Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

31–40 of 376 posts

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

#32

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.

And then they could optimize the model for efficiency by picking up multiple people that share similar routes. It could even become a public service!

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

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s unlikely autonomous cars will be privately owned.

Looking forward to the future of having to leave 40 mins earlier so I can mark multiple vehicles as "need cleaning" before having one arrive that won't give me hepatitis.

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

#37
post #8

This is akin to removing the requirement for unicorns to wear horseshoes on the public road.

How so?

See anyone riding unicorns around recently?

Exactly.

Legacy regulations governing the occupant compartment are not yet a practical impediment for self driving cars because they haven't got that far yet.

Realistically what the removal of this regulation means is that some hypothetical future company with an autonomous yard spotter can drive the thing 500yd down the public way from warehouse B to warehouse C without the legal department getting antsy.

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

#38
post #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…

One of my favorite youtubers did an hour long video on the trucker convoy from California to DC and it was a peak into another world. The thing I thought about after watching it was wondering what it looks like when that group has mass unemployment in 10 years.

Truck driving employs 1% of the US population and if those jobs are lost to automation, there's no chance of them coming back like they did throughout other recessions. It won't just be the drivers, it'll be their friends, families and children that will be unemployed, unhappy, and very motivated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKcJrBRVZn4

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

#39
post #35

If your vehicle is heading relentlessly toward a group of schoolchildren it would be nice to have a way to override it. Either that or no windows so you won't be haunted by it every night of your life.

We have the technology to replace schoolchildren at a much lower cost than cars

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

#40

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.

Logically there needs to be a way to control the car at all times, otherwise you could be locked into a long trip you don’t want to take.

The difference is just that it’s higher level controls than a steering wheel.

Post reply on HN