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Whenever people jump up enthusiastically about autonomous cars being right around the corner, I remember taking a cab in Lima, Peru, in the middle of some horre

Whenever people jump up enthusiastically about autonomous cars being right around the corner, I remember taking a cab in Lima, Peru, in the middle of some horrendously chaotic traffic, where drivers were navigating with little regard for lanes, negotiation for merging is done eye-to-eye, and impatient pedestrians would throw themselves into the street, tired of waiting for minutes to cross and trusting that the driver ahead wasn't suffering from some murderous rage that day. I also remember run-down suburbs where massive potholes and ditches make navigations of certain streets a puzzle by itself, compounded by garbage trucks ahead just doing their thing, improperly placed signage ahead, and those badly-designed intersections where you can totally count on drivers misjudging distances. As the designers move away from the relatively trivial confines of well-maintained urban spaces and into different countries and cultures, I seriously question their ability to keep things reasonable for the rest of the human drivers. So far nothing in the near-future horizons of this technology indicates that the software would be able to navigate in many of these adverse situations without incurring huge time penalties or causing unacceptable delays. I really do think that a lot of the hype happens to be because certain actors (Uber comes to mind as the most significant) have basically placed all their bets in these edge cases being small enough that a small number of human drivers should suffice to get around them. I remain skeptical.

