Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality • Hacker News Board

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#31

Post by Eridrus » Thu, Sep 13, 2018, 6:41 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #15

I think a lot of people in this field did see this coming. I knew a few people in this space about a year ago and I pretty much hear: "realistically, 15 years out at the earliest." I really really hate the concept of a driverless car. It's an incredibly difficult problem space; and for the same cost, America could build up municipal rail and bus infrastructure to where they were in the 1940s/1950s. We need more citie…

I think it's pretty clear that Waymo & maybe Cruise are the leaders in this space. If you take a look at the quota from Waymo "it will be “longer than you think” for self-driving vehicles to be everywhere." - the key part is "everywhere".

Maybe it will take 15 years for it to be everywhere, but I'm still fully expecting a deployment in Phoenix this year or next.

I'm not really clear what tax break you're complaining about, AFAIK there is no extra tax break for Waymo.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#32

Post by gist » Thu, Sep 13, 2018, 6:41 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #15

I think a lot of people in this field did see this coming. I knew a few people in this space about a year ago and I pretty much hear: "realistically, 15 years out at the earliest." I really really hate the concept of a driverless car. It's an incredibly difficult problem space; and for the same cost, America could build up municipal rail and bus infrastructure to where they were in the 1940s/1950s. We need more citie…

> I pretty much hear: "realistically, 15 years out at the earliest."

And honestly any number is simply just 'pulled out of the ass' anyway. It's not as if they can see daylight on all the problems that need to be solved or predict various soft issues (the government only one example). So this is not that someone is building the atomic bomb and can realistically judge more or less the scope of the problems that need to be solved and then build in a bit of leeway.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#33

Post by piyh » Thu, Sep 13, 2018, 6:41 PM UTC

bytematic wrote: post #24

Buldak wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We like the idea of technological solutions that don't require us to change our lifestyle or make hard choices. Driverless cars are appealing because they would allow us to largely maintain the status quo (as opposed to, say, reorienting toward public transportation). It's like an obese person who says, "I don't want to eat healthy and exercise. Why can't scientists just invent low-calorie versions of the food I like…

Sounds preferable in both cases to me What is the non tech solution for automobiles, better designed cities?

Sounds to me like driverless cars are easier than redesigning existing cities.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#34

Post by Zigurd » Thu, Sep 13, 2018, 6:42 PM UTC

This assessment of the state of play is very uneven. For example, the assertion made by Meredith Broussard quoted in the article "It’s also not true that we must transition to self-driving cars because human-piloted ones are so lethal" is a truism. The article goes on to say "Countless innovations have made cars radically safer since the 1950s and continue to do so."

Yet vehicles remain as lethal as dread diseases, mostly down to the humans piloting them. Just cutting that number of deaths and injuries significantly would be a boon similar to eradicating malaria.

I expect the flourishing of autonomous vehicles to be sudden and unanticipated. Just as you can't tell unless you are looking for the decals or attuned to why back seats are suddenly more populated you might miss the fact there are two million ride share drivers in the US now. One day we will realize the wait for a bus is much shorter because busses are right-sized and more frequent and can surge where they are needed because drivers aren't a bottleneck and routes are dynamic.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#35

Post by melling » Thu, Sep 13, 2018, 6:44 PM UTC

x220 wrote: post #12

melling wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t say speech recognition is solved. It’s still quite error prone. Self-driving cars need to be even better or people will die. Perhaps self-driving cars can be deployed in a limited way, as taxis, for example.

>I wouldn’t say speech recognition is solved. It’s still quite error prone. Sure it is, but it's doing a hell of a lot better than many critics thought ever possible. >Self-driving cars need to be even better or people will die. People will always die. Requiring with certainty that self-driving cars will never cause accidents is a purely emotional instinct with no regard for facts or well-being of people. The only th…

I never use the word certainty, you threw that in there. I said they need to be better than current speech recognition.

