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

Uber Wants to Make It Illegal to Operate Your Own Self-Driving Car in Cities

cei.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 50 posts

Re: Uber Wants to Make It Illegal to Operate Your Own Self-Driving Car in Cities

#21

Post by dragonwriter »

munk-a wrote: post #13
tyingq wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"there could certainly be competition in this space" I was assuming governments forcing all fleets to share data. Probably via some "safety / think of the children / OMG terrorists" bill.

I think for safety you might get benefit out of cars communicating intent to neighbors. Pervasive tracking and reporting would be unnecessary - but that is the logic, of course various governments could require all sorts of stuff in the name of anything. So yea, good point.

Beyond uses of local comms, N Non-local coordination could improve long-range routing, and even support automated allocation of infrastructure (like the way some roads—especially expensive-to-build-and-maintain ones like tunnels—reconfigure lanes for different directions of travel at different times of day to match traffic patterns, but dynamically and in more places.)

Re: Uber Wants to Make It Illegal to Operate Your Own Self-Driving Car in Cities

#23

Post by zild3d »

peapicker wrote: post #19
rayiner wrote: post #12

There needs to be a planned phase-out of human-driven vehicles. Supporting legacy incumbents can hugely hamstring automated technology.[1] It's a double-whammy: (1) enormous investment must go into designing around human drives in the first place, and (2) the existence of human-driven vehicles dramatically reduces the traffic mitigation advantages of self-driving vehicles (reducing the incentive to make the investmen…

You can pry my human-driven gas-burning vehicle out of my cold dead hands.

Well if you're one of the (un)lucky 1.3 million people a year, that is certainly possible

Re: Uber Wants to Make It Illegal to Operate Your Own Self-Driving Car in Cities

#25

Post by peapicker »

zild3d wrote: post #23
peapicker wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can pry my human-driven gas-burning vehicle out of my cold dead hands.

Well if you're one of the (un)lucky 1.3 million people a year, that is certainly possible

In the US, the # is just over 37,000 driving deaths per year, or about 35 times less than 1.3 million.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...

Re: Uber Wants to Make It Illegal to Operate Your Own Self-Driving Car in Cities

#26

Post by munk-a »

dragonwriter wrote: post #21
munk-a wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think for safety you might get benefit out of cars communicating intent to neighbors. Pervasive tracking and reporting would be unnecessary - but that is the logic, of course various governments could require all sorts of stuff in the name of anything. So yea, good point.

Beyond uses of local comms, N Non-local coordination could improve long-range routing, and even support automated allocation of infrastructure (like the way some roads—especially expensive-to-build-and-maintain ones like tunnels—reconfigure lanes for different directions of travel at different times of day to match traffic patterns, but dynamically and in more places.)

I think non-local comms will end up going through more pedestrian modes.

Road usage configuration is something that external systems will already force self-driving cars to obey, a lot of bridges are 3 or 5 lanes with a middle that switches directions, or have some partitioned third lane group that switches similarly. Broadcasting that information over the web/whatever may help car co-ordination, especially it may help with route planning and traffic analysis, but these systems should be rather strongly isolated from the car itself and be offered from a source open to the general public.

There is a lot of interesting stuff here, especially when you get into traffic balancing, but none of it would need to pass through a car relay network or anything of the sort - there may be economy in doing so, but that sort of a propriety (or open yay) caching of state wouldn't impact or impose requirements on car-to-car communications.

Re: Uber Wants to Make It Illegal to Operate Your Own Self-Driving Car in Cities

#27

Post by rayiner »

peapicker wrote: post #19
rayiner wrote: post #12

There needs to be a planned phase-out of human-driven vehicles. Supporting legacy incumbents can hugely hamstring automated technology.[1] It's a double-whammy: (1) enormous investment must go into designing around human drives in the first place, and (2) the existence of human-driven vehicles dramatically reduces the traffic mitigation advantages of self-driving vehicles (reducing the incentive to make the investmen…

You can pry my human-driven gas-burning vehicle out of my cold dead hands.

You can keep the car and drive it on your farm. But as to public roads, they're a limited public resource, and the government has an obligation to ensure they are utilized as efficiently as possible. That will be achieved by only allowing self-driving cars.

Re: Uber Wants to Make It Illegal to Operate Your Own Self-Driving Car in Cities

#28

Post by benchaney »

rayiner wrote: post #12

There needs to be a planned phase-out of human-driven vehicles. Supporting legacy incumbents can hugely hamstring automated technology.[1] It's a double-whammy: (1) enormous investment must go into designing around human drives in the first place, and (2) the existence of human-driven vehicles dramatically reduces the traffic mitigation advantages of self-driving vehicles (reducing the incentive to make the investmen…

Is the government going to mandate that all self driving car software be open source? Otherwise, Hell no. I'm not putting my life in the hands of a proprietary, corporate, spyware ridden death trap.

Re: Uber Wants to Make It Illegal to Operate Your Own Self-Driving Car in Cities

#29

Post by adfm »

ughira wrote: post #18

Why was Uber mostly singled out in this article? If anyone reads the article, it makes it seem like there is some agenda behind it, especially when seeing the full list of signatories for the initiative [1]. The article also reads with some bias as the initiative itself seems to make some sense, based on my cursory review. [1] https://www.sharedmobilityprinciples.org/signatories/

Consider the source.

"The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a non-profit public policy organization dedicated to advancing the principles of limited government, free enterprise, and individual liberty."

"...CEI crafts advocacy campaigns in order to reach policy makers..."

Re: Uber Wants to Make It Illegal to Operate Your Own Self-Driving Car in Cities

#30

Post by eesmith »

rayiner wrote: post #27
peapicker wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can pry my human-driven gas-burning vehicle out of my cold dead hands.

You can keep the car and drive it on your farm. But as to public roads, they're a limited public resource, and the government has an obligation to ensure they are utilized as efficiently as possible. That will be achieved by only allowing self-driving cars.

"as efficiently as possible"

There is no such obligation.

Or rather, how do you define "utilize"?

In terms of transport efficiency, buses and light rail carry more people than cars.

And if only self-driving cars are allowed on the roads, what of bicycles, pedestrians, people on wheelchairs, and horses?

We used to play on the roads when I was a kid, being careful to watch out for cars. That's part of "utilize", is it not?

There are also other categories of roads, like scenic highways, which have a different utility function than efficiency. Some neighborhoods have back alleys for garage access, garbage pickup, and the like.

Post reply on HN