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Cars Are Death Machines. Self-Driving Tech Won’t Change That

nytimes.com

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Re: Cars Are Death Machines. Self-Driving Tech Won’t Change That

#61

Post by robbrown451 »

bluGill wrote: post #58
robbrown451 wrote: post #46

There was nothing in the article to support the notion that self-driving cars won't address the danger of cars. Sure, as long as there are human drivers there will be accidents caused by human drivers (and obviously there will be human drivers for a long time, just as horse drawn vehicles remained around for a long time after automobiles arrived [1]), but if the only argument related to self driving cars is that they…

Small cars and vans don't need signalling to be good. The reason is geometric: someone already in the car doesn't want to detour to your front door to pick you up (they will excuse this if you are obviously handicapped and thus need special treatment). All transit makes the most sense when they run a regular fixed route - just like large buses and trains run. The advantage of self driving is they run every 5 minutes…

They don't necessarily have to detour to your front door, you can often walk to a pickup point that is a compromise: balancing amount of detouring, amount of walking, amount of waiting, amount of adapting your schedule to the schedule of the transportation. The more flexible you are on any of those things, the more you can save yourself a few cents.

The worst case is, you need the car as soon as possible, you want it to come to your door, you don't want to be slowed down at all by stops along the way. Maybe you have other requirements, like you need it to have room for cargo, you need it to have a seat for your kid, you need to take your Golden Retriever along, or whatever. In those cases, it'll cost you a bit more, but it's still the same system so it's not a big deal.

On the other hand, maybe you are good with scheduling your trip in advance, you don't mind it making lots of stops because you'll just be working on your laptop anyway, and if the weather is nice you are good with a bit of a walk on either end. The more people who are this flexible, the better the system works, so they are happy to give you a discount.

What I'm talking about is about is somewhere between a city bus, and an Uber/cab. Lots of efficiencies can be gained by balancing all these different things, and the more people using it, the easier it gets to do this sort of thing.

I can't see why people wouldn't want it to work like that.

Re: Cars Are Death Machines. Self-Driving Tech Won’t Change That

#62

Post by feanaro »

gwbas1c wrote: post #60
toper-centage wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also neglecting long distance transit. Passenger trains are pretty much not a thing in America, right?

Not really, the distances are too great to make them economical. That's why air travel is more common. For distances where trains make sense, cars are preferable: You can travel at your own schedule, and then you have transportation at your destination. If you take a train, you have to meet the train at a certain place at a certain time, which is stressful, and then you still have to arrange transportation from the t…

On the other hand, you have to actually drive the car and it has much less space so it's less comfortable.

Re: Cars Are Death Machines. Self-Driving Tech Won’t Change That

#63

Post by quicklyfrozen »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #57
anyfoo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'd argue that "when" is very, very far away. Unless you remove human drivers, and significantly change the infrastructure for self-driving cars, but at some point you are not so far from (existing) self-conducted trains, then.

We already have self driving cars running around Mountain View with little problems. Extending that progress to more extreme conditions doesn’t seem far fetched, especially when we continue to have technology advances in sensors (LIDAR) and AI control. 5 or 10 years might sound aggressive to many people, but 20 years doesn’t sound far off at all.

Driving in Mountain View just isn't that representative of a lot of the US, much less of the world. You'll never have training data that covers every scenario as we're constantly creating new ones -- from spray painted temporary signage to unclear directions from police officers to random obstacles that force breaking rules to navigate around. 20 years sounds pretty optimistic to me.

Re: Cars Are Death Machines. Self-Driving Tech Won’t Change That

#64

Post by RhysU »

gwbas1c wrote: post #60
toper-centage wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also neglecting long distance transit. Passenger trains are pretty much not a thing in America, right?

Not really, the distances are too great to make them economical. That's why air travel is more common. For distances where trains make sense, cars are preferable: You can travel at your own schedule, and then you have transportation at your destination. If you take a train, you have to meet the train at a certain place at a certain time, which is stressful, and then you still have to arrange transportation from the t…

Traveling by train with not tiny kids is pleasant.

