The Human Driving Manifesto • Hacker News Board

Re: The Human Driving Manifesto

#31

Post by cardmagic » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 6:17 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #28

cardmagic wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people in the self-driving cars world are not talking about "taking away" other use cases for wheeled vehicles. It's a strawman.

And by saying "most people", you make a weak man argument - since you can sideline and ignore the people who are advocating for taking away manual driving options (ironically a sibling comment). And the sibling comment is hardly a tiny minority - you can see them popping up all over the place in the comments on such articles, not to mention the Waymos and Ubers of the world.

Then say what you mean. Instead of trying to limit my freedom of owning a self-driving car, make it clear you are arguing for the right of people to drive what they want to and we’ll be on the same page.

Re: The Human Driving Manifesto

#32

Post by cardmagic » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 6:20 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #30

cardmagic wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I tried it, I wouldn't try it with the same car I drive to work with every day. I'd use a car built to drive over riverbeds. Most people aren't saying that self-driving cars should take over every kind of vehicle with wheels. I think the main purpose is to give commuters and truck drivers another option, not to remove options from people.

> I wouldn't try it with the same car I drive to work with every day. Most people who do this do indeed use their daily drivers. Most people can't afford to own a second $30,000 vehicle they can take out only on the weekends. > I think the main purpose is [...] not to remove options from people. And I quote: "Google had long distinguished itself from other companies for committing to the development of a true robot c…

So you want to limit my freedom of owning a car without a steering wheel so that you can protect your freedom of owning one with a steering wheel? That doesn’t make much sense to me. Just because one company makes a better mouse trap doesn’t mean that everyone is subjected to only buying the new mouse trap. Welcome to free market capitalism.

Re: The Human Driving Manifesto

#33

Post by notahacker » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 6:20 PM UTC

cryptoz wrote: post #2

This entire article is clickbait, where the author wants you to believe he is being persecuted or something. > Despite a storm of clickbait media reports, there is still little evidence that self-driving cars are safer than humans. This is the central thesis, but the author made up the idea that we are supposed to already have these cars that are safer than humans. Nobody thinks this. Nobody. These cars will hopefull…

Yeah, I'm more sceptical about fully autonomous vehicles than most people, but the arguments presented in this article are bad

Even if fully autonomous cars remain impractical for real world commercial use cases because it can't match human capability to handle edge cases the investment in a programme pay off in terms of driver aids. And the fun of hands on a wheel can always be had on a racetrack.

But the goal of autonomous driving isn't "zero deaths" it's "sell cars", and convenience gets mentioned as least as often as safety as a selling point by its promoters. Since the errors autonomous vehicles make are different from those made by humans (and there's no reason to believe they will ever be zero), there's a strong argument that accidents can be further reduced by retaining an alert, responsible human driver, even if that driver's slightly less alert and responsible than they otherwise would be. That's been the case for Waymo's programmes so far (there's certainly no safety argument for making their backup drivers remote at this stage; that's all about a public show of confidence). The safety/convenience tradeoff isn't straightforward, because perfectly convenient fully autonomous vehicles means a safety benefit from fewer miles with inadequate or even drunk drivers having access to controls, but you probably wouldn't shoot for full autonomy and no controls if safety was the real goal. Frankly, even if the responsible human driver did absolutely nothing useful they'd probably net reduce road deaths simply by ensuring self driving technology doesn't massively inflate the number of miles driven per capita

Re: The Human Driving Manifesto

#34

Post by falcolas » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 6:34 PM UTC

cardmagic wrote: post #32

falcolas wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't try it with the same car I drive to work with every day. Most people who do this do indeed use their daily drivers. Most people can't afford to own a second $30,000 vehicle they can take out only on the weekends. > I think the main purpose is [...] not to remove options from people. And I quote: "Google had long distinguished itself from other companies for committing to the development of a true robot c…

So you want to limit my freedom of owning a car without a steering wheel so that you can protect your freedom of owning one with a steering wheel? That doesn’t make much sense to me. Just because one company makes a better mouse trap doesn’t mean that everyone is subjected to only buying the new mouse trap. Welcome to free market capitalism.

That’s the thing about removing controls: if they are there, you don’t have to use them. If they aren’t there, you can’t ever use them.

The US hasn’t been purely free market since, well, ever. What’s to stop car companies from buying legislation to force people into subscription based vehicles? They already force the use of dealers for buying cars...

Re: The Human Driving Manifesto

#35

Post by yellowapple » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 6:43 PM UTC

Svip wrote: post #20

Where is the middle ground? In the self-driving car debate, I only see the extremes of the positions. Surely it will end in a compromise. I own two classic cars (well, one of them will be soon enough). By virtue of their age, they are obviously not self-driving and never will be. But I hope to have them in my possession 30-40 years from now, because I like them very much. I believe I like driving, because I only do i…

"Where is the middle ground?"

This is the middle ground, at least between "human control should be disallowed" and "automation should be disallowed".

Re: The Human Driving Manifesto

#36

Post by cardmagic » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 6:44 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #34

cardmagic wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you want to limit my freedom of owning a car without a steering wheel so that you can protect your freedom of owning one with a steering wheel? That doesn’t make much sense to me. Just because one company makes a better mouse trap doesn’t mean that everyone is subjected to only buying the new mouse trap. Welcome to free market capitalism.

That’s the thing about removing controls: if they are there, you don’t have to use them. If they aren’t there, you can’t ever use them. The US hasn’t been purely free market since, well, ever. What’s to stop car companies from buying legislation to force people into subscription based vehicles? They already force the use of dealers for buying cars...

It’s still legal to drive horse and buggies on roads, even though it is 10x more dangerous for the people driving them. Why haven’t they forced us into stopping horse and buggies? Should someone have forced cars to not be invented because they didn’t have horses and if there aren’t horses, you can’t add horses later? I’ve heard horse and buggies are a lot of fun to ride over riverbeds too, after all.

Re: The Human Driving Manifesto

#37

Post by Spartan-S63 » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 7:17 PM UTC

Svip wrote: post #20

Where is the middle ground? In the self-driving car debate, I only see the extremes of the positions. Surely it will end in a compromise. I own two classic cars (well, one of them will be soon enough). By virtue of their age, they are obviously not self-driving and never will be. But I hope to have them in my possession 30-40 years from now, because I like them very much. I believe I like driving, because I only do i…

The ideal, here, is that once self-driving cars reach a level where they are demonstrably safer than human drivers, the issue of liability discourages continued use of human-driven vehicles.

The way I see it is that once self-driving cars are safe and viable, anytime an accident involving a human and a self-driving car happens, the human is automatically assigned fault. It doesn't restrict your freedom to drive the car, it just makes you think twice since liability is against you should an accident happen.

This of course, assumes that self-driving cars are capable of driving perfectly within existing driving laws. If that is true, there's no way a self-driving car could legally be at-fault for an accident.