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>“operating the vehicle on-road anywhere that a typically skilled human driver can reasonably operate a conventional vehicle.”
People who think otherwise must have spent their entire lives in metro areas with little to no weather.
Moderate amounts of snow will certainly make L5 driving impossible until we have AI where reasonable people start thinking about giving civil rights to.
IMO, some of the earliest truly L5 applications outside of very specific areas are going to require not only a geofence, but some amount of in-environment learning from a human driver at the wheel. This may involve some kind of conditional unlocks of L5 capabilities, in the same way that some hypercars require the owner to attend a driving school in order for the manufacturer to tell the ECU to operate at full capaci…
>hypercars require the owner to attend a driving school in order for the manufacturer to tell the ECU to operate at full capacity. Do you have more information on this? I’ve never heard of additional classes to unlock different driving modes. I know some US cars come with a “red key” that will automatically change the car to its most aggressive tune, but doesn’t require any classes 700+HP.
I'll admit that I don't really have a lot of first-hand experience in this though. It's on my to-do list if I can get one of my side-hustles to take off :)
One thing that bugs me about L5 is the designers of the spec think it's awesome that L5 takes the steering wheel away. Why? It seems like a downgrade. I'd never buy an L5 car because sometimes I want to drive, and break the speed limit a little.
That takes away the societal benefits of L5, though. That's one of the main problems with self driving in general. It's a completely different system if 99% are self driving instead of 100%. L5 is about transport, where everything can be 10-100x more efficient if everone is FSD. But if even 1% decide to take the wheel then it's instant gridlock everywhere. If you want to drive, and have fun, we'll have racetracks for…
Or maybe it's like saying you want to ride your horse on a country road every so often.
I think the L4/L5 debate can be greatly helped by people realizing that the majority of human drivers on the road are not L5-capable. A sizeable chunk are L3s and not many are L5s. The way it works is that people simply don't go out in conditions they don't feel comfortable in (snowsquals, etc) and will never attempt areas they think are beyond them (comfortably driving in suburbia, but never attempting to drive in N…
> people simply don't go out in conditions they don't feel comfortable in (snowsquals, etc) and will never attempt areas they think are beyond them Regarding snow squalls, I don’t think it is a reasonable interpretation of L5 to say that the vehicle must be “smart enough” to do things it physically is incapable of doing. I think the difference between 4 and 5 is that 4 may refuse to operate in scenarios that the vehi…
Some other quotes from wikipedia:
"Level 5 ("steering wheel optional"): No human intervention is required at all. An example would be a robotic vehicle that works on all kinds of surfaces, all over the world, all year around, in all weather conditions."
"Under all roadway and environmental conditions that can be managed by a human driver"
I've driven in all sorts of conditions - thick fog on the highway, dangerously heavy snowfall (no lanes), fresh snow without winter tires, etc. These things are not physically impossible they just have a higher probability of killing you. So what is a reasonable definition then? A brash, foolish, broke 19 year old? A stogy, conservative 70 year old? And how do you even quantify these risks, without actually taking a ton of risks, then walking back when bad things happen?
As long as there's someone out there willing to take more risks, they'll be more "capable" than an L5, thus L5s can never technically exist, since there'll always be more capable (but in actuality just plain risky) human drivers.
As a solution, it's maybe missing the resolution of 1m vs about 5m at the moment. This is exactly what's needed, but instead of limiting virtually harmless products like scooters, all cars should conform to geofences, especially in cities.
Rigorous geofence-based speed limiting in cities would save literally tens of thousands of lives per year, and the technology is easy, cheap, and already with us.
Is this article total nonsense? Are vehicle vision systems really driving over kangaroos?
I'm not aware of any actual incidents, but Kangaroos are the most common cause of animal collisions in Australia, so it's not entirely off-base to talk about.
L5 is impossible by this definition: >“operating the vehicle on-road anywhere that a typically skilled human driver can reasonably operate a conventional vehicle.” People who think otherwise must have spent their entire lives in metro areas with little to no weather. Moderate amounts of snow will certainly make L5 driving impossible until we have AI where reasonable people start thinking about giving civil rights to.
I 100% agree. There's no way AI will be able to solve this without being sentient. In my area, there is a large network of single lane dirt and gravel roads that people rely on for their daily existence. I'll be damn impressed when AI can figure out handling an oncoming truck and figure out when to pull forward to a wider spot, backup, stay put, where and how far to pull off into ditches or shoulders that won't give way or lead you to get stuck in the mud or ditch, and when to know if they can push the vegetation out of the way or not. And when to trust a cliff-side "shoulder" or not. These aren't rare exceptions either, that's daily existence for these people. And if you think the paved roads in the area are much better, you're gonna have a rough time.
>People who think otherwise must have spent their entire lives in metro areas with little to no weather.
Despite the slight hyperbole, I think this is absolutely correct. I see this very problem with many takes on this site in a wide variety of contexts. The same people have zero problem advocating for regulation without any exceptions that applies to contexts they simply have never thought about.
At the risk of full-on ranting: They then complain when rural people object and do their best to invalidate the objections of rural people and insist they have the moral high ground.
One thing that bugs me about L5 is the designers of the spec think it's awesome that L5 takes the steering wheel away. Why? It seems like a downgrade. I'd never buy an L5 car because sometimes I want to drive, and break the speed limit a little.
Same reason you don't directly control the elevator going up and down.
Why stop there? Let's build a special track for these robots since tires are pretty bad in terms of environmental impact and physical stress on roads. We can also make them longer so they hold a lot more people, and automate payment systems at the egress points, maybe add in some turnstiles.
Congratulations, we've just reinvented trains. Maybe we could just build some of those?
So, to limit our problem a bit, let's create a nice little geofence around our robot cars. We'll limit the physical environment changes in this area, build in some barriers, limit pedestrian traffic, protect wildlife crossings, maybe build in some weather protection systems so our robots don't have to drive on the snow. Why stop there? Let's build a special track for these robots since tires are pretty bad in terms o…
I'm not interested in self-driving cars, but thinking trains solve all problems is a very narrow, urban view.