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U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

reuters.com

11–20 of 376 posts

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#11

I think any automated vehicle, no matter how advanced, should always have a big red button to make it stop whatever it's doing. Kind of like the emergency brake on a passenger train.

Maybe a “stop gracefully” mode?

If you hit the big red button going 65mph on the center lane of a crowded highway, it could be bad. Especially if the tech starts to feel safe enough that cars can travel close enough to use the draft from cars ahead.

I think an emergency brake works for trains because they’re isolated.

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#12

Look, I'm generally on the bull-ish side of autonomous driving, but this is almost akin to the feds passing laws on science fiction. Section 180.99 part alpha: "Minimum size of a Ringworld is mercury orbit around a red dwarf" I guess we can always drive with a USB-plugin gamepad if there's a glitch or a central system outage? This would actually represent progress if they eliminated the requirement for side mirrors,…

> if they eliminated the requirement for side mirrors

Of course fully automated vehicles will look nothing like typical cars. There's this really common tendency to think way too small, to confuse the current prototypes with a final product.

The mid-term future for SDVs looks more or less like a train compartment on wheels.

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#13
post #10

What's going to be the rate of 'acceptable loss'? There's an obvious point on the cost curve where companies will begin pushing for driverless tech before the problem is fully solved. Without some standardized 'miles between intervention' requirement that accounts for the externality on innocent bystanders, the emergent behavior will be to remove the human in the loop before the societally optimal point. If I save $1…

Elon’s way ahead of the curve on this one. Unfortunately.

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#14

No steering wheels or brake pedals! Feels scary but we are giving technology way more control over our lives already :-).

After removing the steering wheel and making the car fully autonomous, I bet you'll have to pay a subscription for it to drive. And a subscription for a cellular service.

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#17
post #10

What's going to be the rate of 'acceptable loss'? There's an obvious point on the cost curve where companies will begin pushing for driverless tech before the problem is fully solved. Without some standardized 'miles between intervention' requirement that accounts for the externality on innocent bystanders, the emergent behavior will be to remove the human in the loop before the societally optimal point. If I save $1…

Well, the USA has decided that 1000 deaths/day is acceptable and ignorable as background mortality for sars-cov-2.

I don't believe that autonomous cars are actually feasible in environments that aren't arid/flat Arizona that doesn't have winter so it's kind of a moot point. There isn't and will not be an autonomous car that can drive on winter, snow covered roads with emergent (incorrect) paths that humans flock and follow. If the car does the right thing it'll kill people. But 1000/day? I think they can probably come in under that.

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#18
post #11

I think any automated vehicle, no matter how advanced, should always have a big red button to make it stop whatever it's doing. Kind of like the emergency brake on a passenger train.

Maybe a “stop gracefully” mode? If you hit the big red button going 65mph on the center lane of a crowded highway, it could be bad. Especially if the tech starts to feel safe enough that cars can travel close enough to use the draft from cars ahead. I think an emergency brake works for trains because they’re isolated.

They do have a "pull over" physical button. You can see them on Waymo vehicles. The car finds a safe spot to pull over when you hit it.

Re: U.S. eliminates human controls requirement for fully automated vehicles

#19
If we think we have class antagonism and rural vs. urban antagonism now, wait until self-driving trucks decimate trucking as an industry. It's one of the largest well-paying employers of "blue collar" people. We are still a ways off but it's definitely coming.

We have to do something about inequality or we will have totalitarianism. It will either be in the form of a totalitarian fascist or communist revolution, or a totalitarian police state to prevent such a revolution.

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