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Am I the only one feeling the press + big tech narrative of "driverless vehicles = safety" is way ahead of itself? OK, "driver error is blamed for 94% of crash

Am I the only one feeling the press + big tech narrative of "driverless vehicles = safety" is way ahead of itself? OK, "driver error is blamed for 94% of crashes", but what is the validation strategy to show where driverless cars can quantifiably improve? In 2016, Philip Koopman of CMU discusses that there are non-trivial engineering challenges of achieving safety in NHTSA Level 4 vehicle automation: https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman16_sae_autonomous_validation.pdf https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman16_sae_autono... If we are building the safest transportation system, what role do driverless vehicles play? Wouldn't that be the narrative that actually saves the most lives?

monkmartinez 9y ago
No you are not! HN seems to think the same way, and it is one of the worst cases of rose colored glasses I have ever witnessed. What about the cost? Who is going to be able to afford this? Also, what about people that rely on a vehicle for work? Retrofit $75K work trucks with another $75K in self driving gizmos? Find me a practical plumber, carpenter, A/C, lock smith, self-employed guy/gal that will sign up for that! Edit to add... Have the crazy expensive and downright hostile self-driving John Deere tractors eliminated farming deaths?
- mattpavelle 9y ago
  I'm curious - where did you come up with your $75k cost for retrofitting existing vehicles?
  - monkmartinez 9y ago
    Out of thin air. Why would it be cheaper? If you made the product, would you try to maximize profit or do it for SAFETY and the good of society?
    - narrowrail 9y ago
      You seem to be arguing against technological progress in order to protect people. Most of us 'self-driving car' skeptics are just pointing out that the timelines presented in much of the press are wildly optimistic.
    - mattpavelle 9y ago
      Got it. I admittedly know nothing about what the pricing will be here - and comparing to Tesla may be apples to oranges, but per The Verge (https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/20/13346512/tesla-self-driving-autonomous-enhanced-autopilot-cost https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/20/13346512/tesla-self-driv...) the hardware for a Tesla is under $10k. Additionally maximizing profit (and this may read as condescending but I do not intend for it to be so) does not necessarily mean maximizing price. Obviously if you are not selling at a loss you can potentially make more money with a cheaper price point on volume. I do agree, however, that first adopters will likely pay a premium. Eventually I imagine insurance companies will help subsidize these things too - if the price does not become trivial.
- gfodor 9y ago
  Serious question: why is cost such a common argument made here against emerging tech? This argument seems to come up every time some new expensive technology is transitioning closer to consumers' hands, and the current price, which is obviously expected to go down at scale as it does for nearly all widely useful technology, is used as evidence nobody will be able to afford it. I've seen this argument made for technology that is still in the R&D phase, for goodness sake! Obviously, the assumption of all those involved is that the price will plummet as the technology becomes more adopted, so the goal is to get to a price point where the earliest adopters will be willing to pay. For self driving cars, talking about plumbers not buying this at the current price point is a bizarre argument.
  - monkmartinez 9y ago
    Serious counter question; Why is nobody talking about cost? Cars are very expensive... is self-driving tech going to increase or decrease the cost of a vehicle? Do people generally want more freedom or less freedom choice? Why does everyone assume the cost will decrease with scale? How many people can afford a Tesla right now? Let alone a fully autonomous car? If flying were more affordable and less strict more people would own their own plane. It isn't and they don't. I see self-driving cars a lot like airplanes and John Deere tractors. That is, expensive proprietary tech that you have no control over. No thank you. Why does everyone assume that most people want to share a vehicle?
    - stdgy 9y ago
      We've already seen price drops for the most expensive self-driving components. LIDARs, GPUs and storage have already fallen in cost, and the products aren't even on the market yet. There is every reason to believe these price drops will continue as more resources are put into scaling production and more companies enter the game of component design and production.
      - monkmartinez 9y ago
        > There is every reason to believe these price drops will continue as more resources are put into scaling production and more companies enter the game of component design and production. Why? We literally never see that with top shelf products. This isn't an arduino solder job. This is going to be an integrated software and hardware package that will rival an aircraft autopilot/navigation. Please check you facts on the cost of these things. I don't want walmart brand, everday low price components on my self-driving vehicle. I want top of the line if my life is in the balance.
- petters 9y ago
  In my opinion, the primary use case of self-diving cars aren't personal ownership. Society as a whole wastes a lot of resources when every household has a car that stands still 95% of the time. With self-driving cars, we can plausibly improve that.
  - notahacker 9y ago
    We could significantly improve it now with more Zipcar type apps (at least in cities where people live close together) but the most people want guaranteed access to a vehicle at 8am and 5:30pm weekday situation isn't easily solved just by making them mobile when not in operation. Nor - at least in the short term - is people's tendency to use cars, and especially cars with no previous owners, as a status symbol (many people could save more of their income not buying new models and premium marques than allowing it to be used by someone else at weekends and some evenings, but they choose the car that takes up more of their disposable income all the same)
    - onwchristian 9y ago
      Agreed. I also think another big reason for personal car ownership is having kids. With the increasing ages/weights recommended and/or required by law for car seats, that can be a hassle if trying to use a ride sharing service. It increases difficulty with increased number of kids at varying ages. For those without kids, while it's not crazy difficult to install a car seat, it can still take upwards of 5-15 minutes (depending on the style of seat). This amount of time lost can be a big hindrance. Yes, I know that Uber has started to tackle this problem, but as far as I know it only provides 1 car seat, and a car equipped this way may not always be nearby. Maybe this will be a completely solved problem soon, which would be great!
