U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars

#21

Post by tokenadult » Thu, May 30, 2013, 6:33 PM UTC

It was good to read all the comments here before I decided to write this one. There is some good nuance in the back-and-forth among the comments on this interesting article. I especially like BorgHunter's second-level comment

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5794159

with its link to the official document related to this story.

Here in Minnesota, human driving is sufficiently lousy that I can't wait for self-driving cars to get on the roads here. I see people neglecting being aware of traffic to engage in cell phone conversations or texting conversations on every drive I take here, and even though we get snow every winter, the first few snowfalls of each winter always result in lots of crashes as people drive like they drive in summer on slippery roads until they adapt their driving habits. Bring on the self-driving cars here, I say. I'm glad that the government regulators are attempting to do empirical safety studies, but I urge them to be bold in rolling out self-driving technology as rapidly as it can come to market.

Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars

#22

Post by tokenizer » Thu, May 30, 2013, 6:39 PM UTC

roguecoder wrote: post #7

Given 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.

Regardless of how bad I or someone driving around me is, I would rather have complete control. If I'm going to relinquish that control, then the alternative better be superb. This is one of those paradigms where we need software engineering to be flawless, which history can tell us, is never the case.

Not disagreeing with you just offering an opinion which is more centered and cautious.

Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars

#23

Post by shawabawa3 » Thu, May 30, 2013, 6:41 PM UTC

6d0debc071 wrote: post #19

BorgHunter wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. I don't know that it would make that much difference. Most people want to drive at the same time to get to work and few people seem likely to want to have their car do an extra commute so that it can park up at home. Couple that with the fact that a ca…

Presumably self driving cars would lead to dirt cheap taxi and car sharing services, reducing the need for everyone to own a car. Yould even have things like letting your car be a taxi during the day while you work

Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars

#24

Post by ceejayoz » Thu, May 30, 2013, 6:42 PM UTC

tokenizer wrote: post #22

roguecoder wrote: post #7

Given 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.

Regardless of how bad I or someone driving around me is, I would rather have complete control. If I'm going to relinquish that control, then the alternative better be superb. This is one of those paradigms where we need software engineering to be flawless, which history can tell us, is never the case. Not disagreeing with you just offering an opinion which is more centered and cautious.

I'd personally like to have complete control... but it's balanced by the fact that I'd rather most of the other drivers I encounter not have that control.

Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars

#25

Post by whiddershins » Thu, May 30, 2013, 6:43 PM UTC

this is an agency trying desperately to seem relevant

Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars

#26

Post by BorgHunter » Thu, May 30, 2013, 6:43 PM UTC

6d0debc071 wrote: post #19

BorgHunter wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. I don't know that it would make that much difference. Most people want to drive at the same time to get to work and few people seem likely to want to have their car do an extra commute so that it can park up at home. Couple that with the fact that a ca…

There's essentially no need to own a fully autonomous car for solely personal use. Big fleets of dispatched vehicles that you can order to show up at your door (with, this is key, low response times for on-demand service plus reliable scheduled service for your daily commute) would be a much better value proposition for most people, with superior economies of scale that you don't get with a dismal ~5% utilization that most private vehicles operate at. If such a dispatch service were done right and had a big enough variety of vehicle types and prompt enough service, it could easily supplant private car ownership for all but a relatively small group of individuals, because owning a car just wouldn't provide enough advantages to be worth the added cost and hassle.

Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars

#27

Post by protomyth » Thu, May 30, 2013, 6:43 PM UTC

maeon3 wrote: post #9

Also, 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 t…

This is my biggest fear with automated cars. Snow, ice, and animals are problematic and having the car drive all summer means poor winter driving[1]. I still worry about how it figures what is safe to push through versus what will cause an accident. The constant flurries / drifting is also going to be a huge sensor problem.

Car companies are pretty bad about winter driving as is[2][3], so I expect we will have a lot of problems.

1) it is bad enough on the first snow day in Minneapolis even though everyone was driving the day before

2) if the traction light actually informs you of a loss of traction, you shouldn't be driving anyway

3) heated seats, but a total lack of work on defrosting in all these years

Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars

#28

Post by acavailhez » Thu, May 30, 2013, 6:43 PM UTC

tokenizer wrote: post #22

roguecoder wrote: post #7

Given 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.

Regardless of how bad I or someone driving around me is, I would rather have complete control. If I'm going to relinquish that control, then the alternative better be superb. This is one of those paradigms where we need software engineering to be flawless, which history can tell us, is never the case. Not disagreeing with you just offering an opinion which is more centered and cautious.

Mostly people look at self driving cars in the light of "Would I be better driving my vehicle?"

I like to look a it from the other direction "Would I be better if everyone had a self-driven car?"

Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars

#29

Post by usea » Thu, May 30, 2013, 6:44 PM UTC

tokenizer wrote: post #22

roguecoder wrote: post #7

Given 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.

Regardless of how bad I or someone driving around me is, I would rather have complete control. If I'm going to relinquish that control, then the alternative better be superb. This is one of those paradigms where we need software engineering to be flawless, which history can tell us, is never the case. Not disagreeing with you just offering an opinion which is more centered and cautious.

If you have ever been a passenger in a car, you have given up that control to an entity which is likely far less safe than the software option. (still need to see the data this was based on)

Re: U.S. urges states not to allow general use of self-driving cars

#30

Post by cracell » Thu, May 30, 2013, 6:44 PM UTC

steven777400 wrote: post #5

Reading 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…

Which seems to be the same conclusion as those working on autonomous vehicles right now since no one has announced when they plan to make consumer models available.

The only real take away I got from this article is that the NHTSA is actively monitoring autonomous vehicles as they should be.