to get on during rush hours, and even harder to stay on. And that's in the winter, summer time's a whole other ball game...

Self driving cars are certainly not the solution, but that's not to say there's not plenty that needs fixing on the London Underground.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOF_XIylzS8 still rings true, albeit with less BK these days than before.

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#159

Post by taneq »

muraiki wrote: post #117
menacingly wrote: post #13

There was a time when I thought of regulations as progress killers, but I find myself shifting on that and getting nervous every time I hear about self-driving tech. It's great stuff, but I really do not want my family to be the brave eggs we had to crack to get to the omelet of a driverless future. I now _like_ that someone somewhere has a book listing chemicals that aren't allowed to be shipped on an airplane, and…

One study by RAND says: "Autonomous vehicles would have to be driven hundreds of millions of miles and, under some scenarios, hundreds of billions of miles to create enough data to clearly demonstrate their safety... Under even the most-aggressive test driving assumptions, it would take existing fleets of autonomous vehicles tens and even hundreds of years to log sufficient miles to adequately assess the safety of th…

> Another question: if somebody you loved was killed by a self-driving car, would you be comforted in knowing that the technology was in aggregate saving the lives of other people? I have no answers to these questions... it's a hard problem.

We already have analogous situations with things like airbags. Airbags unarguably save lives, and yet they've also unarguably killed kids.

Re: Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research

#160

Post by taneq »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #115
devwastaken wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I’m betting" Thats the problem. How do you know? When you have family, and people you care about, thats not 'conservative'. Thats the reality of being human. If 'change' means that consumers become the testing grounds for unsafe technologies, then yeah, I'll be plenty 'adverse to change'. These technologies do not require people to die to be made.

Trying to find some good statistics but looking around it seems a majority of accidents end up being caused by human error, distracted driving and drunk driving. AI wouldn't have any of those so I'm personally confident that it'll have a much higher level of safety. The trouble is when we swap "human error" for "machine error". Because humans screw up all the time but a machine is going to fail in a way that'll likel…

> Trying to find some good statistics but looking around it seems a majority of accidents end up being caused by human error, distracted driving and drunk driving.

This is a big one that most people seem to miss: A self-driving car doesn't have to be better than an alert, conscientious human driver to be better than 90% of the actual complacent, distracted, tired humans on the road.

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