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Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

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Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#291

Post by nradov »

carb wrote: post #289
nradov wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One edge case I have seen is law enforcement officers using loudspeakers on their cars to give drivers specific instructions such as to pull over in a certain spot or move out of a certain area. How will level 5 autonomous vehicles handle that case? There is no useful visual signal, just the audio. Will they need speech recognition and NLP that works in noisy environments?

In theory you could have an API integration with law enforcement that allow them to switch the car into "pull over" mode.

In theory new technology can do all sorts of magical things. In reality the San Jose Police department is broke and can't even afford to hire enough officers to comply with federal guidelines. Where is the funding going to come from?

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#292

Post by dsfyu404ed »

galdosdi wrote: post #204
MR4D wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine some drunk guy hops into his car in bad weather. He taps the auto-cruise button and then passes out. Snow, rain, construction, - something - hinders the ride somewhere along the way home. Car cannot process the issue correctly, and slows to a stop, alerting the driver. Driver, being sound asleep, cannot hear the annoying alert tone. Alert continues, and possibly after some time, alerts authorities of it's dis…

This puts a positive spin on the culture in busier urban areas of expecting drivers in front to start very quickly at a green or else get a friendly reminder honk. If you're going to look at your phone at a red, know the light timings or look at the transverse pedestrian crossing signal or transverse yellow light so you know how long you have.

>This puts a positive spin on the culture in busier urban areas of expecting drivers in front to start very quickly at a green or else get a friendly reminder honk

I think it puts a positive spin on itself. Traffic lights work best when the green duration is utilized to the fullest extent.

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#293

Post by uytyuiyu76678 »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #254
shuntress wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a world where theres no self-driving cars and that same drunk guy on that some night hops in to the car and tries to drive home. Edit: I would gladly accept more failure in uncommon edge cases if it means reduced failure in normal operation (ie: drunk guy slams in to a house at 1 AM on a clear calm night)

Imagine a world where the breathalyzer tech we have had for a couple of decades now was installed into cars and simply prevented drunk people from driving. This is coming; I've seen mentions of a system with passive alcohol detection (just from the air inside the car) plus active "blow in tube" test if the passive test triggers that will start rolling out to cars soon. But it seems if stopping drunk drivers was reall…

That will just spurn a small industry with hobos camping near bars, ready to blow for ten bucks (no pun intended).

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#294

Post by Animats »

jayjay71 wrote: post #290
Animats wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that Google was able to handle construction sites, traffic cones, and people directing traffic last year. Watch Urmson's video from SXSW.[1] Google has put a lot of effort into handling unusual situations. Those cars driving on residential streets in Mountain View and Austin have accumulated data on the hard cases. The California DMV continues to publish autonomous vehicle crash reports. The last one was in Oc…

I'm curious: when do you think a stage 3, 4, and 5 vehicle will be readily available on the market (specifically the United States)?

Level 3 on major freeways in about two years. (Like Tesla claimed to have, but without the "slams into cars parked at the left edge of the road" bug.) Level 4, in the form of self-driving low-speed vans in campus-type areas, has already been deployed in a few locations.

Volvo loaned a family a Level 3 car yesterday.[1]

[1] https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/09/volvo-tests-self-driving...

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#295

Post by ghaff »

jayjay71 wrote: post #290
Animats wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that Google was able to handle construction sites, traffic cones, and people directing traffic last year. Watch Urmson's video from SXSW.[1] Google has put a lot of effort into handling unusual situations. Those cars driving on residential streets in Mountain View and Austin have accumulated data on the hard cases. The California DMV continues to publish autonomous vehicle crash reports. The last one was in Oc…

I'm curious: when do you think a stage 3, 4, and 5 vehicle will be readily available on the market (specifically the United States)?

My personal expectation is that Level 3 could be relatively soon given that companies like Volvo are doing legitimate pilots. Maybe 10 years? But the question would be how many places they would (legally) be allowed to drive without an attentive driver and under what conditions.

It's not clear to me how much L4 buys you as a consumer product. "No driver during defined use case." If you can't go door to door in a wide range of weather conditions, what's the difference between having a non-attentive driver and no driver?

ADDED: Yes, as was written elsewhere, low-speed campus use cases make sense. But that's not what most people consider self-driving.

Level 5. Many decades.

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#296

Post by shitgoose »

aurelianito wrote: post #273
gertef wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drone cars! Why isn't remote control driving progressing apace with self-driving cars? Outsource Uber driving to lowest-wage drivers in India, Bangladesh, or Nigeria.

Latency

12 hours latency doesn't stop outsourcing the software projects, so it should be fine too.

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#297

Post by escape_goat »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #276

So where is the traction proof for a "Proven market need" for self driving cars? Whenever we discuss new ventures on HN, the number one thing repeated is the YC mantra "Make something that people want." Yet I don't see the "solves a concrete problem that people are looking for solutions now for." You can certainly make the case based on long range conjecture that there would be big benefits: lower fatalities, more fr…

I don't have any proof that a market exists for these cars right now, but I can make up a story that suggests that a real market is indeed at play.

There's a proven market need for that entire field of technology in general, the market of "doing things that were never before humanly possible while making billions of dollars in profit along the way".

A self-driving car is a plausibly viable product, in that a person can imagine that it would provide him or her with personal safety, convenience, relief from effort, and extra leisure/work time. By itself, it could have a significant lifestyle effect both in terms of commuting and travel.

