Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen' • Hacker News Board

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#891

Post by lsc » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

sib wrote: post #801

_red wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>... if the manufacturer was willing to properly insure it, Its not just the manufacturers, who is underwriting all that insurance? Ford sells approximately 2.3M vehicles per year, imagine if 50% of self-driving...over a 5 year period that 5.5M cars...if each one needs to carry a potential 1M policy thats an incredible amount of liability on someone's balance sheet. (even if you say the policy is only 100K thats stil…

But all of those cars are insured (and that insurance is underwritten) today. So the liability already lives on the balance sheet of insurance companies. Maybe the specific companies change...

eh, right now most people are massively underinsured; minimum coverage in California is like $35k, and most insurance companies won't sell you a plan with more than a half million of liability (at least not without an umbrella policy) - if we stop subsidizing driving through pushing costs on to victims of accidents, the cost of driving will go up. But yeah, it should be about the cost of a good umbrella policy+auto policy is now, modulo any savings if the self-driving car gets in fewer accidents.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#892

Post by ehsankia » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 6:12 PM UTC

hilbertseries wrote: post #653

ehsankia wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it a little silly to call someone "only sane C-level person" after one comment? Also, while claiming these innovations are only a few years way may be insane, saying they will never happen feels probably just as non-sense. History hasn't been on the side of such absolute claims. It will take time, but Waymo already has working 100% self-driving cars out in the wild. Yes it's in a small area, with perfect weathe…

https://www.cnet.com/news/alphabet-google-waymo-ceo-john-kra... Waymo ceo made a similar statement.

To me those are two very different statement, at least for my interpretation of the first statement. If the VW exec was referring to very hard weather conditions, then fair enough, but I doubt that's what he meant.

The Waymo CEO was very clearly referring to extreme conditions like storms, and honestly, most humans can't and shouldn't drive in said conditions, so it's not that crazy to say Waymo may never be able to either.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#893

Post by naravara » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 7:30 PM UTC

supertrope wrote: post #814

naravara wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. For the cost of all this retrofitting of roads, you’d be able to build the most insanely comprehensive transit system anyone has ever heard of. FWIW though, it probably is possible to use this sort of technology for buses and shuttles. You can’t fix markings on ALL the roads, but you can make sure the markings are good enough on main arterials to have a dedicated bus lane.

A lot of tech solutions to transportation problems are reinventing elements of mass transit. Self-driving trucks that are virtually linked like a train. Telling Uber pool rides to walk to the nearest intersection to optimize routes (like a bus stop). Central scheduling to share right of way timeslots between vehicles. Or tech fails to reinvent the wheel, e.g. assuming that the congestion and parking issues caused by…

>A lot of tech solutions to transportation problems are reinventing elements of mass transit.

For sure. And I feel like they're going about it backwards by defaulting to maintaining norms of private property and leasing things starting with private/personally owned property and developing ways to lease it to for communal use.

They'd probably have a more viable business model if they had started with communal property and charged rent or usage fees for maintenance instead. Jitney cabs or dollar vans have been around forever, and their big challenge was figuring out how to do dispatch and routing in a way that didn't give people intolerably long wait times.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#894

Post by michaelmrose » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 8:03 PM UTC

DrScump wrote: post #874

michaelmrose wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given 100 individuals who would have died in everyday accidents all would prefer a 99% chance of survival. Given a population of a million all would prefer a 1 in a million chance of death under a semi to a 1 in 10k chance of being smeared in a more average fashion. Your argument is the same one used against seat belts with people advocating a strictly inferior survival strategy to prevent a rare misadventure.

Let's say your autodrive system replaces 100,000 driver-hours. Let's say those driver-hours would have resulted in 3 deaths of others (in vehicles or pedestrians) but your autodrive results in 1 different death (which wouldn't have occurred with the human drivers). Your stats are no comfort at all to the loved ones of your victim. It's like the Trolley Problem but the humans are unidentifiable.

The trolley problem challenges people who don't consider choosing not to act equally an active choice or intuitively feel that action is different than inaction.

I would always pick the most valuable to me side and pull the switch or leave it be to bring about the better end result. Given the availability of self driving vehicles that reduce mortality choosing to drive oneself and kill more people is an unethical choice that will be as little comfort to the 3 victims as the one.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#895

Post by kohtatsu » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 8:11 PM UTC

gaius__baltar wrote: post #883

kohtatsu wrote: post #722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So presumably every self-driving vehicle is going to be constantly streaming all sorts of information in their purview to a central hub? That is a privacy nightmare without regulation on scrubbing extraneous information, done before upload: for example blocking out of pedestrian data; not just faces but clothing and gait, and probably also any data captured through windows. It would be ideal to have a limited view of…

> That is a privacy nightmare I don't want to disappoint, but the future will have no privacy whatsoever.