stale2002 10y ago
Sure, those scenarios you pointed out are difficult, but what about highway driving? Replacing highway driving with autonomous vehicles is still completely game changing for the transportation industry. It means that 90% of truck drivers are out of a job. (Truck drivers of the future will just handle the last mile). That is certainly something that is going to be disruptive.
- mcgrath_sh 10y ago
  I'd love this as a private vehicle too. Imagine if you could turn a 12 hour drive into an hour on each end (from highway exists to local destination) with the ability to just relax or sleep in the middle? I don't think I'd fly anywhere within 10 hours of me, because an overnight drive suddenly isn't a burden!
  - milliondollar 10y ago
    Yes. I don't know why more time isn't spent on this aspect. It would totally start competing with air travel at that point for sure. I travel all the time for work between cities 4 hours by car or 45 minutes by air. So car is slightly longer all in given fixed costs at airport on either end. But I would do it ALL the time if I didn't have to drive it myself!
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
devdoomari 10y ago
well, there can be 'autonomous-car-friendly-zones' which would automatically entail ridiculously high rent prices : )
Groxx 10y ago
I'm not sure those "well-maintained urban spaces" are as simple as you seem to be implying. They have plenty of quickly-changing construction in the middle of active roads, out of date / invisible signs, and far more crazy drivers and pedestrians to interact with per day than in Middleonowhere Pennciltucky. As to garbage trucks: ever seen people pull U-turns randomly in the middle of the road in a busy city, or dive across 4 lanes to make an exit? Garbage trucks seem simple by comparison, and at significantly lower speeds.
rifung 10y ago
Is there any reason we can't just rely on autonomous cars in areas where these edge cases don't happen? Then as the companies behind this technology make more money, they can start working out the edge cases, but before then, even getting it to work in a given city seems like a huge win.
- qball 10y ago
  >Is there any reason we can't just rely on autonomous cars in areas where these edge cases don't happen? Because there are still ripple effects to doing this affecting areas with edge cases. So let's say you've reduced the number of manual-driven cars. That has implications for: * Economies of scale. Autonomous cars will likely be of a different design than manual ones so the price of a manual-drive will likely increase- where will the increased money to buy them come from? * Insurance costs. Drivers in less-dense cities are currently safer than the national average: what does the risk and cost for a safer driver become now that the bad urban driver benchmark disappears? * Government regulation and other politicking. What happens to everyone else in, say, California or New York State or a European country if an urban-focused legislature creates laws restricting ownership/use of a manual-driven car in some way (anything from a tax to an outright ban)? Whether these implications are small or large (or whether they cancel each other) isn't adequately answered right now; but I suspect that at least one (or all 3) will turn out to be a major hindrance to autonomous car deployment. Or they don't, and some section of the population gets screwed anyway.
  - babyrainbow 10y ago
    >what does the risk and cost for a safer driver become now that the bad urban driver benchmark disappears? I am not sure if an autonomous car will be safer. I mean, can they even do panic breaking right now (For example, if someone or something jumps in front of the car?). You know, safety is often not about having the fastest reaction time, but also about having good anticipation that any decent human driver will develop in a short time.... I think any hopes that cars will be better than humans at it is quite naive...
    - 10y ago
arjie 10y ago
If twenty percent of the population controls eighty percent of the wealth, why should you ever care about the remaining eighty percent of the population? They can't pay you, so your success or failure in their markets need not determine your success or failure in general. Just like with electricity, the Internet, and air travel, the poor will be last. And a lot of people can do very well for themselves by putting the poor last.
- aninhumer 10y ago
  I'm not really sure what your point is here, other than "global inequality sucks"? Should we arbitrarily stop development of self-driving cars until poorer countries' infrastructure can support them? How would that help anyone?
  - Ntrails 10y ago
    There was no implied position on global inequality being good or bad - just a reality check. Peru will be irrelevant to the viability of the project in the short term
arjie 10y ago
If twenty percent of the population controls eighty percent of the wealth, why should you ever care about the remaining eighty percent of the population. They can't pay you, so your success or failure in their markets need not determine your success or failure. Just like with electricity, the Internet, and air travel, the poor will be last. And a lot of people can do very well for themselves by putting the poor last.
thewhitetulip 10y ago
This is the same case in India, no way an AI is able to drive on Indian roads before they pull the plug on the project altogether. I feel that self driving cars will become fancy toys for the ultra rich. Our roads are not predictable, they are good in a few places, but mostly, they are exceedingly bad. For a human itself they are impossible to travel let aside have a robot driving it. There are crazy pedestrians who don't move out of the way, they walk in the middle of the f* road, crazy people try to squeeze through the gap between your vehicle and the next one even if there is no discernible gap. In India, in majority of roads you don't just have to look sideways, you also have to see if some stupid idiot is driving at the speeds of higher than 60 while you cross an intersection. Plus in places of high traffic the self driving car would be deadlocked because here, nobody gives anyone a lead, you have to "earn" the lead by stopping others, no way a robot is going to do that.
- cypherpunks01 10y ago
  Good point about India! I wonder how a self-driving car would handle someone coming towards you on the wrong side of a divided highway, or know how to get a cow out of the middle of a crowded street..
  - coldtea 10y ago
    Like the AI in any driving game with similar conditions? It's still driving, just with different degrees of freedom.
    - thewhitetulip 10y ago
      It might be various degrees of freedom but in India there are a few people who follow traffic rules, everyone acts as if they own the street, they drive on the wrong side of the highway, pedestrians cross the street even while being fully aware that there is a vehicle coming at 150+ kmph speeds etc. It is crazy and chaotic, plus forget the highways, in smaller alleys the road is so narrow that can barely accomodate a bus, if the AI gets stuck in such a deadlock it'll be stuck forever, because nobody gives you side, you have to force someone to stop
