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The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

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Re: The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

#41

Post by ams6110 »

Any time I read these utopian pieces about the driverless car nirvana that is around the corner I roll my eyes. If there's anything we should learn from history it's that nothing is as simple as it seems, especially if it's something we want.

There will be unforeseen technical issues that are not apparent with a single test car or even small numbers of test cars. There will be accidents, and we'll have lawsuits against Google or other manufacturers. Those will have to play out, so we figure out who is really liable when a driverless car crashes. Trial lawyers will flock to these like sharks to a bleeding fish.

We may get to a point where driverless cars are safer than human-operated cars, and are accepted by the public. I think it's at least 50 years away.

Re: The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

#42

Post by dpe82 »

> There are significantly fewer one way streets, fewer bicyclists, fewer pedestrians. The directions will be simpler on average.

While that may indeed be true on average, the real challenge in developing production-level driverless tech is properly handling the edge cases. Just because a vehicle may not often have to deal with bicyclists doesn't mean it never has to deal with them.

Re: The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

#43

Post by nawitus »

tlb wrote: post #25

The major benefit of self-driving isn't saving the costs of a driver's salary, it's reducing accidents. Commercial truck drivers are skilled and alert, so it's hard to be safer than them. Average commuters are distracted and accident-prone, so you can reduce accidents with near-future technology.

Do you have a source which shows that commercial truck drivers are less accident-prone, and by how much?

Re: The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

#44

Post by woofyman »

ams6110 wrote: post #41

Any time I read these utopian pieces about the driverless car nirvana that is around the corner I roll my eyes. If there's anything we should learn from history it's that nothing is as simple as it seems, especially if it's something we want. There will be unforeseen technical issues that are not apparent with a single test car or even small numbers of test cars. There will be accidents, and we'll have lawsuits again…

Agreed. The corner cases are very difficult.

Re: The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

#45

Post by MaulingMonkey »

danohuiginn wrote: post #26
kposehn wrote: post #9

> Compared to driverless cars, driverless trucking is technically way simpler. When going from one warehouse in a sparsely populated area to a another warehouse in a similarly sparsly populated area, there’s a lot less that can go wrong. Not quite. Long haul trucking has far more things to go wrong than a short jaunt from two packed urban spots to another. A lot goes wrong on these trips. Flat tires, accidents, bad w…

>the best start is short-haul intermodal bingo. In container ports, long-distance drivers will generally dump their trailer to be shunted and loaded internally, and pick up another one. Separate cabs are attached to move things around within the port. These could relatively easily become driverless. It's a highly controlled and automated environment. Every moment a ship is in the port costs money, so there's a big re…

No "in the future" about it... we're already seeing automated ore haulers in Australia's pit mines, for example. It's a perfect storm of a controlled, sparsely populated and dangerous environment, relatively low cost (thanks to fewer, larger vehicles, and automation costs rising slower than size), etc.

Re: The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

#46

Post by joshuaellinger »

I was in the bay area recently and got stuck on 101 driving from Google to GoodData in downtown SF....

It made me think that the place to start is the car pool lanes on 101.

Just close them off to humans. Instead, make them available to driverless cars with one addition -- a driverless on-top tow truck.

You drive your existing car on it. Type a destination in on your phone and press GO. It dumps you an one of several exit points.

Ideally, you'd do this with rail instead of roads but that changes it from a tech problem (mostly) for an infrastructure problem (mostly).

Re: The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

#48

Post by exit »

fvrghl wrote: post #4

I totally agree that driverless trucks are the future, but I don't think it will come easy. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is one of the largest unions in North America, and one of the most politically powerful. I think that they will fight this with everything they have to keep humans getting paychecks.

i hope the shock of all taxi/trucking/pizza delivery/etc jobs being eliminated leads to a substantial rethinking of employment in general

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

Re: The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

#49

Post by fricken4 »

ams6110 wrote: post #41

Any time I read these utopian pieces about the driverless car nirvana that is around the corner I roll my eyes. If there's anything we should learn from history it's that nothing is as simple as it seems, especially if it's something we want. There will be unforeseen technical issues that are not apparent with a single test car or even small numbers of test cars. There will be accidents, and we'll have lawsuits again…

It's not 50 years away, it's closer to 5 years away. In 15 years they will dominate the roads.

Google's cars have already demonstrated that they are safer than human drivers with 99% statistical certainty, they have over 750,000 miles of accident free testing on public roads under their belt.

Because Self Driving Cars stand to reduce traffic accidents by 90% or more, it is likely that they will be afforded certain legal protections against the sorts of class action lawsuits you're suggesting, much as they do for vaccine makers, under the auspices that in spite of the risks involved for manufacturers the net benefit to society is too great.

Re: The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

#50

Post by fricken4 »

fvrghl wrote: post #4

I totally agree that driverless trucks are the future, but I don't think it will come easy. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is one of the largest unions in North America, and one of the most politically powerful. I think that they will fight this with everything they have to keep humans getting paychecks.

The number of longshoremen needed to run a modern port has decreased by a factor of 10 over the last 30 or 40 years. Because of their strong unions, the one's who remain get paid very well. Unions don't really have a strong bargaining chip once their labour is no longer needed.
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