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

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 376 posts

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

#91

Post by pbhjpbhj »

TillE wrote: post #12
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #6

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.

>a train compartment on wheels. //

A bus?

Yes, autonomous public vehicles seem likely - like a Flexi-bus - but people like to travel without random members of the public, private hire of small vehicles will definitely be a thing unless the public get priced out of it.

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

#92

Post by ttmb »

pizza wrote: post #7

Reading between the lines here this just makes me think that the regulator has become captured by the industry. This is like removing human control on an autonomous Russian roulette revolver that shoots to the side if it detects a person in front of the barrel, then praying for the best.

This regulation is saying that if you did build an autonomous Russian roulette revolver, there's no requirement to outfit it with a pistol grip and a trigger.

If there is a fully driverless (not driving itself with a human still in it) truck - as companies tell us is their goal - it does not increase or decrease safety to have or not have a seat and a steering wheel in it.

The argument here is that building an autonomous Russian roulette revolver is a stupid thing to do, which is orthogonal.

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

#93

Post by rhacker »

cannaceo wrote: post #75
bottled_poe wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statistical equivalence is one thing, but the risk will shift within the population. Let’s set the bar a bit higher than above average ? The average driver is a dumbass. autonomous vehicles should be expected to consistently make better decisions than the best drivers, not just the average ones.

Why is beating the existing standard not enough?

It doesn't beat the existing standard.

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

#94

Post by vkou »

verisimi wrote: post #55
walkhour wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Driving is already a Russian roulette right? If autonomous vehicles are safer than human drivers as advertised the barrel would just have more capacity.

Define 'safer'. If you have not paid your taxes, get in to your car, and it drives you to the local court-house or police station, this is a new risk, no?

It would be actually be better for the car to drive itself to the repo man, if you miss payments on it / are refusing to pay your debts to the government.

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

#95

Post by TillE »

warmwaffles wrote: post #76
coffeeblack wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Self driving” means that it is far more likely for a human driver to override the car in panic and hit the children than it is for the car to hit the children autonomously.

IF the car does hit the children even while driving autonomously the driver will be held responsible regardless of overrides. If someone dies, someone is going to jail until the justice system works through it.

There is no "driver" in this scenario, aside from the software.

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

#96

Post by mindcrime »

zaps wrote: post #20

Those men know what it means to turn the keys, and some are just not up to it! Now, it's as simple as that! I think we oughta take the men out of the loop.

We've had men in those cars since before any of you guys were watching "Howdy Doody"! Now I myself sleep pretty well knowing those boys are driving.

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

#97

Post by jeffreygoesto »

bottled_poe wrote: post #69
walkhour wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Driving is already a Russian roulette right? If autonomous vehicles are safer than human drivers as advertised the barrel would just have more capacity.

Statistical equivalence is one thing, but the risk will shift within the population. Let’s set the bar a bit higher than above average ? The average driver is a dumbass. autonomous vehicles should be expected to consistently make better decisions than the best drivers, not just the average ones.

You wrote correctly "should". Today they can't even compete with the average driver, regardless of what the companies tell us that try to benefit from them.

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

#99

Post by sumo89 »

Where's that video of the guy's dash cam showing what full autonomous driving in a Tesla is currently like, the one where it keeps trying to drive him head first in to other vehicles. I'm hoping this is just intended for on-campus shuttles or something.

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

#100

Post by throwaway894345 »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #87
cannaceo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is beating the existing standard not enough?

Presumably, if a specific person is a very good driver, entering an automated vehicle that is merely better than average driver, with no controls to interject, results in a net reduction of safety for this individual. More specifically, what IF or rather WHEN there is an incident that could've been prevented by human interjection, but wasn't? Other aspect is, why are we only ever discussing these separately? What is…

> Presumably, if a specific person is a very good driver, entering an automated vehicle that is merely better than average driver, with no controls to interject, results in a net reduction of safety for this individual.

But for far more individuals there will be a net increase in safety, moreover, since traffic accidents don't only imperil drivers, pedestrians and safe drivers will also experience an increase in safety due to average drivers using just-above-average automation.

> What is the safety of a automation-assisted human?

That's where we're at today with systems like Tesla's Autopilot.

Post reply on HN