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Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

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Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#411

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

dmix wrote: post #405
ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asian cities have far worse infrastructure than the US for cars. Toronto has horrible traffic too.

Calling for better US gov infrastructure still doesn't solve this problem for them. Nor will American or Chinese tech companies. In the meantime I'll take driverless electric cars who are actually making progress pls. Instead of fantasizing about the day modern nation states are marginally functional at delivering services, like they were half a century ago. Basically everything they touch, especially under the false…

You act as if self driving cars are independent of infrastructure. These cars need roads. And if these cars are your solution to mass transit, far more will be on the road, requiring more upkeep. Roads are huge money sinks.

You seem to think self driving cars are magnificent devices that just glide over roads and don't need bridges or tunnels. For some reason, we never include these costs with cars when compared to mass transit. That is simply unfair.

I'm not against self driving cars by any means. But people misrepresent them all the time.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#412

Post by chewz »

linuxftw wrote: post #204
jimmy1 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Driverless cars are coming along just fine. I am curious why you believe this to be the case? Driverless cars have yet to even come close to being workable in adverse conditions, to my knowledge, please correct me if I am wrong. > This is mostly about sensors and geometry. And mostly about the limitations of sensors, and the limitation of available algorithms to overcome geometry. A algorithm a driverless car uses…

I think interesting edge cases include: 'empty cardboard box or log?' 'Deer just crossed road, is there another one close behind?' 'Driving temporarily on the wrong side of the street due to construction or a downed tree limb' 'Police directing traffic' 'Driving on wrong side of road to avoid collision' 'One lane bridges' 'Busy parking garage with blind corners' 'City Bus driver forces themselves recklessly into your…

I would add some more edge cases - driving a street in Delhi or Bangkok. Or navigating small Italian town where streets layout had been designed circa 12th century.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#413

Post by pkulak »

mikedh wrote: post #258
pkulak wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one thinks that you just hook up ML to a camera and you're done. Literally everyone working on this only uses ML for identification. When that Model X crashed into a highway divider, it was because the lines on the road were very faint and there was a fork in the line that actually wasn't the _real_ lane line. The car followed that by mistake, but only because of the misidentification of the lane line. How are mor…

If the Model X in your example had LIDAR, it would have been able to build up a decently accurate collision model of the world, which it could have then used to say "there is an object in the path I'm on, maybe I shouldn't plow into it." As opposed to relying on implicit and apparently unreliable cues like lane markers. That particular fatal crash seems like a sensors and geometry problem. "Nothing about our current…

> If the Model X in your example had LIDAR, it would have been able to build up a decently accurate collision model of the world

No it wouldn't. The whole problem with avoiding stationary objects is that they are _everywhere_. Do you really think radar and vision didn't "see" the barrier? Should it have known that it was in it's path? For sure. But that has nothing to do with sensors. Stationary objects are in our paths constantly while we drive, but we tend not to hit them because they are usually only temporarily so. At 80 mph the difference between a parked car being in our path and not, at the stopping distance of over 300 feet, is only a degree or two of wheel turn. We have enough information. Acting on it appropriately every single second of operation is the problem.

> Really? Was the world designed for binocular vision...

Yes. That's why we have road signs, stripes on the road, reflectors, lights on cars, lights hung over the road which light up in different colors to indicate right of way, etc. LIDAR is useless with all of the most important signals on our roads.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#414

Post by linuxftw »

lsc wrote: post #408
fouc wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Divide by millions. Statistically quite low failure.

I think it's still close to the most likely cause of violent death for an American; Neck and neck with gun deaths, if you count the self-inflicted. I mean yeah, compared to medieval statistics, it's great, but in comparison to the other non-medical ways to die you face as a 21st century American? automotive fatalities are quite high, and the problem deserves a lot of focus.

Best way to reduce traffic deaths is to reduce traffic. That requires changing of zoning so people can live near where they work.

You could also make it harder to be qualified to drive.