djsumdog 10y ago
I remember when I first went to India and saw the traffic. My family would say that traffic in the US and Europe was more "streamlined." You make some good points, as does this article. In the article though, I think at least some of these points will just involve more visual indicators on cars themselves that people will need to get use to (and yes, I do realize that won't solve many of the other class issues the author raises). I have my own concerns. So much money, even tax money, is being poured into this tech that I don't see as viable for at least 7 ~ 10 more years. We could be building automated trains, which do exist, are viable and can operate even on late night runs without drivers or strikes. All of Singapore's lines are automated and several of London's are; both which have trains arriving on platforms at less than two minute intervals at peak hours. Self driving cars also will not solve the capacity problem at all: http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-solve-the-transportation-problem/ http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-sol... You'd have to have self-driving car only motoways to even being to approach the theoretical maximums of car capacity, and it still pails in comparison to train capacity, or even bus capacity for that matter. The other thing I don't think people realize is that we (most likely) won't be owning self driving vehicles. I feel like if States get their acts together, we're going to need FAA style regulations. Cars need to be inspected at regular intervals to ensure all the sensors are functioning. Software updates need to be audited, and safety algorithms will need to be shared. I mean, do you want to live in a world where Audi claims their driving algorithms are safer than Nissan's, or Honda charging extra for more comprehensive sensor packages? I don't think we can have a self driving where people own vehicles, which goes well against the OSS creed of "Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?"
- rebuilder 10y ago
  "Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?" "The new, maintenance-free iCar! So reliable, we welded the hood shut!" Add a better copywriter, and an actual product, and I think a lot of people would buy that. Same with car-as-service. A lot of people don't actually want to own a car, they just want the transport capabilities and convenience.
- dagw 10y ago
  "Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?" Sure why not? When do most people open the hood on their car? To top up fluids and, occasionally, to jump start the battery. Both of those things could be done without opening the hood with a slight redesign. Modern cars are both so reliable and so complex that there is hardly anything under the hood that most people either can or have to do, and this is only getting more true for electric cars.
rebuilder 10y ago
It seems to me the autonomous car is a car for wealthy countries, where wages are high, personal time valuable and roads in good shape.
morgante 10y ago
Why is the situation in Peru at all relevant? I too have been to lots of places where self-driving cars would have a ridiculously hard time. Those places are also very far from the cutting edge of technology. Even if self-driving cars are confined to US highways, cities, and suburbs they have terrific potential. The future doesn't have to be evenly distributed to arrive on time. Seriously, I don't even understand you argument. Why would the existence of challenging backwaters in Peru prevent the development and deployment of self-driving cars in the US?
- paganel 10y ago
  Not the OP but I think he gave Peru just as an example. I would personally say that "normal" and non-hazardous traffic like that from the US and some Western European countries is the exception rather than the norm if we look at the whole planet.
  - morgante 10y ago
    Sure, but population is far from the most important metric when it comes to developing new technologies. The iPhone was out of reach of most of the world when it launched (from a financial perspective), and it was only available in the US. That didn't make it an impossible product to develop. Even if self-driving cars were confined to only the USA that would still be a massive market and provide a huge ROI for the developers. Thinking self-driving cars have to work everywhere or even most places to be useful is myopic. It's like saying cell phones will never work because you can't get reception in Antarctica.
    - paganel 10y ago
      I think the biggest market for cars has now become China. India will probably reach the top-5 in the next 10-20 years. Looking forward to the next 30-50 years the biggest demographic increases (meaning future car buyers) will come from places like Africa and South and SE-Asia. It would be myopic to disregard those places as having people who would never afford cars. To continue with your example, almost all of Sub-Saharan Africa passed from having no phone at all to having cell phones (because it was too expensive to install land-lines).
Acalyptol 10y ago
Well they're not gonna wait the whole world to be ready to start introducing self-driving cars in areas where they're ready, so it really depends on where live those people who "jump up enthusiastically"
dunkelheit 10y ago
I think you missed the point of the post entirely. You talk about technological problems, which, while formidable, are not insurmountable. Surely they are hard but at least we have a direction of attack (as opposed to say teleportation or time travel or AGI, where we don't even know where to start). Just as in the case of Go, the performance of artificial systems will at first be borderline acceptable, then it will be on par with strong amateurs, and then it will surpass performance levels of the best of humans. The post in contrast talks about social problems and shows how they will cause much strife and friction and will delay the adoption of driverless vehicles even after all technological problems are solved.
Asooka 10y ago
> As the designers move away from the relatively trivial confines of well-maintained urban spaces and into different countries and cultures, I seriously question their ability to keep things reasonable for the rest of the human drivers And why should we support and enable unacceptable infrastructure and a broken culture? Isn't it better to force everyone else to conform to a single well-thought-out and managed system?
realo 10y ago