Speech recognition can be good, but sometimes it seems to go haywire. It did nail this post though.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#36

Post by baybal2 » Thu, Sep 13, 2018, 6:44 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #15

I think a lot of people in this field did see this coming. I knew a few people in this space about a year ago and I pretty much hear: "realistically, 15 years out at the earliest." I really really hate the concept of a driverless car. It's an incredibly difficult problem space; and for the same cost, America could build up municipal rail and bus infrastructure to where they were in the 1940s/1950s. We need more citie…

In level of stupidity, the concept of self driving car in my opinion is second only to a flying car.

The second disregard, that well... there are airplanes.

The first, that driverless busses that creep at 30km/h and do emergency brake every every 10 minutes thanks to overattentive collision avoidance system also been around for decades.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#37

Post by petre » Thu, Sep 13, 2018, 6:45 PM UTC

lemoncucumber wrote: post #26

djsumdog wrote: post #15

I think a lot of people in this field did see this coming. I knew a few people in this space about a year ago and I pretty much hear: "realistically, 15 years out at the earliest." I really really hate the concept of a driverless car. It's an incredibly difficult problem space; and for the same cost, America could build up municipal rail and bus infrastructure to where they were in the 1940s/1950s. We need more citie…

Exactly. Driverless trains are a solved problem, so why don't we just build some of those?

The ECA has recently made an assesment of high speed rail and they found out things are not as rosy as they seem:

https://www.eca.europa.eu/en/Pages/DocItem.aspx?did=46398

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#38

Post by dmix » Thu, Sep 13, 2018, 6:45 PM UTC

Eridrus wrote: post #31

djsumdog wrote: post #15

I think a lot of people in this field did see this coming. I knew a few people in this space about a year ago and I pretty much hear: "realistically, 15 years out at the earliest." I really really hate the concept of a driverless car. It's an incredibly difficult problem space; and for the same cost, America could build up municipal rail and bus infrastructure to where they were in the 1940s/1950s. We need more citie…

I think it's pretty clear that Waymo & maybe Cruise are the leaders in this space. If you take a look at the quota from Waymo "it will be “longer than you think” for self-driving vehicles to be everywhere." - the key part is "everywhere". Maybe it will take 15 years for it to be everywhere, but I'm still fully expecting a deployment in Phoenix this year or next. I'm not really clear what tax break you're complaining…

And regardless no tax break could be comparable or relevant compared to the cost of nation wide improvements to mass transit.

Plus driverless car tech is global. The US infrastructure problems are irrelevant to me as a Canadian or the billions of people in Asia.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#39

Post by amthewiz » Thu, Sep 13, 2018, 6:46 PM UTC

Buldak wrote: post #9

cicero wrote: post #2

"Our love affair with self-driving cars is a form of 'techno-chauvinism,' Prof. Broussard says. 'It's the idea that technology is always the highest and best solution, and is superior to the people-based solution.'"

We like the idea of technological solutions that don't require us to change our lifestyle or make hard choices. Driverless cars are appealing because they would allow us to largely maintain the status quo (as opposed to, say, reorienting toward public transportation). It's like an obese person who says, "I don't want to eat healthy and exercise. Why can't scientists just invent low-calorie versions of the food I like…

Really? I don't like to fetch water from a lake every day to my house. Instead of using technology to bring water to my house, what lifestyle changes or hard choices should I rather make?

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#40

Post by Zigurd » Thu, Sep 13, 2018, 6:47 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #15

I think a lot of people in this field did see this coming. I knew a few people in this space about a year ago and I pretty much hear: "realistically, 15 years out at the earliest." I really really hate the concept of a driverless car. It's an incredibly difficult problem space; and for the same cost, America could build up municipal rail and bus infrastructure to where they were in the 1940s/1950s. We need more citie…

"Driverless car" is probably not the outcome for autonomous vehicles. At one end of the scale, cities will use road space vastly more efficiently with optimized vehicles for groups of riders, and at the other end of the scale, short-haul air travel will be challenged by door-to-door 150mph+ highway vehicles. None of these will look much like a personal car, and only the wealthy will consider owning one that will become rapidly obsolete and have a meagre duty cycle a sensible idea. For many people the answer will be a bicycle because the roads will become a safe place for cycling.