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

The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

perspectivezoom.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 62 posts

Re: The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

#11

Post by simonebrunozzi »

Since 2010, I keep saying that Singapore (nation state, in this case) will be the first "city" (with at least one million people) to adopt driverless cars in a short span of time. I would even accept bets :)

Municipalities with a lot of freedom will follow suit. I don't know if american cities will have an easy time fighting with unions, conservatives, taxi drivers, real estate owners.

Why real estate owners? Because once transportation gets optimized, "hot" areas of the city will cool down in prices, compared to other parts of the city.

Re: The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

#13

Post by gojomo »

A problem with trucks as the leading-edge is that they're already a bit alien to the public and policymakers: resented in traffic, feared out of proportion to actual risks, underappreciated as some narrow corporate/union interest. If they're the test case, enthusiasm will be lower, regulation more costly/cautious, and the public vaguely suspicious, primed to assume the worst when anything goes wrong.

Re: The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

#14

Post by jorleif »

rickdale wrote: post #3

The only flaw I see with beginning with semi-trucks is the perception of driverless cars to the masses and the potential damage a driverless semi-truck accident could incur vs a driverless Prius or something smaller. Not saying there won't be a market for it in the trucking business, but seems smart to start on the smaller cars just for the sake of perceived safety.

Exactly what I thought. There is an awful lot of damage a semi-truck can do if things go wrong. But, then I realized, that there is not necessarily a need for the "trucks" to be big. Maybe you could go the Roomba route, and make them much smaller than traditional trucks, maybe even smaller than conventional cars. Since no driver is needed, you can scale out with many of them, rather than having one very large truck. Maybe that approach does not work for everything, but somehow I think having a large bunch of cargo ants is much less risky than a single very large cargo elephant.

Re: The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

#16

Post by graylights »

Driverless trucks is a real opportunity that could save a lot of money in shipping.

But it could be exploited. If a person walks out in front of a truck, the automated truck better stop. Which an unguarded truck would become easy to rob with little risk. A flat tire would mean the truck calls in for help and is stranded defenseless on the side of the road. That said a fair amount of loss could probably be absorbed with the savings.

I expect long haul truck drivers instead to turn into truck captains. They're present but not for the driving. The truck can drive through the night while they sleep. The captain will handle weigh-ins, emergencies and other road tasks.

Re: The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

#18

Post by alexeisadeski3 »

dlsx wrote: post #7
fvrghl wrote: post #4

I totally agree that driverless trucks are the future, but I don't think it will come easy. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is one of the largest unions in North America, and one of the most politically powerful. I think that they will fight this with everything they have to keep humans getting paychecks.

Except the power of going on strike has been completely disintegrated with an automated fleet of trucks sitting back ready to be deployed. Disruption will come, and they won't be able to stop it.

He's not referring to a strike, but to politics.

Re: The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

#19

Post by [deleted] »

graylights wrote: post #16

Driverless trucks is a real opportunity that could save a lot of money in shipping. But it could be exploited. If a person walks out in front of a truck, the automated truck better stop. Which an unguarded truck would become easy to rob with little risk. A flat tire would mean the truck calls in for help and is stranded defenseless on the side of the road. That said a fair amount of loss could probably be absorbed wi…

[deleted]

Re: The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

#20

Post by milsorgen »

kposehn wrote: post #9

> Compared to driverless cars, driverless trucking is technically way simpler. When going from one warehouse in a sparsely populated area to a another warehouse in a similarly sparsly populated area, there’s a lot less that can go wrong. Not quite. Long haul trucking has far more things to go wrong than a short jaunt from two packed urban spots to another. A lot goes wrong on these trips. Flat tires, accidents, bad w…

>Long haul trucking has far more things to go wrong than a short jaunt from two packed urban spots to another.

Some road side service response personnel could alleviate that. I personally think automating long haul would be a great thing, I've seen a lot of hair raising driving by truckers on I-84 and if we can't expand rail transport or zone commercial/industrial near rail access then I see this as the next best thing. Of course truckers would be quite vocal about any sort of change...

Post reply on HN