Nevada passes law authorizing driverless cars • Hacker News Board

Re: Nevada passes law authorizing driverless cars

#121

Post by crux_ » Thu, Jun 23, 2011, 7:50 PM UTC

anti wrote: post #103

alanh wrote: post #81

We expect people to be frightened of robotic cars for the same reason they are scared of dying in a plane crash: Some deep-seated fear of dying in a manner that isn’t our own fault. Thoughts: 1) Marketing/PR for autonomous vehicles needs to really drive home their safety, so when you hear “robot car,” you think “… saves lives.” 2) Is it hard to imagine the opposite fear in children born 10 years from now? Having seen…

3) Loss of jobs. When we're heading to a future of robotic anything that will replace an entire profession, drivers in this case. What will be the economic effect of it?

Generally: Unless our demand for goods and services can grow at a pace that matches worker productivity as amplified by automation, there eventually simply won't be enough work to be done to keep everyone fed & housed.

This is paradoxical, since our productivity will be at an all-time high. Eventually we'll arrive at some sort of alternative economy but at least in the US there will be some serious unpleasantness along the way.

Re: Nevada passes law authorizing driverless cars

#122

Post by checker » Thu, Jun 23, 2011, 7:51 PM UTC

mkr-hn wrote: post #53

erikpukinskis wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Transit already offers you choices when you want to go from A to B. It could do the same thing with driverless cars. Want to take one the whole way? That'll be 60 minutes and cost $12.50. Or you can can take the driverless car to the train, which will take you the rest of the way. $7.50, and takes 1h20 minutes.

I know someone who spent some time in one of Japan's smaller prefectures. He hated how all the trains stopped promptly at midnight, making late night things impossible. Something like this would let you take a train there and an automatic car back.

This will definitely benefit bars. I would love to see drunk driving become a thing of the past at some point in my lifetime.

Re: Nevada passes law authorizing driverless cars

#123

Post by georgemcbay » Thu, Jun 23, 2011, 7:53 PM UTC

rdouble wrote: post #118

I'm surprised by the comments that imply we'll solve traffic congestion and be snoozing safely in the passenger seat as our robot cars zip us to work in 10-20 years. I live in a technical world where a team of geniuses can barely keep a system up that exchanges 140 character messages.

"Robot cars" don't need to deal with the sort of scale or coupling that causes systems like the one you described to fail (the system you reference itself doesn't really need to be that way, technically... it is that way for the purposes of centralized control).

The "robot car" I may be sleeping in doesn't have to worry about what the other 300 million cars on the road are up to, only the 10 or so that happen to be immediately around me.

Yes, there are real problems to be solved in this area but they are very different sorts of problems than scaling and at the current rate of progress I wouldn't be too surprised if automated driving were available as a high end option on some cars within 15 years.

Re: Nevada passes law authorizing driverless cars

#124

Post by hollerith » Thu, Jun 23, 2011, 7:57 PM UTC

It would be more difficult for an innovation like driverless cars to get a start in a country like France where almost any change in the laws requires the involvement of the national government. (In the U.S., most legal cases, including the laws of the road and most serious crimes like robbery, rape and murder, are handled by the individual 50 states.)

Re: Nevada passes law authorizing driverless cars

#125

Post by checker » Thu, Jun 23, 2011, 7:59 PM UTC

mkr-hn wrote: post #34

pavel_lishin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do a lot of people avoid public transport just because of the lack of personal space?

Every person I know who has talked about public transport says the other people (especially bums napping and skeevy people) are the big thing that limits the amount of traveling they do on rails and buses. Reach and timing take up the next two slots.

I can definitely feel 'trapped' when people invade my personal space, especially if they smell or have a cough. Those experiences are horrible for the extended amounts of time required for a commute. I still ride, but driving really isn't an option.

Sometimes I wonder why public transport doesn't raise the prices during rush hour to create an equilibrium where the trains don't become sardine cans. I guess economically and somewhat ethically it might be harmful.

I pay $10 to get to work and back in rush hour. Parking is $12 for the day, plus gas and wear and tear. I would gladly pay some extra cash if it made the trains emptier, cleaner, and more reliable.

Re: Nevada passes law authorizing driverless cars

#126

Post by saool » Thu, Jun 23, 2011, 8:02 PM UTC

rdouble wrote: post #118

I'm surprised by the comments that imply we'll solve traffic congestion and be snoozing safely in the passenger seat as our robot cars zip us to work in 10-20 years. I live in a technical world where a team of geniuses can barely keep a system up that exchanges 140 character messages.

We already have robots designed for games that drive cars, even besting most of the people skill-wise, and we have a nice traffic congestion example out of the network and medium access protocols too in the telecommunications science. so I guess that those problems are already almost sorted out.

Video-game bots are a nice research field for artificial intelligence which can provide solutions for the real world.

Unrelated: Check this out if you're interested in the topic, it's a nice read http://www.cs.rochester.edu/research/quagents/QuakeIII.pdf

Re: Nevada passes law authorizing driverless cars

#127

Post by esoteriq » Thu, Jun 23, 2011, 8:04 PM UTC

natesm wrote: post #109

pavel_lishin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do a lot of people avoid public transport just because of the lack of personal space?

I find dislike of public transit strange. I have a strong dislike of cars - you have to pay for the car, you have to pay for insurance, you have to pay to fix it when it randomly breaks, you have to pay for gas, it lives outside your house on the street (so who knows what could happen to it late at night)... I could go on. My ideal transportation arrangement is a subway pass in my wallet and nothing else . Which, in…

Public transit-only travel is workable in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. as well. Although in Philadelphia, you would have to take the buses quite often to compensate for the gaps in the subway system.

Re: Nevada passes law authorizing driverless cars

#128

Post by rmason » Thu, Jun 23, 2011, 8:06 PM UTC

My state of Michigan is known as the birthplace of the automobile. We had the first stretch of paved road in the world as well as the first stoplight.

But we've abdicated our leadership in the automotive industry by turning our back on this development. Michigan rightly should have been the first state to legalize this technology.

It seems as if the auto technology breakthroughs are coming from Silicon Valley. Bob Lutz said the Chevy Volt was developed in response to the Tesla's embarassing us. Now its Google's turn to embarass and challenge Detroit's engineers.

Re: Nevada passes law authorizing driverless cars

#129

Post by callahad » Thu, Jun 23, 2011, 8:06 PM UTC

Can anyone comment on the state of autonomous vehicles with regard to their ability to operate in mixed, human traffic? I would think that human drivers would be dangerously erratic and thus extraordinarily difficult to account for.

And what do you do, as a passenger, when your driverless car induces road rage in a human driver?

Re: Nevada passes law authorizing driverless cars

#130

Post by saool » Thu, Jun 23, 2011, 8:07 PM UTC

anti wrote: post #103

alanh wrote: post #81

We expect people to be frightened of robotic cars for the same reason they are scared of dying in a plane crash: Some deep-seated fear of dying in a manner that isn’t our own fault. Thoughts: 1) Marketing/PR for autonomous vehicles needs to really drive home their safety, so when you hear “robot car,” you think “… saves lives.” 2) Is it hard to imagine the opposite fear in children born 10 years from now? Having seen…

3) Loss of jobs. When we're heading to a future of robotic anything that will replace an entire profession, drivers in this case. What will be the economic effect of it?

That's not the way to look at it.

See creative destruction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction

e.g. the car being invented did mean less work for horse-carriage "drivers", but eventually everything was better than before.