You are right in saying that autonomous cars, as we envision them for the near future, require some form of "proper" infrastructure to be able to perform (safely). However you are wrong in seemingly thinking that this infrastructure will never come. As with many technologies, it is the infrastructure that is important ( cell phones vs cellular network, ethernet-enabled computers vs the ISP broadband installations, iPhone vs iTunes store, etc...). Here it is similar and it is not so far fetched to think that in some future the road system will be modified in some ways in order to accommodate level 5 autonomous cars and people. For example, the city of Drachten in the Netherlands has no traffic lights, road signage (stop signs, etc...) at all. They modified their infrastructure and got better pedestrian security. From Wikipedia: "Drachten received international attention for a traffic experiment known as shared space, a concept pioneered by Hans Monderman. Almost all traffic lights and signs have been removed in the town's centre in an effort to improve traffic safety, based on the theory that drivers pay more attention to their surroundings when they cannot rely on strict traffic rules. Previously the town's centre had an average of 8 accidents per year. In the first two years after the system was introduced, yearly accidents were reduced to 1." It would be very interesting to see how level-5 autonomous cars would fare in Drachten...
yomly 10y ago
After a skim of this sub-thread I'm surprised no one mentions that it might be a benefit that as autonomous-car driving tech spreads around world (presumably with SF/SV being the epicentre), countries which are poorly equipped for autonomous cars start to find the momentum to overhaul their road network and driving education system. Having been to several countries in Asia, it would be no bad thing to have a stepwise reform in how driving is done in these countries - think of the number of accidents that would be reduced.
- Daishiman 10y ago
  Or take advantage of the car's systems to steal from drivers, scam them, or take precedence on the road.
celticninja 10y ago
Self driving cars are designed for well maintained first world situations where the rule of law is followed (or at least the driving regulations are). Sure in India or Thailand where it is a free for all and the infrastructure is poorly maintained they will not be suitable but in these countries the death toll on the roads is also ridiculous. In the USA, Canada and Eurioe, the largest markets for these vehicles (at present) the cars work fine and will ultimately reduce the number of deaths on the roads. Eventually other nations will catch up and self driving or at least assisted driving will be much better for everyone.
- wrsh07 10y ago
  Self driving cars are designed to learn. People are way overestimating how much time it's going to take to retrain them for cities in new locales. Will they sell in India to start? No, of course not. Most tech in the US takes a few years to launch internationally. But I think it will transfer much faster (5 years for internationalization) than the doom and gloom prophets on here say.
joshwcomeau 10y ago
Potholes actually seem like a situation that autonomous cars would handle far better than humans. And yeah I expect that the jump from level 4 to level 5 (assuming that level 4 does not include the most chaotic of world streets) will take decades, but that's fine.
nicwolff 10y ago
We don't have to go that far; anyone who thinks an autonomous car could compete in normal weekday midtown Manhattan traffic hasn't had the pleasure. You have to change lanes constantly to avoid double- and triple-parked trucks and taxis, and street construction – and every lane change is a little game of low-speed Chicken, in which each driver pretends they don't care if they get hit, and presumes that the other will yield. Autonomous cars can't pretend; every human driver will know that they have to avoid accidents whenever possible. And paid human drivers will be particularly eager to block their progress, to penalize their passengers.
xutopia 10y ago
I'm more skeptical that a human can deal with this complexity better than a computer could.
Balgair 10y ago
Many people think that self driving cars will lead to less cars on the road, but I believe they will lead to more cars and therefore worse traffic. Since you won't be actively driving the car, the time the commute takes will become less of a chore and you will put up with it taking longer. Think self-driving Winnebagos that go off and get cleaned and re-fueled when you are at work. Additionally, why pay for parking? Just send the car about the block for 2 hours while you watch the movie. The cost in gas/wear-n-tear will be less than the $12 for parking in some areas. That crowded concert that already has parking issues? Those are going to be much worse with a self-driving car. Also, what about teenagers? Take a blow-up doll, tie a rock to the feet, and put it in the middle of the road that leads to school. Do that in 5 places. How long would it take for a person to look up from their phone and realize the car is no longer moving? Essentially, taking the 'common sense' out of driving for an algorithmic approach is not going to work very well either. Yes, we may kill less people than before, but I believe that you can't just algo your way to less traffic. You have to use both the self-driving and the person's brain (what little motorists seem to have) together. Taking people of the picture won't work either.
- naasking 10y ago
  > Many people think that self driving cars will lead to less cars on the road, but I believe they will lead to more cars and therefore worse traffic. Since you won't be actively driving the car, the time the commute takes will become less of a chore and you will put up with it taking longer. No, you just won't own your own car, you'll car share via a service like Uber. It would be way cheaper since you would no longer carry the maintenance and insurance costs for a vehicle. That's why it would lead to fwer cars on the road.
  - galdosdi 10y ago
    When in the history of economics has changing nothing but making a resource _cheaper_ lead to consumption of that resource _decreasing_? Don't kid yourself, if car driving gets cheaper people will do more of it. Or will you not be more likely to take a cab ride when it's $1 than when it's $20?
naasking 10y ago
> I also remember run-down suburbs where massive potholes and ditches make navigations of certain streets a puzzle by itself, compounded by garbage trucks ahead just doing their thing, improperly placed signage ahead, and those badly-designed intersections where you can totally count on drivers misjudging distances. Even assuming your anecdote is at all relevant, why would any of these factors impact the ability of an autonomous vehicle to navigate these streets? The car knows where it has to go, and it senses its environment more frequently, with more precision, and with faster reaction times than a human ever could. Either the objects surrounding it are on vectors that will impact its chosen path or they won't. If they don't, then it proceeds. If they do, it must slow, stop, or find an alternate path that avoids those vectors. There's nothing earth shattering here.
- Daishiman 10y ago
  Can an autonomous system judge the difference between a harmless piece of trash on the road and something spiky that's going to blow out a tire?
  - baddox 10y ago
    If it has seen millions more of both things than any human, then I don't find it hard to believe that it could distinguish them better than most humans.

