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

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#261

Post by vorpalhex » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 6:58 PM UTC

mhermher wrote: post #249

vorpalhex wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In his intro speech of the Model 3, specifically talking about the FSD he was selling, he talked about something like "one day you could sleep while your car ...". I don't remember the exact quote, but it was something along those lines. Tying it very closely (albeit in some indefinite future) to the product he was selling. He's not a "realist" or "skeptic" in any way.

I used the word "and" there intentionally.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#262

Post by pedrocr » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 6:58 PM UTC

FabHK wrote: post #250

pedrocr wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That rate is on the order of 1000x worse than airliners which was the comparison as that's the level of reliability people are expecting from self-driving cars. A self-driving car that's 100x worse than the airliner standard would still save 90% of all road fatalities. And yet saving 30k lives might still not be enough for people to accept such a lower standard compared to an airliner. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T…

This statistic is in terms of passenger miles, but airplanes travel much faster per car, and airplane journeys are normally much longer than a typical car ride. So, planes might be around 500x better per pax-mile, but per pax-journey they're just about 5x better. Incidentally, the fatality rate for self driving cars should be also around 5x better (per vehicle mile) than human drivers for wide spread acceptance, acco…

Per-distance statistics may stretch the risk perception as people use planes for different trips than cars. But per journey statistics seems a much bigger error in the other direction. Fatalities with airliners are pretty close to 0 per year whereas 30k+ people a year die in car accidents. Most people know of someone that died that way whereas any airplane accident is national news. 5x really understates that difference. I don't think per-journey numbers are reasonable as a comparison.

The study showing 5x is quite neat, thanks. I expect this to be a floor for the difference though. Once some of the deaths with self-driving cars are shown to be things that human drivers would easily avoid the requirements will be higher, even if in total 5x better has been achieved. For widespread acceptance I'd bet on 10x as a minimum and 100x at the extreme, depending on what types of accidents are in there that shape the perception.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#263

Post by DarmokJalad1701 » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 7:06 PM UTC

TotempaaltJ wrote: post #7

echelon wrote: post #3

Earlier 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.

> 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.

How much are talking? Waymo is 10 billion in the hole. Tesla spent maybe around that much developing autopilot. This is also not public money being spent.

A typical public transit system costs orders of magnitude more than that. Example: California's High Speed Rail project started at 40 billion and projections have already ballooned to 98 billion.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#264

Post by mandelbrotwurst » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 7:11 PM UTC

pedrocr wrote: post #104

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as that's the level of reliability people are expecting from self-driving cars Why do you think this? It makes sense to me intuitively that people would be willing to accept more death causes by other people than more opaque and unfamiliar autonomous systems, but I haven't seen any hard data on this and am curious. Is this mentioned somewhere in the Wikipedia article that you linked or did you just share that to de…

The Wikipedia article is just for the fatality statistics. The expectation of airliner reliability for self-driving cars is what I get from the discussions around this. Here on HN and in other places. Maybe it will be lower and the uncanny valley will be smaller but I wouldn't bet on it. People are much more afraid of flying than of driving even though driving is much riskier. And that's because you're much more will…

Gotcha, OK. Yeah, I agree with you directionally.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#265

Post by decafninja » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

Grimm1 wrote: post #153

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…

Even before Covid, I did everything I could to avoid riding NYC's (and its surrounding regions) public transportation. Namely, bicycle, walk, semi-private ferry services, or even drive. The subways are literally disgusting.

I'd happily use the public transportation if it was anything closer to Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Hong Kong, or many other cities outside the US.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#266

Post by decafninja » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 7:23 PM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #218

Grimm1 wrote: post #153

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…

>> Between being crammed in the cars, the mentally unstable accosting you, the lack of cleanliness and the occasional assault Three of the four of those are things you don't hear people complaining about with the transit system in Japan because of the culture differences in the USA. How can that be fixed, here?

One solution I see suggested often is shut down 24hour subway service in NYC. Use that time to do (thorough) cleaning, maintenance, etc. I doubt that would put NYC's subway near the level of Tokyo's or other cities with actual great transit, but it would help a lot.

