The self-driving car is a red herring
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Re: The self-driving car is a red herring
#2Classic anti hype cycle. Won't age well.
Re: The self-driving car is a red herring
#3Classic anti hype cycle. Won't age well.
How many nines of reliability do self driving cars need before they're safe?
They have to operate in weather. Rain, snow, dark. They have to adapt to novel conditions.
I put the self-driving car in the same category as the flying car and jet pack. This one just happens to have VC funding.
I don't think we'll see these things for another decade, and when that next decade arrives we'll be saying the same. Another decade.
Re: The self-driving car is a red herring
#4The idea of a spectrum of roads, ranging from "no drivers" to "no robots" seems near-fetched.
Re: The self-driving car is a red herring
#5> Some experts now predict that we may never achieve the original dream of a reliable fully self-driving car. And even if we do, spreading the technology beyond the Arizona suburbs will require costly retrofits to add navigational hardware to existing roads. This is a non-starter in the post-pandemic age of austerity. Most state and local governments now struggle to merely maintain a much simpler, yet more fundamental technology for orienting both human and computer drivers—the painted markings that guide us along the pavement.
I don't buy this argument. Yes, retro-fitting costs money, but even if one were to lay down guide wires next to every major road, the costs wouldn't be as insurmountable as it is being painted here. The cost of digging up a ditch next to the road just isn't that bad.
Furthermore, it's not just costs to bear, but also benefits to weigh. If an AV capable road might get you from city to suburb, the suburb might just pay for the retrofit themselves.
Re: The self-driving car is a red herring
#6This article (willfully) mistakes Waymo's caution for allegedly intractable nature of the self-driving problem.
Re: The self-driving car is a red herring
#7Classic anti hype cycle. Won't age well.
How many nines of reliability do self driving cars need before they're safe? They have to operate in weather. Rain, snow, dark. They have to adapt to novel conditions. I put the self-driving car in the same category as the flying car and jet pack. This one just happens to have VC funding. I don't think we'll see these things for another decade, and when that next decade arrives we'll be saying the same. Another decad…
I think we'll see a lot of approximations of it. Autonomous taxis in predefined spaces (see Cruise, Waymo), trucks on highways (maybe changing to human drivers when entering/nearing cities).
But no safe full self-driving for a while.
Although I do feel like the money spent in the US so far would've been better spent setting up better public transit/train lines.
Re: The self-driving car is a red herring
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many nines of reliability do self driving cars need before they're safe? They have to operate in weather. Rain, snow, dark. They have to adapt to novel conditions. I put the self-driving car in the same category as the flying car and jet pack. This one just happens to have VC funding. I don't think we'll see these things for another decade, and when that next decade arrives we'll be saying the same. Another decad…
I think we'll see a lot of approximations of it. Autonomous taxis in predefined spaces (see Cruise, Waymo), trucks on highways (maybe changing to human drivers when entering/nearing cities). But no safe full self-driving for a while. Although I do feel like the money spent in the US so far would've been better spent setting up better public transit/train lines.
Better public transit can't be leveraged into a monopoly though, it would just quietly improve peoples lives.
Re: The self-driving car is a red herring
#9Self-driving cars, computer speech recognition and the collapse of the federal reserve system. Things that are going to perpetually happen next year since the inception of Hacker News.
Re: The self-driving car is a red herring
#10Classic anti hype cycle. Won't age well.
How many nines of reliability do self driving cars need before they're safe? They have to operate in weather. Rain, snow, dark. They have to adapt to novel conditions. I put the self-driving car in the same category as the flying car and jet pack. This one just happens to have VC funding. I don't think we'll see these things for another decade, and when that next decade arrives we'll be saying the same. Another decad…
When self driving cars will be consistently more reliable than 99% of human drivers, that will be enough. That is not a lot of nines.