Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance

Cars play a large role in America. I don't know all the history about how it came to be this way, but I can make some guesses...

* America is very big, and a lot of the settlements are spread out by a ways. Cars make those communities less insular because they provide a way to get from one town to another, where biking would take a very long time and significant effort.

* I forget when (was it the Great Depression?), but there was a big government initiative to build interstate highways connecting places together by roads. Again, these were distant places, but by being able to travel by car, they now feel quite a bit closer. Most everyone on HN was born after this gigantic network of roads was already in place, and car culture was firmly cemented in the US.

* Due to the distances involved, getting a drivers license around the age of 16 or 17 is a huge amount of freedom bestowed on children just as they really desire such freedom. I spent a lot of time in a car as a teenager not just because of where we were going, but also since it was a mostly-private space for me and my friends.

* For the above reasons and many many more, America in general has a culture that is very centered on cars, so given that a lot of HN is both American and interested in technology, it makes sense there'd be a lot of autonomous car talk here.

I wish I had grown up somewhere less car-centric. I moved to NYC specifically so that I wouldn't have to rely on cars, and I quite like the public transportation here. When I've gone back to the rural New Hampshire town I grew up in, public transportation doesn't exist and getting anywhere except my immediate neighbor's houses takes a long time via bike, and I remember why I grew up with cars.

Edit to add: America is also heavily invested in cars and the culture that follows. The train system throughout the country has been in a terrible state for a looooooong time, and there's not much hope of it ever getting better due to the fact that we're so invested in cars. Some cities and towns have better public transportation support, but most don't. Some cities and towns have better support for bicycles and pedestrians, but most don't. There are occasional pushes to change things, but there's always heavy resistance due to just how deep into cars we are, and just how many people and local governments would truly need to get on the same page to make meaningful change.

> A life-critical system or safety-critical system is a system whose failure or malfunction may result in one (or more) of the following outcomes:

> death or serious injury to people,

> loss or severe damage to equipment/property

> environmental harm

I also agree that telecommuting or flexible hours would work well. But again, for most office workers in the country and world, there is significant inflexibility: they must arrive at their appointed time, leave at their appointed time, and take breaks at appointed times. My statement was intended to be broad and to apply to all workers instead of just for the high-tech industry.

So I see self-driving cars as a backdoor solution to the above problems: replace regular cars with self-driving cars, maybe with car-sharing, and now a country that has so much invested in the car suddenly is able to significantly reduce the latter's influence on society without realizing it. Well, one can but hope anyways.

Not true.. There are other ways of doing this incrementally. For example, slow speeds, closed roads (no pedestrians or other cars), only in good weather, ideal conditions, etc.