Whenever this gets suggested, there is a loud outcry from people that say they would gladly put up with the filth, unreliability, and occasional assault/rape/murder if it meant 24hour service. Usually arguments put forth is that there are always people (including lower income night shift workers) that must have the subway at wee hours of the night/morning. I'm pretty sure Seoul and Tokyo also have night shift workers and they manage to do just fine using buses or other alternate transportation. If anything Seoul and Tokyo have an even more notoriously hardcore "city never sleeps" workaholic culture than NYC.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#267

Post by dionidium » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 7:27 PM UTC

kanox wrote: post #146

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…

I really wish people would stop claiming that the solution to cars is walking or public transport. I don't have a car either but claiming that people should "stop driving" is not a serious approach. Cars are extremely useful and are not going anywhere. They have problems like carbon emissions and being extremely dangerous but those will have to be solved while preserving the fundamental utility of a cars: They are in…

Cars are extremely useful for traveling long distances, traveling between cities, and for those rare times when you need to haul a lot of stuff, but they are terrible as daily transportation. They are the solution to a made-up problem that they alone exacerbate, which is that our cities are too spread out. There's no particular reason your immediate neighborhood doesn't have a small grocery store and all the other amenities you require for daily living. (That's how we built cities before the automobile, obviously.)

That's a design choice and it's a particularly bad one that's making your life less convenient, your body less healthy, your streets less safe, and your environment more polluted. When everybody drives you get congestion, which forces people to spread out more, which increases the reliance on cars...and so it goes.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#268

Post by Grimm1 » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 7:28 PM UTC

Teever wrote: post #259

Grimm1 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hard disagree with you. Individualism is not the root of our failing infrastructure.

I think that the hyper-individualism that has been cultivated in certain segments of the American population for partisan political purposes is ultimately the greatest threat that American society faces. It corrodes all aspects of society when a sizable population will place themselves above all else. The ironic part is that except for a thin slice of the wealthy it doesn't even benefit the people who espouse it the…

Individualism != selfish and ignorant.

I'm highly individualist. I stay inside, wear a mask everywhere I go and listed to experts like Dr.Fauci on the subject of Covid. That's just one example.

There's a large amount of the population that lack empathy and are willfully ignorant. Individualism may be the cover word but what you actually mean is "hyper ignorance and selfishness"

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#269

Post by clairity » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 7:29 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #220

clairity wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

electric kick scooters (and bikes) make foot-travel distance less relevant in many places, extending the serviceable radius around a station from 1/3 mile to 2-3 miles. we just need to turn street parking into dedicated bike/scooter lanes to make it safe enough for more people to choose this option.

Possibly. Americans seem real reluctant to hop on a bike, and I don't think it's just for safety reasons. Big chunks of the US are too cold to want to be outside that much, a lot of the year. But more dedicated bike infrastructure would be a huge help in general.

sure, there are some parts of the US that get too cold and snowy, but there's plenty of the country that doesn't (like my own neck of the woods, southern california).

i was more pointing out that 2 relatively inexpensive changes (use scooters, convert parking to bike lanes) could dramatically change the balance of cars vs. public transport in those places (not everywhere). it doesn't have to require a wholesale change of our built environment to get benefits now (even for those dependent on cars).

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#270

Post by dionidium » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 7:30 PM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #193

d_burfoot wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The key is to realize the cars themselves killed density. People have very naive explanations of why the US is so bad at density and urbanism. Canada and Australia, which are very similar to the US, have very dense cities like Montreal, Toronto, and Melbourne. Do they not have cars in Canada and Australia? If you want to find the real reason why all other developed countries have dense cities with good public trans…

Canada might have certain urban areas with public transport, but huge swaths of the country depend on cars. That is the same situation as the U.S. except we've got 10x the population as Canada...so we've got more people in more places. As for Australia, a huge chunk of the country is desert, and most people are situated along the coasts. The U.S. doesn't want urbanism. People by and large do not want to live in dense…

People who don't want density should be free to avoid it. What they should not be allowed to do is pass laws that prevent the rest of us from enjoying the benefits of density. The primary reason we don't have increased density in the United States is that it's illegal in most cities to build enough new housing to meaningfully densify neighborhoods.