I view autonomous cars as the 'lazy technocratic' solution to a problem caused by total government mismanagement.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#415

Post by ant6n »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #23
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…

This is the part that drives me crazy - America HAD electric railroads all over the place. Or at least Illinois (my homestate) did. You can look up 'Illinois InterUrban' and see maps of rails connecting every rural city. Many of the carriages were used as scrap metal for WWII, and once cars took off the demand wasn't there to rehabilitate them. But it would be so much cheaper to build out than even just replacing the…

Interurbans were actually very fast, they were like hybrids between trams and mainline fast trains. The 1930s "Red Devil" could do 90mph (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Devil_(interurban))

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#416

Post by ant6n »

100ideas wrote: post #166
jazzyjackson wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the part that drives me crazy - America HAD electric railroads all over the place. Or at least Illinois (my homestate) did. You can look up 'Illinois InterUrban' and see maps of rails connecting every rural city. Many of the carriages were used as scrap metal for WWII, and once cars took off the demand wasn't there to rehabilitate them. But it would be so much cheaper to build out than even just replacing the…

Freight traffic dominates the utilization of the rail network in the US and is prioritized over other traffic. Freight trains travel slowly. This is why US passenger train service is so poor compared to Europe. > The picture for freight is different. According to Panorama 2009 , 46 percent of EU-27 freight goes by highway while only 10 percent goes by rail, while in the U.S. 43 percent goes by rail and only 30 percen…

I'd argue the main difference is that the infrastructure in the US is private, while it's publicly owned in Europe. This allows some amount of subsidy towards the infrastructure, like is done for highways, allowing passenger trains to exist.

Since then railroads have to be completely self-supporting in the US, they focus on how they can achieve the highest productivity: giant, slow trains on shoddy track.

It also means the infrastructures are competing with one another, so there are redundant, shoddy, competing rail networks, rather than a network for slow and heavy freight trains, and a network for fast and light passenger trains.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#418

Post by Alupis »

beat wrote: post #226
Alupis wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Today, 3000 people die in the US every single day because of car accidents Whoa... that's over 1 million people annually... you probably mean globally? Depending on the year, it's somewhere between 30,000 - 40,000 annually[1][2][3], or in the worst-case, about 109 people daily in the US. When you examine those numbers further, you'll see about 10,000-18,000 (depending on the year) are sadly still alcohol related[4]…

Hey, you know what would fix the drunk driving problem? Autonomous cars.

What makes you think drunk people will have the clarity of mind to configure and engage their autonomous system?

These cars will still have steering wheels... drunk people already don't have the clarity of mind to recognize they're too drunk to drive safely...

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#419

Post by dmix »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #411
dmix wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling for better US gov infrastructure still doesn't solve this problem for them. Nor will American or Chinese tech companies. In the meantime I'll take driverless electric cars who are actually making progress pls. Instead of fantasizing about the day modern nation states are marginally functional at delivering services, like they were half a century ago. Basically everything they touch, especially under the false…

You act as if self driving cars are independent of infrastructure. These cars need roads. And if these cars are your solution to mass transit, far more will be on the road, requiring more upkeep. Roads are huge money sinks. You seem to think self driving cars are magnificent devices that just glide over roads and don't need bridges or tunnels. For some reason, we never include these costs with cars when compared to m…

I didn't make such a suggestion at all, I was referring to major transit projects and related projects. Seems like you're changing the subject anyway, so I'd rather not continue.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#420

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

dmix wrote: post #419
ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You act as if self driving cars are independent of infrastructure. These cars need roads. And if these cars are your solution to mass transit, far more will be on the road, requiring more upkeep. Roads are huge money sinks. You seem to think self driving cars are magnificent devices that just glide over roads and don't need bridges or tunnels. For some reason, we never include these costs with cars when compared to m…

I didn't make such a suggestion at all, I was referring to major transit projects and related projects. Seems like you're changing the subject anyway, so I'd rather not continue.

Perhaps you should explain how, of course I can't force you to continue. Simply say you no longer wish to discuss - no need to be insecure about the debate by needlessly adding a "convenient" excuse to exit.

Cheers.

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