4 ms·

Sure. Close down the road, get a bunch of professional drivers to simulate traffic (including poor driving), and have it at for a few hundreds of thousands of m

• JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  They (Uber) already had trials in Pittsburgh. Presumably after the closed-track trials. This sound like a careful progression of testing and trials to me. And every "Technology Demo" is of course a publicity stunt by definition.
  • vannevar 10y ago
    I think you're badly underestimating the amount and nature of the data required. Think about space travel: after 60 years, the catastrophic failure rate is still about 1 in 200. This is due in part to the very low volume of flights over the decades. The Shuttle underwent what passed for extensive testing before its first "operational" flight, but was retired before it accumulated even as many hours as the average test flight program for a commercial airliner. Before we run vehicles as potentially destructive as a fully loaded 18-wheeler autonomously on public roads, we should log tens of thousands of test hours under simulated real-world traffic conditions. That's expensive, hence Uber's willingness to roll the dice with other people's lives. The burden is not on the public to show that an autonomous truck is unsafe; the burden is on the promoters to show that it is safe. That burden is not even close to being met, as the article acknowledges when they say the technology won't be ready for another 5 years. This was a stunt to help Uber maintain its valuation, and the DoT should've been looking out more for the public.