There will be privacy until the singularity, don't worry.

Continued encroachments on privacy and personal autonomy may indeed deteriorate them, even cripple our ability to protect those rights, but simply worrying about that doesn't mean I must go gentle into that good night.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#896

Post by lsc » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

lsc wrote: post #891

sib wrote: post #801

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But all of those cars are insured (and that insurance is underwritten) today. So the liability already lives on the balance sheet of insurance companies. Maybe the specific companies change...

eh, right now most people are massively underinsured; minimum coverage in California is like $35k, and most insurance companies won't sell you a plan with more than a half million of liability (at least not without an umbrella policy) - if we stop subsidizing driving through pushing costs on to victims of accidents, the cost of driving will go up. But yeah, it should be about the cost of a good umbrella policy+auto p…

but note, we're paying most of that already in the form of people who are killed and under-compensated by under-insured drivers. Increasing liability insurance minimums would roll that cost that is currently born entirely by the victim into the cost of operating a car, which is where it ought to be.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#897

Post by lsc » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 10:07 PM UTC

lsc wrote: post #890

mytailorisrich wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure there are niche markets where fully self-driving and self-driving only cars may make sense. But they still need to handle fault cases: e.g. they cannot only rely on a beacon sent by traffic lights because that beacon or the whole traffic light might out of order. So, imho, while smart infrastructure may help self-driving cars and traffic management it does not allow you to avoid the "hard work", which to make su…

eh, my argument is that as long as they are intelligent enough to safely get to the side of the road, I think there's a very large number of people who would be okay with a car that "broke down" every 10K miles if it was otherwise great. (heck, I've been in some sort of breakdown or accident in an uber more often than that, even not counting app failures, so people would probably tolerate a lot more than that if the…

more to the point, for "full self driving" even with infrastructure, the "don't hit unexpected pedestrians" technology needs to get way better. You probably can regulate transponders in cars. You probably can't regulate transponders on children.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#898

Post by pjkundert » Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 11:00 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #825

pjkundert wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t be a drone. What are you downvoting for? Are you going to remain ignorant, or start to think? I’m totally in support of, and believe in the value of self-driving vehicles. But, the SV soy-boys need to bring their A-game. Not the “My machine learning system that underperforms a nematode worm’s neural performance is going to totes solve self-driving cars” toy they’re delivering now. Come on! I expect better, espe…

Please don't let downvotes get to you like this. I know it's not always easy, but the site guidelines ask it explicitly of everyone. That's because it quickly causes comments to sink below the acceptable levels, which is what happened here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Thanks for all you do, dang!

However, unless HN implements K-Means clustering, a single-axis downvote mechanism will inevitably lead to echo-chamber bullying, I believe.

Especially if no-one fights back, encouraging the people who vote “sensible” vs “nonsense”, and discouraging the “like” vs “don’t like” voters who ruin debate.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#899

Post by oblib » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 1:17 AM UTC

aantix wrote: post #834

oblib wrote: post #817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If I had to choose between privacy... That sounds like it's taken right out of an Orwell story.

You already make this tradeoff - you have a bank account instead of hiding your money in a mattress. You're probably browsing the web from a normal internet connection, not a VPN, or some alternative?

Yes, and I have some control over that which I exercise regularly. Not enough control, but what I have I use proactively.

I'm also active in trying to wrestle more control of the data being collected on me.

And I am not willing to give up my privacy for your convenience and not happy with those who'd willingly give up theirs in a way that sweeps mine up with it.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#900

Post by jethro_tell » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 1:46 AM UTC

stevehawk wrote: post #378

jethro_tell wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, a stake in the ground on the edge of the road that says, I'm 15 feet to the right of the center lane will probably pay for itself in a couple years of stripping. You put two in the ground that say, I'm 15 feet to the right of the centerline and 35 feet from the next beacon and you never have to paint a centerline there again.

But all you've done is swapped one thing that will be poorly maintained for one thing that's already poorly maintained.

*with a much longer life. Stripping needs to be done every year to stay fresh. You can put a beacon in the ground and I should be able to be there and working 10 years later.