However, even if it were not especially economically viable by itself, it would serve as a highly useful prototype and legislative precedent for the rather more dangerous and less sympathetic self-driving truck.

The self-driving truck has advantages over the operated truck that go far beyond the savings in wages when all the truck drivers lose their jobs. It can operate continually and consistently, with lower maintenance costs; it can be prepositioned or rerouted at a moment's notice; it can integrate efficiently with other aspects of an partially automated logistics chain. It will create new value. In turn, it will serve as a prototype for other motile robotics technologies required by a fully automated logistics chain, all of which - taken together - will be a crucial step towards the full automation of the means of production.

It is plausible that the major automotive manufacturers are more than happy to treat the self-driving car as a loss-leader.

This is just a story I made up, rather than an authoritative or informed opinion, but I believe that it's fairly typical of the "imaginative futurist" version of the case for self-driving cars.

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#298

Post by Tiktaalik »

Obi_Juan_Kenobi wrote: post #267
Tiktaalik wrote: post #125

No mention of pedestrians, cyclists, or how cars (self driving or otherwise) affect the urban realm. So much of the self driving discussion seems to be wholly about the automobile technology in a bubble, with near zero thought put into the impacts on people, cities and society. The fact that the idea of signal less intersections, a concept that ignores the existence of pedestrians and cyclists entirely, is even a poi…

Are there cycling/pedestrian advocacy groups that are against self-driving cars? I'm sure there's some concern about the early stages, but these groups are so acutely aware of the deficiencies of human driving that I find a lot of enthusiasm for automation. A driving infrastructure that's advanced as far as signal-less intersections is one that will almost certainly have dedicated space for human-powered transport. A…

The concern I have read from urban planners is more that autonomous cars are simply an improved variation of a car, and they won't actually fix many of the core problems that cars have created in cities.

Autonomous cars absolutely have the potential to be much safer than human driven cars, but their innovations don't change many other aspects of car oriented transportation. It remains questionable then whether our cities will be all that different if the cars on the road are autonomously driven or not.

In this sort of discussion I feel it must be added that it's fully possible to build walkable, bike friendly, cities right now with current technology. We just choose not to do so. We don't need new technologies to achieve this.

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#299

Post by jpindar »

_archon_ wrote: post #185
alkonaut wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until cars are reliably at the highest level of replacing humans along the entire way of any drive (I.e cars don't have drivers seats) then obviously it must be a criminal offense to be the "driver" while drunk, even if the driver was hoping to sleep all the way home. What has happened here is really better: the drunk guy is asleep in a stopped car, rather than asleep in a car that just hit another car.

Interestingly, he can still be arrested for DWI. This would be an interesting case, though, because the mens rea is clearly not present; the human intended to be conveyed by a capable transportation system, and didn't intend or attempt to control a vehicle while in motion. I look forward to the result of this case for legal precedent reasons.

You can get arrested for sleeping in a car while drunk, even if you clearly intended to sleep it off overnight instead of driving home drunk. No mens rea needed.

Re: Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars

#300

Post by quacker »

theincredulousk wrote: post #288
quacker wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By this logic, we shouldn't "let" people play sports because purpose built robots would be statistically better. I don't think this is a fair comparison. There were about ~35000 motor vehicle deaths in 2015[1]. When we have the opportunity to reduce this number to (nearly) zero, the question becomes: is it worth paying 35000 lives to allow our society to satisfy its recreational driving needs? I think the answer is…

I was pointing out that the author's logic is hyperbolic and naive, making it seem as if statistically minimizing risk is the only thing that matters to anyone. To your point, we also "pay" ~88,000 lives per year to allow our society to satisfy its recreational alcohol consumption needs, but that is what society has chosen. I do agree it is a problem that we share roads, and many people don't take the risks seriously…

> To your point, we also "pay" ~88,000 lives per year to allow our society to satisfy its recreational alcohol consumption needs, but that is what society has chosen.

This is a good contrasting point. I think there is an argument to be had about "winnable" battles, though. It's much easier to police roads than it is to police everyone's home for alcohol, for example. It's easier (I imagine) to smuggle some alcohol from another country than it is to import an illegal vehicle. (Aside: some ~10,000 of those alcohol related deaths involved drunk-driving)

I agree that there needs to be a careful timeline for legislation. We shouldn't use legislation to bring about change too early.

I do think, though, that the transition to autonomous vehicles could occur gradually. First, you make them capable of self-driving. Then, cars start being manufactured without a steering wheel or pedals. Then, all new cars must not have a steering wheel. Then, once a sufficiently high percentage of vehicles are autonomous and without steering wheels, additional legislation could be considered. This would take decades, of course.

> There are plenty more reasonable steps to be taken before that...

I'm aware that in countries other than the US (like Germany, IIRC), it is harder (in terms of additional and stricter testing) and more expensive to obtain your driver's license. That is something I don't disagree with.

On the other hand, the US is a place which is very reliant on cars to get places: the country is larger and more spread out, public transportation is worse, etc. The ideal aspect of self-driving cars in combination with restricting or outlawing human drivers is people can still own them as they always have (prices will come down and used cars will exist) and it should bring down fatalities in a meaningful way. Additional legislation that may prevent people from getting the license they need to drive to their job would not be required.

> The list goes on, without copping to the naive, even juvenile, conclusion that outlawing human drivers is logical because autonomous cars are safer.

None of this rhetoric convinces me that it is not logical to remove human error from the driving equation.

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