stale2002 10y ago

Sure, those scenarios you pointed out are difficult, but what about highway driving? Replacing highway driving with autonomous vehicles is still completely game changing for the transportation industry. It means that 90% of truck drivers are out of a job. (Truck drivers of the future will just handle the last mile). That is certainly something that is going to be disruptive.

mcgrath_sh 10y ago
I'd love this as a private vehicle too. Imagine if you could turn a 12 hour drive into an hour on each end (from highway exists to local destination) with the ability to just relax or sleep in the middle? I don't think I'd fly anywhere within 10 hours of me, because an overnight drive suddenly isn't a burden!
- milliondollar 10y ago
  Yes. I don't know why more time isn't spent on this aspect. It would totally start competing with air travel at that point for sure. I travel all the time for work between cities 4 hours by car or 45 minutes by air. So car is slightly longer all in given fixed costs at airport on either end. But I would do it ALL the time if I didn't have to drive it myself!
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

devdoomari 10y ago

well, there can be 'autonomous-car-friendly-zones' which would automatically entail ridiculously high rent prices : )

Groxx 10y ago

I'm not sure those "well-maintained urban spaces" are as simple as you seem to be implying. They have plenty of quickly-changing construction in the middle of active roads, out of date / invisible signs, and far more crazy drivers and pedestrians to interact with per day than in Middleonowhere Pennciltucky. As to garbage trucks: ever seen people pull U-turns randomly in the middle of the road in a busy city, or dive across 4 lanes to make an exit? Garbage trucks seem simple by comparison, and at significantly lower speeds.

rifung 10y ago

Is there any reason we can't just rely on autonomous cars in areas where these edge cases don't happen? Then as the companies behind this technology make more money, they can start working out the edge cases, but before then, even getting it to work in a given city seems like a huge win.

qball 10y ago
>Is there any reason we can't just rely on autonomous cars in areas where these edge cases don't happen? Because there are still ripple effects to doing this affecting areas with edge cases. So let's say you've reduced the number of manual-driven cars. That has implications for: * Economies of scale. Autonomous cars will likely be of a different design than manual ones so the price of a manual-drive will likely increase- where will the increased money to buy them come from? * Insurance costs. Drivers in less-dense cities are currently safer than the national average: what does the risk and cost for a safer driver become now that the bad urban driver benchmark disappears? * Government regulation and other politicking. What happens to everyone else in, say, California or New York State or a European country if an urban-focused legislature creates laws restricting ownership/use of a manual-driven car in some way (anything from a tax to an outright ban)? Whether these implications are small or large (or whether they cancel each other) isn't adequately answered right now; but I suspect that at least one (or all 3) will turn out to be a major hindrance to autonomous car deployment. Or they don't, and some section of the population gets screwed anyway.
- babyrainbow 10y ago
  >what does the risk and cost for a safer driver become now that the bad urban driver benchmark disappears? I am not sure if an autonomous car will be safer. I mean, can they even do panic breaking right now (For example, if someone or something jumps in front of the car?). You know, safety is often not about having the fastest reaction time, but also about having good anticipation that any decent human driver will develop in a short time.... I think any hopes that cars will be better than humans at it is quite naive...
  - 10y ago

arjie 10y ago

If twenty percent of the population controls eighty percent of the wealth, why should you ever care about the remaining eighty percent of the population? They can't pay you, so your success or failure in their markets need not determine your success or failure in general. Just like with electricity, the Internet, and air travel, the poor will be last. And a lot of people can do very well for themselves by putting the poor last.

