U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars
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Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars
#2I can imagine that there will be a very bloody political fight over self-driving vehicles as they become more mainstream, particularly when it comes to taxis and trucks, because of the vested interests of professional drivers.
Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars
#3"NHTSHA urges that cars have the capability of detecting that their automated vehicle technologies have malfunctioned 'and informing the driver in a way that enables the driver to regain proper control of the vehicle'"
Yes, unless the system to detect that has malfunctioned.
Past the car screaming "shit's broke, take the wheel", i'm not sure what other ways they have of informing the driver.
Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars
#4I can imagine that there will be a very bloody political fight over self-driving vehicles as they become more mainstream, particularly when it comes to taxis and trucks, because of the vested interests of professional drivers.
There will be two big, competing points regarding automated vehicles in the public eye:
* Automated vehicles can save a lot of people a lot of money, save lives, and completely transform the way transportation operates (and perhaps even how cities and suburbs look. See, for example, the vast swaths of parking lots in much of the United States, and think how utterly unnecessary they'll be in a world of fully autonomous vehicles.). The NHTSA policy document says this in the first paragraph, in fact.
* Automated vehicles are untested and scary; would you trust your children's safety to a computer?
The entrenched interests like taxi drivers, truckers, etc. will push the second quite a bit, I imagine. As with a lot of new technology being introduced to the public, that argument will initially have a lot of traction (especially if there are big, public incidents when it starts being rolled out) regardless of what the statistics say regarding safety, but it will gradually be marginalized as people get used to it, based on the strength of the first argument. But it'll be an arduous journey there. People don't like change.
NHTSA press release, with link to the actual policy document (at the bottom): http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/U.S.+Departm...
Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars
#5Reading the article, this doesn't strike me as inappropriate. "Self-driving vehicle technology is not yet at the stage of sophistication or demonstrated safety capability that it should be authorized for use by members of the public for general driving purposes" is probably true. The cars are good at what they do, but that doesn't mean they can handle all sorts of bizarre detour, road construction, rural roads, faded/incorrect markings, conflicting markings, control from officers/construction workers on the roadway, etc. It's a huge, promising field, but still under significant development.
They also say, "as self-driving cars improve, they will reconsider."
Seems fair.
Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars
#6I can imagine that there will be a very bloody political fight over self-driving vehicles as they become more mainstream, particularly when it comes to taxis and trucks, because of the vested interests of professional drivers.
Why do people on HN always jump to "vested interests?" The NHTSA is conducting a study to determine whether a new kind of vehicle should be allowed on public roads. This is the prudent course of action, whether or not anyone stands to benefit from it.
I worked at a company that does what you'd call today whitespace wireless technologies. I remember when I was young and naive, my reaction was: "why doesn't the FCC just get out of our way and let us put this stuff on the public airwaves?" And I distinctly remember when Microsoft did the test with their whitespace technology, where it couldn't handle, of all things, unlicensed wireless microphones (commonly used by churches and sporting events). And my thought was: "who the fuck cares about churches? They're standing in the way of progress!"
Then I worked for a summer at the FCC and realized: "shit, the world is really complicated." There are tons of stakeholders who use the public airwaves and it's imprudent do anything without first being sure what the impact will be (measure twice, cut once, as they say).
Self-driving cars will happen, and have to happen, the same way. The governments of the country spend $160 billion a year on the public roads, and the people of the country are absolutely dependent on them, and before they let a bunch of yahoos run computerized cars everywhere they are going to have to be convinced of what impact they will have on the system.
Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars
#7Given how bad humans are at driving cars safely, it is unfortunate that we are holding self-driving cars to a higher standard than we hold humans. It will cause needless loss of life.
Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars
#8I can imagine that there will be a very bloody political fight over self-driving vehicles as they become more mainstream, particularly when it comes to taxis and trucks, because of the vested interests of professional drivers.
There will be two big, competing points regarding automated vehicles in the public eye: * Automated vehicles can save a lot of people a lot of money, save lives, and completely transform the way transportation operates (and perhaps even how cities and suburbs look. See, for example, the vast swaths of parking lots in much of the United States, and think how utterly unnecessary they'll be in a world of fully autonomou…
It's possible that the destruction of all driving-based livelihoods will take on symbolic importance in the public eye, too. It could come to represent the loss of blue collar and white collar jobs to everyone who doesn't have a career anymore, and that would really complicate the rollout.
Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars
#9Also, driving in the snow and ice safety is about 3 orders of magnitude more difficult to do than driving on dry pavement.
There also needs to be an indicator: "It's snowing, please wait until the road is warm and dry, or have the carbon unit take over".
But that's no good, we have to get to where we are going, so tens of thousands of people, who havn't been practicing driving AT ALL for about 8 months now dust off their glasses and try to remember what these symbols on the dashboard mean and which petal is the "make go faster" one.
Either humans must be required to drive 20% of the time, or else the humans will be stranded when ice is encountered.
Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars
#10Given how bad humans are at driving cars safely, it is unfortunate that we are holding self-driving cars to a higher standard than we hold humans. It will cause needless loss of life.
Yes. Given that people also generally believe they drive safely, what is happening is that they are basically trying to hold them to the standard people believe (incorrectly) they are currently at.