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

Uber Wants to Make It Illegal to Operate Your Own Self-Driving Car in Cities

cei.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 50 posts

Re: Uber Wants to Make It Illegal to Operate Your Own Self-Driving Car in Cities

#31

Post by soneil »

rayiner wrote: post #27
peapicker wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can pry my human-driven gas-burning vehicle out of my cold dead hands.

You can keep the car and drive it on your farm. But as to public roads, they're a limited public resource, and the government has an obligation to ensure they are utilized as efficiently as possible. That will be achieved by only allowing self-driving cars.

Unfortunately this is the kinda stuff that creates red/blue divides.

I used to live somewhere I could drive the 12 miles to work without seeing another car. Telling people around there that they can't have their trucks because roads are a limited resource, would go over like a fart in a spacesuit.

Re: Uber Wants to Make It Illegal to Operate Your Own Self-Driving Car in Cities

#32

Post by [deleted] »

hartror wrote: post #6

> Due to the transformational potential of autonomous vehicle technology, it is critical that all AVs are part of shared fleets, well-regulated, and zero emission. Shared fleets can provide more affordable access to all, maximize public safety and emissions benefits, ensure that maintenance and software upgrades are managed by professionals, and actualize the promise of reductions in vehicles, parking, and congestion…

[deleted]

Re: Uber Wants to Make It Illegal to Operate Your Own Self-Driving Car in Cities

#33

Post by eqtn »

munk-a wrote: post #4
tyingq wrote: post #3

I suppose someone will call me out as alarmist, but this sounds almost like the first step into a dystopian movie. Ban personal self driving cars, then when the fleets outnumber personal non-self-driving cars, ban them too. Presto...big brother now knows where you are, all the time. (Yes, I get that cell phones serve that purpose now, but the workaround is pretty easy)

I think that's a bit overly alarmist, there could certainly be competition in this space. _But_ this is an absolutely despicable move on Uber's part that would slow the adoption of self-driving vehicles to prop up their own (at that point failing) business model.

If there are no data sharing then these people will come up with an idea to necessary monopoly.

Re: Uber Wants to Make It Illegal to Operate Your Own Self-Driving Car in Cities

#34

Post by acheron »

rayiner wrote: post #27
peapicker wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can pry my human-driven gas-burning vehicle out of my cold dead hands.

You can keep the car and drive it on your farm. But as to public roads, they're a limited public resource, and the government has an obligation to ensure they are utilized as efficiently as possible. That will be achieved by only allowing self-driving cars.

I used to think the song "Red Barchetta" was far-fetched.

Re: Uber Wants to Make It Illegal to Operate Your Own Self-Driving Car in Cities

#35

Post by mnm1 »

I love self driving cars, but more and more it seems when they will arrive, the cons might outweigh the pros if we're not careful. With thinking like this, I think I'll keep driving myself and seriously consider voting against any legislation that might lead to this outcome. Uber should rethink what its ultimate strategy is. If we can't deter Uber because it's a giant US corporation, we can certainly deter self-driving car technology. And that would be a giant loss for all of humanity, including the greedy Uber execs.

Re: Uber Wants to Make It Illegal to Operate Your Own Self-Driving Car in Cities

#36

Post by Turing_Machine »

rayiner wrote: post #12

There needs to be a planned phase-out of human-driven vehicles. Supporting legacy incumbents can hugely hamstring automated technology.[1] It's a double-whammy: (1) enormous investment must go into designing around human drives in the first place, and (2) the existence of human-driven vehicles dramatically reduces the traffic mitigation advantages of self-driving vehicles (reducing the incentive to make the investmen…

I actually expect this to happen naturally.

Pretty much the instant it becomes provable in a court of law that self-driving cars are safer than human-driven ones, it will become impossible to buy insurance for human-driven cars (at least not at any rate most of us could afford).

"So...Mr. Smith. You knew that using the autonomous driving software was safer than operating the car manually, yet you deliberately turned it off. Your faulty driving then killed Mr. Johnson and his entire family."

No sane insurance company is going to defend that in court.

Re: Uber Wants to Make It Illegal to Operate Your Own Self-Driving Car in Cities

#37

Post by Turing_Machine »

randyrand wrote: post #5

How ridiculous. At some point you drive enough to warrant not having a middle man between you and a car. This really does not need to be regulated. Just let people make their own economic decisions. Not to forget, some people also like or need to keep belongings in their car.

Why couldn't people have personal pods with their stuff in it, with their preferred upholstery, sound system, etc. that got moved by a third-party owned motor unit?

Re: Uber Wants to Make It Illegal to Operate Your Own Self-Driving Car in Cities

#38

Post by sfgunn »

tyingq wrote: post #7
munk-a wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a bit overly alarmist, there could certainly be competition in this space. _But_ this is an absolutely despicable move on Uber's part that would slow the adoption of self-driving vehicles to prop up their own (at that point failing) business model.

"there could certainly be competition in this space" I was assuming governments forcing all fleets to share data. Probably via some "safety / think of the children / OMG terrorists" bill.

Hi, it's called V2V in the automotive space. The US Dept. of Transportation has a thing called RITA (https://www.itscosts.its.dot.gov/ITS/benecost.nsf/SummID/SC2...).

As an aside, Federal Transportation guys don't bother invoking terrorism, they just go with "yeah these are two ton things moving around and we are the rule makers."

Re: Uber Wants to Make It Illegal to Operate Your Own Self-Driving Car in Cities

#39

Post by chriscappuccio »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #37
randyrand wrote: post #5

How ridiculous. At some point you drive enough to warrant not having a middle man between you and a car. This really does not need to be regulated. Just let people make their own economic decisions. Not to forget, some people also like or need to keep belongings in their car.

Why couldn't people have personal pods with their stuff in it, with their preferred upholstery, sound system, etc. that got moved by a third-party owned motor unit?

Because we have cars

Re: Uber Wants to Make It Illegal to Operate Your Own Self-Driving Car in Cities

#40

Post by klez »

hprotagonist wrote: post #14

The sidebar suggested I read another CEI article entitled "stop forcing unions on your workers". Uh huh. This article sure seems like it represents facts in an unbiased way..

Look, you don't like CEI? Fine, me neither, from the looks of it.

Are they spinning a libertarian agenda? Yes they are.

Is this article mostly an attack on uber and "shameless, greenwashed crony capitalism"? Yes it is.

BUT

Is it true that a group outlined those 10 proposals? Yes it is.[0]

Is it true that proposal #10 is about only permitting fleets to operate EVs? Yes it is.

Is it true that Uber (and Lyft, and Bla Bla Car, and...) signed this proposals? Yes it is.[1]

Will those companies greatly profit from that kind of regulation? You betcha!

That is the gist of the article, and that is what we should be discussing about.

[0] https://www.sharedmobilityprinciples.org/

[1] https://www.sharedmobilityprinciples.org/signatories/

EDIT: OT, but is your name a reference to Snow Crash? Because if it is, good job! :)

Post reply on HN