aninhumer 10y ago
I'm not really sure what your point is here, other than "global inequality sucks"? Should we arbitrarily stop development of self-driving cars until poorer countries' infrastructure can support them? How would that help anyone?
- Ntrails 10y ago
  There was no implied position on global inequality being good or bad - just a reality check. Peru will be irrelevant to the viability of the project in the short term

arjie 10y ago

If twenty percent of the population controls eighty percent of the wealth, why should you ever care about the remaining eighty percent of the population. They can't pay you, so your success or failure in their markets need not determine your success or failure. Just like with electricity, the Internet, and air travel, the poor will be last. And a lot of people can do very well for themselves by putting the poor last.

thewhitetulip 10y ago

This is the same case in India, no way an AI is able to drive on Indian roads before they pull the plug on the project altogether. I feel that self driving cars will become fancy toys for the ultra rich. Our roads are not predictable, they are good in a few places, but mostly, they are exceedingly bad. For a human itself they are impossible to travel let aside have a robot driving it. There are crazy pedestrians who don't move out of the way, they walk in the middle of the f* road, crazy people try to squeeze through the gap between your vehicle and the next one even if there is no discernible gap. In India, in majority of roads you don't just have to look sideways, you also have to see if some stupid idiot is driving at the speeds of higher than 60 while you cross an intersection. Plus in places of high traffic the self driving car would be deadlocked because here, nobody gives anyone a lead, you have to "earn" the lead by stopping others, no way a robot is going to do that.

cypherpunks01 10y ago
Good point about India! I wonder how a self-driving car would handle someone coming towards you on the wrong side of a divided highway, or know how to get a cow out of the middle of a crowded street..
- coldtea 10y ago
  Like the AI in any driving game with similar conditions? It's still driving, just with different degrees of freedom.
  - thewhitetulip 10y ago
    It might be various degrees of freedom but in India there are a few people who follow traffic rules, everyone acts as if they own the street, they drive on the wrong side of the highway, pedestrians cross the street even while being fully aware that there is a vehicle coming at 150+ kmph speeds etc. It is crazy and chaotic, plus forget the highways, in smaller alleys the road is so narrow that can barely accomodate a bus, if the AI gets stuck in such a deadlock it'll be stuck forever, because nobody gives you side, you have to force someone to stop

djsumdog 10y ago

I remember when I first went to India and saw the traffic. My family would say that traffic in the US and Europe was more "streamlined." You make some good points, as does this article. In the article though, I think at least some of these points will just involve more visual indicators on cars themselves that people will need to get use to (and yes, I do realize that won't solve many of the other class issues the author raises). I have my own concerns. So much money, even tax money, is being poured into this tech that I don't see as viable for at least 7 ~ 10 more years. We could be building automated trains, which do exist, are viable and can operate even on late night runs without drivers or strikes. All of Singapore's lines are automated and several of London's are; both which have trains arriving on platforms at less than two minute intervals at peak hours. Self driving cars also will not solve the capacity problem at all: http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-solve-the-transportation-problem/ http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-sol... You'd have to have self-driving car only motoways to even being to approach the theoretical maximums of car capacity, and it still pails in comparison to train capacity, or even bus capacity for that matter. The other thing I don't think people realize is that we (most likely) won't be owning self driving vehicles. I feel like if States get their acts together, we're going to need FAA style regulations. Cars need to be inspected at regular intervals to ensure all the sensors are functioning. Software updates need to be audited, and safety algorithms will need to be shared. I mean, do you want to live in a world where Audi claims their driving algorithms are safer than Nissan's, or Honda charging extra for more comprehensive sensor packages? I don't think we can have a self driving where people own vehicles, which goes well against the OSS creed of "Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?"

rebuilder 10y ago
"Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?" "The new, maintenance-free iCar! So reliable, we welded the hood shut!" Add a better copywriter, and an actual product, and I think a lot of people would buy that. Same with car-as-service. A lot of people don't actually want to own a car, they just want the transport capabilities and convenience.
dagw 10y ago
"Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?" Sure why not? When do most people open the hood on their car? To top up fluids and, occasionally, to jump start the battery. Both of those things could be done without opening the hood with a slight redesign. Modern cars are both so reliable and so complex that there is hardly anything under the hood that most people either can or have to do, and this is only getting more true for electric cars.

rebuilder 10y ago

It seems to me the autonomous car is a car for wealthy countries, where wages are high, personal time valuable and roads in good shape.

