The self-driving car is a red herring • Hacker News Board

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#151

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 4:20 PM UTC

>> Ghost roads didn’t demand a massive mobilization of government. The technology of autonomous driving would roll onto existing highways, invisibly weaving a new transportation system. Only this one would be modeled on the Internet. Computers would outnumber people. Code would call all the shots.

Mmrright. Imagine a future where anytime public infrastructure stops working you have to contact Google's tech support. Just think of how that turns out today, when Google's algos decide someone's app is violating TOS or something similar, like the news that comes up every once in a while on HN, where the victims are met with a wall of automated messages that explain nothing.

"If you want an image of the future, picture a human trying to get through a bot to a human operator for ever".

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#152

Post by legolas2412 » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 4:23 PM UTC

vorpalhex wrote: post #121

tim333 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's raised it to this year! >“It’s almost getting to a point where I can go from my house to work with no interventions, despite going through construction and widely varying situations,” he said. >“So this is why I’m very confident about full self-driving functionality being complete by the end of this year. It’s because I’m literally driving it.” Though reading that it sounds more like the car can drive from A to…

I think there's a conflict in what "self driving car" means. I think many users imagine being chauffered around while they read a tablet, potentially not even needing a drivers license. Meanwhile I think realists and Elon Musk expect a car that is doing most of the menial parts of driving while a licensed human driver is still hands on but not doing much work. We're close to that realist scenario in many ways for som…

You call them realists, I call them misleading marketers.

The term to use is driverless. Gives the correct idea of what users imagine. All thsi "self-driving" or FSD is just driver assistance given more capability with no regards to safety.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#153

Post by Grimm1 » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 4:25 PM UTC

I know people love public transport because of the supposed larger benefit to society but having ridden NYC public transport for over 7 years now I absolutely loath it.

The experience is horrible almost every day. Between being crammed in the cars, the mentally unstable accosting you, the lack of cleanliness and the occasional assault I'm simply not willing to deal with that continuously. I put up with it because it was cheaper than owning a car in NYC at a time where I needed to make that trade off but I don't need to make that trade off any more.

This is with the MTA receiving billions of dollars and subsidies. Give us a system like Japan or even some of the light rail like I experienced in France and I can see people moving towards public transport. Continue to give us systems like the New York subway and I don't see cars going away.

This article makes largely the same point -- the way we do public transport in the US is flawed and technology can help us make it less so, but it has to have buy in from our political systems and the people. As long as institutions like the MTA have a say we'll only see mismanaged and rapidly aging systems.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#154

Post by Kaze404 » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 4:25 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #97

Kaze404 wrote: post #81

I have a feeling I'll be down voted to hell for this, but self driving cars always felt like going the complete wrong direction for me. Aside from small personal satisfaction to the few that will be able to afford them, how is revolving our infrastructure and culture around them any better than simply investing in public transportation by making it a more feasible option for people? I'm not in the US, and while the p…

The fundamental prerequisite for functional mass transit is a high population density. That's why it works in NYC and doesn't work in Los Angeles. But that means it's not just a matter of building mass transit. First you have to build taller buildings. And even then there are going to be places where it's just not happening. It doesn't matter how you change the zoning, nobody is going to build skyscrapers in Pine Blu…

The city I live in has around 65 thousand people and has perfectly functional public transportation. This doesn't ring true for me.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#155

Post by Fricken » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 4:26 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #105

kindatrue wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also what's known as the "geometry" problem - 1 self driving car takes up as much space as 1 human driven car. Part of the problem is the general incompetency and mismanagement of US public transit construction -- the costs are insane, even when compared to "socialist" "high-cost" union-heavy Europe. This was a great read on why we get so little for our money: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-y…

One SDC takes up slightly less space when we factor in the necessary buffer around human-driven vehicles to account for human reaction times and safety perception. A fleet of SDCs snaking down a road can "tuck in" tighter to each other because computer reaction times are better (especially if they're networked and sharing decisionmaking signals). Of course, it's still not as space-efficient as a bus. But the bus infr…

If autonomous vehicles werebto ever become cheap and reliable, I fear induced demand could have a much larger effect on traffic volumes than the role it plays in traffic now when vehicles rely on human occupants. As people find more creative use cases for autonomous vehicles, the roads would fill up with ghost cars performing any number of progressively more trivial tasks until traffic returns to equilibrium.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#156

Post by seveibar » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 4:28 PM UTC

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #151

>> Ghost roads didn’t demand a massive mobilization of government. The technology of autonomous driving would roll onto existing highways, invisibly weaving a new transportation system. Only this one would be modeled on the Internet. Computers would outnumber people. Code would call all the shots. Mmrright. Imagine a future where anytime public infrastructure stops working you have to contact Google's tech support. J…

I think Comma.ai and car manufacturers other than Tesla will probably offer a variety of customer support experiences, especially because the cost of churn is much larger than say gsuite.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#157

Post by vkou » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 4:28 PM UTC

paul_f wrote: post #143

sirsar wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LA has an order of magnitude more population than is required for functioning public transit. But you're right they don't have the density. The key is to realize the cars themselves killed density . Parking lots, parking spaces, and extra lanes all conspire to push humans and human spaces further apart. This then makes walking less feasible, cars more required, and more space required to accommodate those cars in a f…

The car did not directly kill density, it enabled people to choose less density.

It doesn't enable people to choose, it made a choice and forced it upon everyone.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#158

Post by throwitaway1235 » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 4:29 PM UTC

Autonomous transportation should be banned. The cost of putting 10 million + people out work do not match the benefits.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#159

Post by cgh » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 4:29 PM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #34

> And even if we do, spreading the technology beyond the Arizona suburbs will require costly retrofits to add navigational hardware to existing roads. No it won't? Why would it? Plenty of companies are testing in other areas, and I haven't heard any suggest that they need special hardware on the roads themselves. Yes, the Phoenix suburbs are the easiest place to start, but that doesn't mean you need special infrastru…

I'm sure the Phoenix suburbs will perfectly prepare autonomous vehicles in Edmonton taking kids to hockey practice in January at 5:30 am.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#160

Post by kanox » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

echelon wrote: post #3

asah wrote: post #2

Classic 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 put the self-driving car in the same category as the flying car and jet pack. This one just happens to have VC funding.

Flying cars and jet packs are limited by physics (specifically energy density) and progress in this area is almost non-existent. We barely got batteries to be vaguely competitive with internal combustion.

Self-driving cars are limited by software and hardware accelerators and this field is making real progress.