Nissan pledges commercially viable autonomous drive by 2020. • Hacker News Board

Re: Nissan pledges commercially viable autonomous drive by 2020.

#81

Post by jerf » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 12:27 AM UTC

stevewilhelm wrote: post #77

jerf wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No sale. Economic stimulus is completely nonfunctional when the lead time is in the "many years". The term "shovel-ready" was thrown around a couple of years ago for a reason. Of course, I suppose you could just hope that you start planning for the project in this downturn, but it'll only start in the next one....

Work in the Central Valley, the part of California that was hit the hardest by the recent economic downturn, is expected to start this year. [1] http://www.hsr.ca.gov/Programs/Statewide_Rail_Modernization/...

For the economic downturn that happened five years ago. The fact that we still need "stimulus" is itself a pretty powerful argument against its effectiveness. Our new economic innovation, making sure the economy stays down as long as our incredible sluggishness in "stimulus".

Re: Nissan pledges commercially viable autonomous drive by 2020.

#82

Post by hobs » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 1:08 AM UTC

schabernakk wrote: post #29

hobs wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automation will certainly help with congestion by optimizing who is doing what when. I am not a network engineer, but I cant imagine that people are driving the most efficiently to even attempt to maximize throughput.

especially when you think about the fact that a lot if not most traffic jams are ghost jams, where a slight overreaction ripples through the following cars causing them all to stop for no apparent reason.

Exactly the kind of stuff I am talking about!

Re: Nissan pledges commercially viable autonomous drive by 2020.

#83

Post by 001sky » Thu, Aug 29, 2013, 6:43 PM UTC

hobs wrote: post #80

001sky wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automation will certainly help with congestion by optimizing... == No. You can't 'optimize' traffic away. LA is a case study.

I might have to look into this a bit more, and I would agree that adding more cars to the point of the system literally being unable to handle them cannot be optimized. However, its clear to me that individual actors in the traffic system do not behave in a way that is beneficial to considerations above and beyond their own. I do believe that this would cause some decrease in overall traffic if it was "fixed" by an a…

specific examples besides the meme

Traffic in LA is a symptom of a social interaction, where demand exceeds supply of a scarce resource. Its not a "technical" problem in the naive sense. You proposed solution is like trying to solve the "tragedy of the commons" through fertilizer. The problem of the commons is not that the quality of the commons is poor. The problem is that no matter how productive it is, it will be overgrazed. So, this is a social problem. Not a technical one in the engineering sense. The solution is ultimately solved with poltics, who keep the politically less powerful (ie, the poor) out of the commons.