morgante 10y ago

Why is the situation in Peru at all relevant? I too have been to lots of places where self-driving cars would have a ridiculously hard time. Those places are also very far from the cutting edge of technology. Even if self-driving cars are confined to US highways, cities, and suburbs they have terrific potential. The future doesn't have to be evenly distributed to arrive on time. Seriously, I don't even understand you argument. Why would the existence of challenging backwaters in Peru prevent the development and deployment of self-driving cars in the US?

paganel 10y ago
Not the OP but I think he gave Peru just as an example. I would personally say that "normal" and non-hazardous traffic like that from the US and some Western European countries is the exception rather than the norm if we look at the whole planet.
- morgante 10y ago
  Sure, but population is far from the most important metric when it comes to developing new technologies. The iPhone was out of reach of most of the world when it launched (from a financial perspective), and it was only available in the US. That didn't make it an impossible product to develop. Even if self-driving cars were confined to only the USA that would still be a massive market and provide a huge ROI for the developers. Thinking self-driving cars have to work everywhere or even most places to be useful is myopic. It's like saying cell phones will never work because you can't get reception in Antarctica.
  - paganel 10y ago
    I think the biggest market for cars has now become China. India will probably reach the top-5 in the next 10-20 years. Looking forward to the next 30-50 years the biggest demographic increases (meaning future car buyers) will come from places like Africa and South and SE-Asia. It would be myopic to disregard those places as having people who would never afford cars. To continue with your example, almost all of Sub-Saharan Africa passed from having no phone at all to having cell phones (because it was too expensive to install land-lines).

Acalyptol 10y ago

Well they're not gonna wait the whole world to be ready to start introducing self-driving cars in areas where they're ready, so it really depends on where live those people who "jump up enthusiastically"

dunkelheit 10y ago

I think you missed the point of the post entirely. You talk about technological problems, which, while formidable, are not insurmountable. Surely they are hard but at least we have a direction of attack (as opposed to say teleportation or time travel or AGI, where we don't even know where to start). Just as in the case of Go, the performance of artificial systems will at first be borderline acceptable, then it will be on par with strong amateurs, and then it will surpass performance levels of the best of humans. The post in contrast talks about social problems and shows how they will cause much strife and friction and will delay the adoption of driverless vehicles even after all technological problems are solved.

Asooka 10y ago

> As the designers move away from the relatively trivial confines of well-maintained urban spaces and into different countries and cultures, I seriously question their ability to keep things reasonable for the rest of the human drivers And why should we support and enable unacceptable infrastructure and a broken culture? Isn't it better to force everyone else to conform to a single well-thought-out and managed system?

realo 10y ago

You are right in saying that autonomous cars, as we envision them for the near future, require some form of "proper" infrastructure to be able to perform (safely). However you are wrong in seemingly thinking that this infrastructure will never come. As with many technologies, it is the infrastructure that is important ( cell phones vs cellular network, ethernet-enabled computers vs the ISP broadband installations, iPhone vs iTunes store, etc...). Here it is similar and it is not so far fetched to think that in some future the road system will be modified in some ways in order to accommodate level 5 autonomous cars and people. For example, the city of Drachten in the Netherlands has no traffic lights, road signage (stop signs, etc...) at all. They modified their infrastructure and got better pedestrian security. From Wikipedia: "Drachten received international attention for a traffic experiment known as shared space, a concept pioneered by Hans Monderman. Almost all traffic lights and signs have been removed in the town's centre in an effort to improve traffic safety, based on the theory that drivers pay more attention to their surroundings when they cannot rely on strict traffic rules. Previously the town's centre had an average of 8 accidents per year. In the first two years after the system was introduced, yearly accidents were reduced to 1." It would be very interesting to see how level-5 autonomous cars would fare in Drachten...

yomly 10y ago

After a skim of this sub-thread I'm surprised no one mentions that it might be a benefit that as autonomous-car driving tech spreads around world (presumably with SF/SV being the epicentre), countries which are poorly equipped for autonomous cars start to find the momentum to overhaul their road network and driving education system. Having been to several countries in Asia, it would be no bad thing to have a stepwise reform in how driving is done in these countries - think of the number of accidents that would be reduced.