Re: Cars Are Death Machines. Self-Driving Tech Won’t Change That

#65

Post by seanmcdirmid »

quicklyfrozen wrote: post #63
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have self driving cars running around Mountain View with little problems. Extending that progress to more extreme conditions doesn’t seem far fetched, especially when we continue to have technology advances in sensors (LIDAR) and AI control. 5 or 10 years might sound aggressive to many people, but 20 years doesn’t sound far off at all.

Driving in Mountain View just isn't that representative of a lot of the US, much less of the world. You'll never have training data that covers every scenario as we're constantly creating new ones -- from spray painted temporary signage to unclear directions from police officers to random obstacles that force breaking rules to navigate around. 20 years sounds pretty optimistic to me.

Why does some people assume the technology will start standing still when it has advanced so far in just the last 5 years? None of those problems are insurmountable, when the tech stops getting better, maybe you’ll have a point.

20 years is incredibly pessimistic to me. Heck, we might even have GAI by then.

Re: Cars Are Death Machines. Self-Driving Tech Won’t Change That

#66

Post by anyfoo »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #65
quicklyfrozen wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Driving in Mountain View just isn't that representative of a lot of the US, much less of the world. You'll never have training data that covers every scenario as we're constantly creating new ones -- from spray painted temporary signage to unclear directions from police officers to random obstacles that force breaking rules to navigate around. 20 years sounds pretty optimistic to me.

Why does some people assume the technology will start standing still when it has advanced so far in just the last 5 years? None of those problems are insurmountable, when the tech stops getting better, maybe you’ll have a point. 20 years is incredibly pessimistic to me. Heck, we might even have GAI by then.

Why do you assume that those "little" problems that stand in the way are surmountable with any realistic rate of advancement in technology? Because some ill-defined "amount" x of advancement has happened in the last 5 years, so in 10 years it will be 2 times x?

Some problems are really hard, some are essentially impossible. For example, the halting problem is impossible to solve. All its corollaries are, too: You cannot for arbitrary cases tell whether a C program adds two simple numbers together, period.

Voice Assistants are an example for "problems so hard, they are essentially impossible": A human housemate has no problem understanding what I mean when I say "it went yellow, can you order this time?", a voice assistant likely never will. If it can understand that one, it cannot understand another way to phrase it that I can come up immediately. It might get good enough to unambiguously understand "order the water filters for the fridge" every time, but I can convey the same thing to a human in infinitely many more ways.

In driving, unfortunately, you don't get to choose which way a situation is presented, the way you can with crafting a sentence to a Voice Assistant. The next time you drive through a city, look out for any even remotely non-standard situation. Now imagine how a computer should be supposed to react without the arsenal of context clues that your lifetime of human experience provides to you, and that tells you to "just swerve left after slowing down for a few feet" with barely a conscious thought.

Re: Cars Are Death Machines. Self-Driving Tech Won’t Change That

#67

Post by zidel »

Alupis wrote: post #26
marble-drink wrote: post #19

Cars don't kill anywhere near as many people in Europe, though. The US is an outlier when it comes to first-world countries. Still, I would like it if the power was taken back from from cars on the road. Cars should be a third-class road user, below bicycles and pedestrians. My idea for improving driver quality is to do what pilots do. Before you are even allowed behind the wheel of a car you must have proven experie…

> Cars don't kill anywhere near as many people in Europe, though. The US is an outlier when it comes to first-world countries Do you have some data for this assertion? The US actually has a pretty low fatality rate per mile driven. Although, anything above zero isn't acceptable to some people... > It's insane that we let kids drive cars before they've even learnt how to use road. We don't, at least in the US. You hav…

> Do you have some data for this assertion? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

Of the countries with data for fatalities per billion vehicle-km (not that many), the US (at 7.3) is equal to Belgium, lower than Czech Republic (11.5) and high than the 13 other European countries. In addition, counting fatalities per distance travelled will make driving less look like it has no safety benefits even though fewer people actually die. If we look at fatalities per capita instead (to attempt to adjust for country size, but not policies and behaviour) the US rate is 33% higher than Europe, more than twice as high as Canada and most of Western Europe and 4.5x Norway.

