Live data from Hacker News

Nevada approves regulations for self-driving cars

physorg.com

121–130 of 140 posts

Re: Nevada approves regulations for self-driving cars

#121
post #52
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or if everyone moves towards self-driving taxi's, then the car takes you to work, then takes someone from near there somewhere else, etc, so you're really talking not much more extra driving, but saving tons on building fewer cars, fewer parking lots, and economies of scales for buying gas and maintaining the cars.

That won't help. Everyone in the area will likely be travelling to work around the same time.

Self-driving minibuses?

Re: Nevada approves regulations for self-driving cars

#122
Am I the only one a little bit concerned by this? Don't get me wrong, I can see all the positives to come out of driverless cars, and the tech behind it astounds me.

My issue is I love driving, and once the world sees how much safer the world is without driver error, would driving manually eventually be banned?

I realise I'm essentially putting my enjoyment over people's safety, but what can I say, I love driving. Just have to hope riderless motorcycles don't come along anytime soon.

Having said all that, it's just occurred to me that if all cars we're driverless, then motorcycle crashes would be massively reduced. Maybe banning manual driving wouldn't be so bad.

Re: Nevada approves regulations for self-driving cars

#123
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me want to visit Las Vegas for this reason alone. I would love to go to Vegas and for the first time in my life ride in a driverless car, convertable, top down, and enjoy the view, take pictures, and relax no matter what the traffic is like. I can see this being a MASSIVE boost to tourist cities.

I think there's only one street in the whole state that gets bad traffic.

Actually, thanks to all the drunk drivers, badly designed roads, people from out of state, etc., traffic in the LV metro area is pretty horrible. Luckily there's a monorail on the strip.

Re: Nevada approves regulations for self-driving cars

#124

Am I the only one a little bit concerned by this? Don't get me wrong, I can see all the positives to come out of driverless cars, and the tech behind it astounds me. My issue is I love driving, and once the world sees how much safer the world is without driver error, would driving manually eventually be banned? I realise I'm essentially putting my enjoyment over people's safety, but what can I say, I love driving. Ju…

>My issue is I love driving, and once the world sees how much safer the world is without driver error, would driving manually eventually be banned?

I think it'd be more likely to be moved somewhere off-road: Race-tracks, specific off-road areas, that kind of thing.

Continuing to allow the day-to-day wholesale slaughter that is humans-driving-cars on public roads is - frankly - insane.

(edit: for slightly better grammatical clarity)

Re: Nevada approves regulations for self-driving cars

#125
post #119
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that we will have a very efficient Taxi system. Using a Smart Phone you will be able to request a Taxi where ever you are; it will already know your favorite locations; your favorite music; it will automatically charge you; we will not need so much parking space.

Agree 100%. In fact, I think self-driving cars together with decent electric engines (which already exist) can revolutionize urban landscape. Just imagine how quiet and pollution free our cities will be if the only traffic allowed inside are electric cars, who automatically go to charge themselves when necessary.

This could work incredibly well especially in urban areas. At least here in Europe, more and more cities are experimenting with traffic limitations in the inner city core, but this also has big drawbacks. Coupled with a cheap self-driving electric cars service, on the other hand...

Re: Nevada approves regulations for self-driving cars

#126

Am I the only one a little bit concerned by this? Don't get me wrong, I can see all the positives to come out of driverless cars, and the tech behind it astounds me. My issue is I love driving, and once the world sees how much safer the world is without driver error, would driving manually eventually be banned? I realise I'm essentially putting my enjoyment over people's safety, but what can I say, I love driving. Ju…

If you look at how current safety systems are designed, there will probably be a manual mode with the car taking over if it thinks your doing something stupid. There will probably always be places where you can drive cars built without such systems.

That said, if you want to drive a 3,000+ LB vehicle at ridiculous speeds and or in a completely unsafe manor on public highways, Fuck You no. Your desire to take stupid risks for fun ends when it puts others at significant risk, you sociopath.

Re: Nevada approves regulations for self-driving cars

#127
post #22
post #4

This opens lots of cool possibilities such as eliminating the need for two cars in the family for example. You go to work, the car then comes back and drives the wife and then later in the afternoon when both parents are working it goes to school and picks up the kids!

My guess is that we will have a very efficient Taxi system. Using a Smart Phone you will be able to request a Taxi where ever you are; it will already know your favorite locations; your favorite music; it will automatically charge you; we will not need so much parking space.

Economically that seems like a wonderful idea, but politically it sounds doomed to failure. Taxi drivers tend to be pretty well organized politically, and in most cities even have laws in place (usually medallion systems) to limit competition. If they can keep these laws in place with their current very weak justifications, I wouldn't be surprised if they can shut down automated cars very easily, since the public would probably be a bit nervous about the idea anyways.

EDIT: Possibly I'm being too pessimistic. I expect automated cars could be really, really awesome and if so, and if they're allowed anywhere, eventually there'll be pressure in other cities to allow them too.

Re: Nevada approves regulations for self-driving cars

#128
post #106
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the Nevads government subsidizing research into self driving cars with tax money? If not, than I see no parallel to stem cells. For the last 10 years or more, you're welcome to do anything you want with stem cells. Go crazy. You just haven't been able to get tax money to fund it, if the stem cells happened to be embryonic.

In an ideal world (according to economists), this isn't an issue. In the world we happen to live in, basic health research is publicly funded. Maybe it shouldn't be, and research funding should be purely commercial, or philanthropic. But with public funding crowding out commercial and philanthropic funding, banning public funding for some kinds of research has a similar impact to banning it.

How can public funding 'crowd out' other funding? There are more 'fund takers' than there is funding available, so if there were private funding available, it would be put to use. I don't understand your reasoning.

Re: Nevada approves regulations for self-driving cars

#129
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that we will have a very efficient Taxi system. Using a Smart Phone you will be able to request a Taxi where ever you are; it will already know your favorite locations; your favorite music; it will automatically charge you; we will not need so much parking space.

Yes, but will it automatically clean up the mess left by the scumbags who were inevitably in the car before you?

Combination of financial and social prevention, automated surveillance and market segmentation will (relatively easily) take care of this. I don't see how it could be a showstopper.

Re: Nevada approves regulations for self-driving cars

#130
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not really an advantage to embryonic stem cells anyways.

Are you sure? How was this determined without doing experimentation with embryonic stem cells?

I thought the only 'difference' was the timeframe of availability, but apparently not:

http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/basics5.asp

One major difference between adult and embryonic stem cells is their different abilities in the number and type of differentiated cell types they can become.

Scientists believe that tissues derived from embryonic and adult stem cells may differ in the likelihood of being rejected after transplantation.

Post reply on HN