Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The self-driving car is a red herring

nautil.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 320 posts

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#291

Post by edogg »

zamfi wrote: post #187
atharris wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rest of the world is rife with small, rural towns that nevertheless have great public transit systems, or at least ones that are more effective than what we see in the US. The major difference is that these places are willing to invest in the public sphere, and they're by and large willing to permit construction that is not car-centric (i.e., no parking minima to subsidize drivers).

Could you give a few examples of small rural towns where people can afford cars but instead the town has great public transit? Genuinely curious!

Whistler, BC

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#292

Post by hutzlibu »

shadowgovt wrote: post #254
hutzlibu wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Big chunks of the US are too cold to want to be outside that much, a lot of the year." There are surely limits to everything and not everyone is into extreme sports, but even in the winter I really like cycling. Much, much more, than the virus infested public transport. There is a saying, there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing.

Clothing won't help when the roads are slushed up.

Spikes do, though. But like I said, there are certainly limits for most people.

But most people probably consider a grey sky, where some rain drops may fall, their limit.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#293

Post by ksk »

ckastner wrote: post #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 fundamenta…

Can you expand on the costs? Any numbers to share?

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#294

Post by [deleted] »

reader_mode wrote: post #11
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…

>They have to operate in weather. Rain, snow, dark. No they don't - a self driving car that knows when it can't drive is perfectly acceptable - not everyone can drive in extreme conditions reliably - doesn't mean they can't drive.

[deleted]

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#295

Post by question000 »

marketingPro wrote: post #277
question000 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok why do you believe this if you can't make one verifiable prediction that it will happen? Will it happens tomorrow? In 20 years? In 5 months? It's just a feeling you have that isn't backed by data. I can't really ever disprove this because you're not really making any claim. This is every FED conversation on HN. People totally believe hyperinflation is "just around the corner" but it never happens only standard nor…

Efficiency is everything. Give it a Google. Also, why are you discounting the last 100 years of federal reserve policy? We obviously had greater than 10x inflation. Is 30% inflation in 8 months not considered hyperinflation? My kids bank account is 30% less valuable now. I'm not going to fight over definitions that 30% inflation isn't enough to be considered hyperinflation.

That's just being silly.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#296

Post by abainbridge »

kanox wrote: post #165
abainbridge wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but self-driving cars would enable self driving buses and they could be great. One problem with buses is that paying the drivers is expensive. As a result buses need to be big to amortize the cost of the driver across lots of users. But big buses don't work well in low demand times of the day. The only option is to run them less frequently, which sucks for users. And big buses don't fit down small streets. An…

> Agreed, but self-driving cars would enable self driving buses and they could be great. Self-driving cars would enable self-driving taxis which would be superior to both private vehicles and public transport. Imagine if there was no need to park and you could summon a vehicle of the appropriate size at will.

I have a theory that large fleets of self-driving taxis will make congestion worse (compared to private cars). They have to drive to you, then drive wherever you want to go, turning one vehicle journey into two ( * ). There are lots of other factors to consider but that seems to be a fundamental problem with the taxi model. I'd be interested in replies that explain the flaw in this theory. I assume it is wrong because I haven't heard anyone else say it.

* It could be even worse. Imagine the morning rush - thousands of taxis have driven to peoples' homes and then driven them to their work/school. Then most will have to park until the next peak of demand in the evening. Either they park in the city, or they drive to an out-of-city parking lot, then drive back in to collect, then drive people home, then drive somewhere else to park until the morning rush. What would have been two vehicle journeys using a private car became six.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#297

Post by rovolo »

njarboe wrote: post #175
barnacled wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am extremely skeptical of the boring project. The claimed money saving (a 10x improvement vs. every single tunnel digger in the world without any evidence to back it up?) the safety issues of a car breaking down in a tunnel or being brought up and down, the enormous cost with digging deeper tunnels, etc. etc. Road tunnels exist and have been built all around the world, these kinds of ideas have been tried and ultim…

Rocket launch technology was at a standstill for 30-40 years until Elon Musk founded SpaceX. 15 years later they built reusable rockets. The cost of putting something into orbit is likely to drop by a factor of 100-1000 when SpaceX's next rocket is up and running sometime in the next few years. It seems like such a waste of time for people to try and debunk these claims from people who are very competent and have acc…

I don't follow rocket technology closely, but is SpaceX really unique in regard to reusable rockets? Didn't Blue Origin do each milestone (announcement, vertical landing, relaunch) before SpaceX did?

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#298

Post by K0balt »

pedrocr wrote: post #59
barnacled wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think firstly it's going to be tough with long-tail edge case deaths to really be sure the numbers will be less than human drivers until self-driving cars are unleashed in sufficient numbers. Secondly, even if you're right (and you may well be) - imagine that a common edge case was a small child jumping out in front of the car. Would we want to accept a vehicle that consistently ran them over? The raw numbers might…

I agree completely. My take from the situation is much more that we are far far too lenient with our standards for cars, roads, and particularly drivers. We've set the bar so low that the technology has a good chance of clearing it soon but only serve to reveal how actually uncomfortable we are with such a low bar that we've normalized over time.

Might be interesting to integrate an AI based self.drivinf system with several additional driver assistance systems, each using fundamentally different algorithmic solutions, and perhaps even some different sensors.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#299

Post by hakfoo »

barnacled wrote: post #18

I like Filip Piekniewski's take on this [0] - deep learning is appropriate for environments where the cost of mistakes is low (or the errors are reversible) and you're able to 'average them out'. Self-driving cars are absolutely not in that category. "If your errors are irreversible and you can't average them out, and your application is in open domain where there will never be a shortage of out of distribution sampl…

I suspect the outliers that confound machines will also frequently confound human drivers, so a lot of that is a wash.

The only way to remotely look at this meaningfully is in aggregate. Deaths and losses per million trip-miles.

This is where the momentum will come from. There will be a day where machines reach and surpass the human level, and we'll see a huge momentum towards penalty-boxing human drivers. I fully expect to call Progressive in 2040 and the hologram Flo will tell me that it costs four times as much to insure me if I have the audacity to retain a steering wheel.

I also think there's a snowball factor. Self-driving cars are going to be way more consistent and predictable than human drivers. That only amplifies as more and more vehicles on the road are self-driving. Once you get to 90% self-driving, I could imagine things like increasing speed limits and dynamically organizing convoys for efficiency.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#300

Post by ggoo »

toast0 wrote: post #171
ggoo wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't we already have self driving buses if we just put them on tracks? They go a predefined route anyway :)

Roads are cheaper than rails, and easier to change. Buseses on wheels are more flexible than trams or whatever on tracks, and can route around a collision. Rails in the road are a severe hazard for cyclists and somewhat hazardous for pedestrians.

(sarcasm)
Post reply on HN