Driverless cars are stuck in a jam • Hacker News Board

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#391

Post by magduf » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

upstandingdude wrote: post #278

bpyne wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Live in the city and want to go hiking 20 miles away?" Yes, you want to use a car in this case. But, in the life I imagine, I would rent a car. I dislike driving intensely, but I can see use-cases in which cars are necessary. However, Americans have been largely forced into car ownership, despite the expense and hassle of owning one. A reduction in car ownership coupled with more pedestrian-friendly community design…

I live in one of those european cities. We have at least six companies offering small electric scooters, even more for bicycles, pedelecs, larger electric scooter, cars, trucks everything. They litter the streets can be rented on a whim with your smartphone, totally hassle free. I used at least four different of these company in the last four days. BUT I still own a car, scooter and my own bicycles because it is supe…

>Also you always have to decide, do I want to/can I spend 50 Euros today just to go hiking? Or you know you could use your own car. Yes it also costs money but its way less and more spread out.

That sounds like someone with very stupid money management. Unfortunately, this is probably the norm.

You're surely spending many hundreds of dollars/Euros per month to own and operate a private vehicle: loan, fuel, insurance, maintenance, repairs. If you go hiking every single weekend, that's 200 Euros (according to you), which still should be cheaper than owning a car. Most likely, you're not going to rent a car every weekend. So it should be pretty obvious that you'll come out way ahead if you sell your car and just rent a car for those occasional weekend hiking trips.

>I live in one of those european cities. ... We have public transport but its depressing and annoying and also expensive.

What city is that? The German cities I've visited had very inexpensive public transit, especially if you got multi-day (or longer) passes, which anyone living there probably would.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#392

Post by anchpop » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

mitfahrener wrote: post #364

bogle wrote: post #133

If we expect driverless cars to be further delayed and we continue building our cities to encourage micromobility (bikes, electric scooters, segregated lanes, car free streets, etc.) then at which point does the value of the driverless car become moot because we no longer drive? Does this sound unlikely? Consider European cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam which have encouraged cycling over the last two decades and…

Let me guess. Single male, able body, no kids. When you have kids, you'd appreciate having a car/rent a car/uber when grocery shopping for example. And the city is full of people with kids. We are not the minority here. Not everyone is interested in a scooter that is inherently unsafe at moderate speeds.

> Single male, able body, no kids

What does being male have to do with it?

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#393

Post by ghaff » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

mikestew wrote: post #313

ivanhoe wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I myself am 40+ and seriously obese, so I'm definitely counting myself into that "too old for e-scooter" group, but I actually had in mind average around-70-and-plus people around me, like my parents and their friends, the "real old people". They can walk but can't walk across the city every day, they can go on a leisure bike ride, but not ride it uphill (and we don't all live in flatland like Dutch), and you definit…

but I actually had in mind average around-70-and-plus people around me, like my parents and their friends, the "real old people". Guess what, me, too! My anecdata are from a more active group, though. So we have differing views of the world, and that’s fine. I’ve never been overweight a day in my life, so I try to avoid general, “all ya need to do is...” It demonstrates a lack of empathy and a small world view. But I…

And some of us who are perfectly happy to walk to get to places where practical (which is certainly not where I live) consider scooters dangerous. So, no, I’m not going to ride a scooter or a bike in a city.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#394

Post by lazerpants » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #333

upstandingdude wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats more or less prohibitively expensive, because your hiking location would be outside of parking zone most likely, thus you're on the clock the whole time. Not my idea of a relaxing experience. Looks like zipcar is even station bound which makes it worse. You have to get yourself and all the stuff to the station somehow and then take it back from there again when you are done.

> Thats more or less prohibitively expensive, because your hiking location would be outside of parking zone most likely, thus you're on the clock the whole time. Not my idea of a relaxing experience. An extra hour or two doesn't make a lot of difference when you're already booking for a weekend. Of course if you get stuck on a mountain overnight or something then you'd have a penalty charge, but frankly that would be…

Anecdotal experience from NYC here:

Owning a cheap car is way less expensive than renting a ZipCar. My car's only cost beyond gas was insurance. And my insurance was cheaper than renting a ZipCar for one weekend.