Compared to its peers, the US really doesn't have a low fatality rate.

Re: Cars Are Death Machines. Self-Driving Tech Won’t Change That

#68

Post by anyfoo »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #57
anyfoo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'd argue that "when" is very, very far away. Unless you remove human drivers, and significantly change the infrastructure for self-driving cars, but at some point you are not so far from (existing) self-conducted trains, then.

We already have self driving cars running around Mountain View with little problems. Extending that progress to more extreme conditions doesn’t seem far fetched, especially when we continue to have technology advances in sensors (LIDAR) and AI control. 5 or 10 years might sound aggressive to many people, but 20 years doesn’t sound far off at all.

I've detailed why I think that this blind extrapolation of "progress" is rather arbitrary and far-fetched below, but I also just realized your mentioning of "AI control", so I want to ask:

With what you know about current AI, how it's "trained" instead of "programmed", at the result of something that can at best be analyzed to a certain degree: From the bottom of your heart, would you really, really trust that AI blackbox component to navigate you through real-world traffic situations at dangerous speeds?

Re: Cars Are Death Machines. Self-Driving Tech Won’t Change That

#69

Post by redblacktree »

egypturnash wrote: post #27
refurb wrote: post #7

It seems somewhat silly to only talk about the negative aspects of cars. What about all the benefits? If you stop and think about it, cars are truly revolutionary. Even many low income people can buy a machine that will travel 50 miles (at 70 mph) on a gallon of liquid that costs $3. It not only allows individuals the freedom to travel, vehicles power a massive transportation network that brings food to our tables an…

And food is optimized solely to be easy to transport and look good on a store shelf after a long ride rather than be healthy. And burning that liquid is one of the top contributors of global warming. For a good while we were adding lead to that liquid in the name of a better burn, despite knowing for much longer than that that lead is terrible for organic creatures like ourselves. And restructuring cities around cars…

You've painted with a pretty broad brush here; a lot of this isn't true. I suppose "remotely interesting" is a matter of opinion, but I live in a suburb that has its own "downtwon" and other amenities, to include a performance art theatre, beautiful plaza with ping pong tables, big screen TV, outdoor pool tables, etc. It's really pretty awesome if you have kids. It's also a subrub that isn't hostile to people who don't own cars. It's entirely practical to get around by bicycle.

I guess the bottom line is: the hyperbole doesn't really serve your argument.

Re: Cars Are Death Machines. Self-Driving Tech Won’t Change That

#70

Post by theelous3 »

redblacktree wrote: post #69
egypturnash wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And food is optimized solely to be easy to transport and look good on a store shelf after a long ride rather than be healthy. And burning that liquid is one of the top contributors of global warming. For a good while we were adding lead to that liquid in the name of a better burn, despite knowing for much longer than that that lead is terrible for organic creatures like ourselves. And restructuring cities around cars…

You've painted with a pretty broad brush here; a lot of this isn't true. I suppose "remotely interesting" is a matter of opinion, but I live in a suburb that has its own "downtwon" and other amenities, to include a performance art theatre, beautiful plaza with ping pong tables, big screen TV, outdoor pool tables, etc. It's really pretty awesome if you have kids. It's also a subrub that isn't hostile to people who don…

What you find interesting (some stuff for kids and some shops in a purpose built suburban plaza / mall) is likely not going to be found interesting by someone who lives in an actual city.

I wouldn't consider what they said to be total hyperbole. It seems that way to you, because you're happy where you are, but that isn't for everyone.

Also, by suburban standards, yours sounds like an outlier on the good side, and I still wouldn't live there. Most people don't have a nice plaza and so on thoughtfully built for their mass housing.

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