Daishiman 10y ago
Or take advantage of the car's systems to steal from drivers, scam them, or take precedence on the road.

celticninja 10y ago

Self driving cars are designed for well maintained first world situations where the rule of law is followed (or at least the driving regulations are). Sure in India or Thailand where it is a free for all and the infrastructure is poorly maintained they will not be suitable but in these countries the death toll on the roads is also ridiculous. In the USA, Canada and Eurioe, the largest markets for these vehicles (at present) the cars work fine and will ultimately reduce the number of deaths on the roads. Eventually other nations will catch up and self driving or at least assisted driving will be much better for everyone.

wrsh07 10y ago
Self driving cars are designed to learn. People are way overestimating how much time it's going to take to retrain them for cities in new locales. Will they sell in India to start? No, of course not. Most tech in the US takes a few years to launch internationally. But I think it will transfer much faster (5 years for internationalization) than the doom and gloom prophets on here say.

joshwcomeau 10y ago

Potholes actually seem like a situation that autonomous cars would handle far better than humans. And yeah I expect that the jump from level 4 to level 5 (assuming that level 4 does not include the most chaotic of world streets) will take decades, but that's fine.

nicwolff 10y ago

We don't have to go that far; anyone who thinks an autonomous car could compete in normal weekday midtown Manhattan traffic hasn't had the pleasure. You have to change lanes constantly to avoid double- and triple-parked trucks and taxis, and street construction – and every lane change is a little game of low-speed Chicken, in which each driver pretends they don't care if they get hit, and presumes that the other will yield. Autonomous cars can't pretend; every human driver will know that they have to avoid accidents whenever possible. And paid human drivers will be particularly eager to block their progress, to penalize their passengers.

xutopia 10y ago

I'm more skeptical that a human can deal with this complexity better than a computer could.

Balgair 10y ago

Many people think that self driving cars will lead to less cars on the road, but I believe they will lead to more cars and therefore worse traffic. Since you won't be actively driving the car, the time the commute takes will become less of a chore and you will put up with it taking longer. Think self-driving Winnebagos that go off and get cleaned and re-fueled when you are at work. Additionally, why pay for parking? Just send the car about the block for 2 hours while you watch the movie. The cost in gas/wear-n-tear will be less than the $12 for parking in some areas. That crowded concert that already has parking issues? Those are going to be much worse with a self-driving car. Also, what about teenagers? Take a blow-up doll, tie a rock to the feet, and put it in the middle of the road that leads to school. Do that in 5 places. How long would it take for a person to look up from their phone and realize the car is no longer moving? Essentially, taking the 'common sense' out of driving for an algorithmic approach is not going to work very well either. Yes, we may kill less people than before, but I believe that you can't just algo your way to less traffic. You have to use both the self-driving and the person's brain (what little motorists seem to have) together. Taking people of the picture won't work either.

naasking 10y ago
> Many people think that self driving cars will lead to less cars on the road, but I believe they will lead to more cars and therefore worse traffic. Since you won't be actively driving the car, the time the commute takes will become less of a chore and you will put up with it taking longer. No, you just won't own your own car, you'll car share via a service like Uber. It would be way cheaper since you would no longer carry the maintenance and insurance costs for a vehicle. That's why it would lead to fwer cars on the road.
- galdosdi 10y ago
  When in the history of economics has changing nothing but making a resource _cheaper_ lead to consumption of that resource _decreasing_? Don't kid yourself, if car driving gets cheaper people will do more of it. Or will you not be more likely to take a cab ride when it's $1 than when it's $20?

naasking 10y ago

> I also remember run-down suburbs where massive potholes and ditches make navigations of certain streets a puzzle by itself, compounded by garbage trucks ahead just doing their thing, improperly placed signage ahead, and those badly-designed intersections where you can totally count on drivers misjudging distances. Even assuming your anecdote is at all relevant, why would any of these factors impact the ability of an autonomous vehicle to navigate these streets? The car knows where it has to go, and it senses its environment more frequently, with more precision, and with faster reaction times than a human ever could. Either the objects surrounding it are on vectors that will impact its chosen path or they won't. If they don't, then it proceeds. If they do, it must slow, stop, or find an alternate path that avoids those vectors. There's nothing earth shattering here.

Daishiman 10y ago
Can an autonomous system judge the difference between a harmless piece of trash on the road and something spiky that's going to blow out a tire?
- baddox 10y ago
  If it has seen millions more of both things than any human, then I don't find it hard to believe that it could distinguish them better than most humans.