Obviously it depends on the car you own, but ZipCar's here can certainly be more expensive and more inconvenient than owning.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#395

Post by zapita » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 5:35 PM UTC

Sargos wrote: post #363

zapita wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the safety of self-driving cars relative to human drivers also become moot if cars were no longer needed?

We are a LOT further away from cars no longer being needed than we are full self-driving cars.

Who's "we"? It seems to me that not all parts of the world are equally dependent on cars.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#396

Post by steadicat » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 5:35 PM UTC

Sargos wrote: post #363

zapita wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the safety of self-driving cars relative to human drivers also become moot if cars were no longer needed?

We are a LOT further away from cars no longer being needed than we are full self-driving cars.

This is an odd comment considering how humans have lived hundreds of thousands of years without cars, and only a few decades with them. You’re saying that a solution that’s as old as time - and used by billions of people today - is not as realistic as a technology that hasn’t been developed yet?

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#397

Post by vkou » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 5:35 PM UTC

lkbm wrote: post #347

bogle wrote: post #133

If we expect driverless cars to be further delayed and we continue building our cities to encourage micromobility (bikes, electric scooters, segregated lanes, car free streets, etc.) then at which point does the value of the driverless car become moot because we no longer drive? Does this sound unlikely? Consider European cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam which have encouraged cycling over the last two decades and…

> Also, why would I prefer a driverless taxi if an electric car with a human driver costs no more? I believe the number one cause of death for Americans under the age of 30 is traffic accidents.[0] It's around 40,000 deaths per year (in the US alone). Cars are getting safer, but humans aren't getting better drivers. Individuals humans will get better with experience, but experienced drivers cycle out and new drivers…

> A 16-year-old doesn't get to inherit the experience of the 70-year-old they're replacing. A new self-driving car does inherit the experience of older self-driving cars. They also learn from each other in a way humans can't.

> Human drivers also improve at a rate of O(1). Self-driving cars can share their experience perfectly, so they improve at a rate of O(n). I get a day of driving experience per day. Each one of a million self-driving cars on the road will acquire a million days of driving experience. They won't drive traffic accidents down to zero in a week, but in a few years, if we were to deploy them en masse, they could.

This is all very nice, but if true, why are self-driving cars still unable to drive in snow, avoid crashing into trucks pulled over on the side of the road, or navigate a parking lot without nearly getting t-boned?

The rate of improvement might be O(N) (I strongly doubt it), but the problem may lie in the constant multiplier...

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#398

Post by tomerico » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 5:36 PM UTC

notJim wrote: post #383

DickingAround wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is kind of silly. It's nice to imagine a world where people don't need cars. But most/all european cities, many of which we laid out before cars, still have cars. We all have cars because cars are incredibly useful; Got 4 young kids and you need to get groceries for the week? You're not going to bicycle them to the store and all that food home again in the mountains. Live in the city and want to go hiking 20 mil…

> Live in the city and want to go hiking 20 miles away? No reason trains can't solve this. When I lived in NYC there was plenty of hiking off the NJ transit. Popular hiking destinations here in the PNW have huge problems with traffic that would be helped greatly by building rail lines to them.

Why create new rail lines when driverless cars can take you anywhere?

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#399

Post by beokop » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 5:37 PM UTC

tehsauce wrote: post #382

lkbm wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, why would I prefer a driverless taxi if an electric car with a human driver costs no more? I believe the number one cause of death for Americans under the age of 30 is traffic accidents.[0] It's around 40,000 deaths per year (in the US alone). Cars are getting safer, but humans aren't getting better drivers. Individuals humans will get better with experience, but experienced drivers cycle out and new drivers…

You're misusing big O notation

It’s pretty clear that the author isn’t using the technical definition of big O but rather is using it in a descriptive way. It’s not ambiguous in any way so what’s the harm?

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#400

Post by EForEndeavour » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 5:37 PM UTC

jaxn wrote: post #176

nkrisc wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally the only justification I've heard for self-driving cars being safer is "computers are faster than people". Yes- but at what? Faster at making the right decision - and the wrong decision too.

Computers can "watch" every direction at once.

They'll also happily be fooled by adversarial patches (optical illusions) in ways that wouldn't fool humans. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/4/8/18297410/ai-tesl...