      - sxates 9y ago
        Lots of people are single. Lots of people's kids are grown. Lots of people could own one car for the kids stuff and car-share the second vehicle as needed. Even with private ownership for cases like children, the total number of cars on the road could decrease considerably.
- yellow_viper 9y ago
  People won't buy self-driving cars (well some will, but not the majority). These cars will be running 24/7 in a ride-sharing service.
  - doczoidberg 9y ago
    Sure people will buy self-driving cars. People want to own things for themself. If a car has a higher value with this feature even more people want to have a car. Consumers don't think economically.
    - jsymolon 9y ago
      People want the convenience of having access to transportation 24/7 no matter where they are and when. Ever call a taxi (not in city) ? 30+ minutes. Also, tragedy of the commons ... who was the last one to use the car has to pay for clean up. How to accomplish that ? ... "No the other guy did it ..."
      - ghaff 9y ago
        I'm skeptical about the "no one will own" meme. That said, there's no reason cleaning would be any more of an issue than it is with Zipcar today. If you go to pickup a car and it needs cleaning, you refuse it and report the problem.
        monkmartinez 9y ago
        Then what? What if you have something pressing to get to? All these rideshare arguments fall flat on their face when it is anything other than "going out" without much of a timeline.
        Noos 9y ago
        yeah, the idea that this could cause you to be late for work seems to escape people.
- jayess 9y ago
  That's why society needs rich people. They buy emerging tech first, then the tech drops in price as initial capital costs are recouped, manufacturing costs come down, and the tech improves. Remember when LCD screens came out and very few people could afford them? We were complaining then too about how could people possibly afford this and who will buy it??!
- ForHackernews 9y ago
  > Retrofit $75K work trucks with another $75K in self driving gizmos? Absolutely they will. That's [at least] $60K worth of driver's salary/benefits costs you've just eliminated. $75K is cheap to eliminate the cost of a human employee.
  - monkmartinez 9y ago
    I don't know where to start with this. The whole point of the truck is to get the workers! to the site. Said vehicle is also there to support the workers during the day with storage for tools and materials. SO no, the damn truck isn't going to replace a plumber or a/c tech. wow.
    - ForHackernews 9y ago
      You said: "Also, what about people that rely on a vehicle for work?" Most people who rely on a vehicle for work are local or long-haul trucking drivers, not local trade workers. The important work a plumber or a/c tech performs is separate from the driving. You're right, those people probably won't move to automated vehicles immediately. But theoretically, in the future where they could have an automated van meet them at the job site with their tools? And return the tools to a secure storage facility afterwards? I don't see why they wouldn't go for that.
- sxates 9y ago
  Your arguments make no sense. 1. A Tesla with full self-driving hardware can be had today for ~$75k. And the model 3 will cut that in half. And the model after that will be even less. Millions of people can afford this. 2. Who said anything about retrofitting old cars? As far as I know, nobody is planning to do this. 3. This isn't a requirement, and it won't happen all at once. The plumber with an old F150 will continue to drive as he always has until the cost/benefit makes sense for him to upgrade. 4. Self driving tractors move at 3mph, and I don't think farm-field traffic fatalities are the big driver behind automated farming. Different use case.
vkou 9y ago
It is. We've seen some spectacular self-driving vehicle failures in the past while. Teslas running into half-opened garage doors, vehicles pulled over on the shoulder, the side of a semi, navigating roundablouts by driving into the ditch, driving on the wrong side of the road, yelling at the driver for staying in their lane...
stevenh 9y ago
Imagine ransomware infecting your car that gives you 30 minutes to pay or you'll be rammed into a tree at 90mph. I don't care about any contrived and well-funded narratives about how unthinking, unfeeling, driverless cars will somehow save lives. No thanks, I'd rather take my chances continuing to share roads with human drivers who are careful because they fear their own death just as much as I do.
- fucking_tragedy 9y ago
  Or the inability to drive your car because of an unpaid parking ticket.
  - tempestn 9y ago
    Except that with a self-driving car you'll never get a parking ticket in the first place!
- Qwertious 9y ago
  In all seriousness, ransomware that would kill someone won't be a remotely common thing - for one thing, it will be represented as "$COMPANY's lack of security KILLS PERSON X", and the bill for the ransom will need to be paid by them. And then the cops/secret-service would get involved. If there's a death involved (and reason to believe more will occur in the future, which would be necessary for ransom as a prolonged business model), then they will come down on any ransomware (and responsible negligent parties, such as auto companies with shitty security) like a TON OF BRICKS. Plus, there's still a lucrative malware model that goes like this: Infect the car, then quietly make it steal itself in the middle of the night (or at your moment of choice). Bam, you now have a stolen car that you can't be connected to, and nobody will notice for a while.
  - ForHackernews 9y ago
    I think this is correct. Criminals aren't stupid. It'd be much safer (in terms of risk of authorities coming after them) to have ransomware where the car just refuses to go anywhere, or drives you to a far-away location, until you pay up. People will pay a fair amount of money to avoid a major inconvenience, but "my car won't start" is a lot less likely to have the FBI beating down your door.
bertil 9y ago
The case that I have heard is that the decisions will be taken (or rather have been) by a team of software engineers with problem-fixing methods that are meaningfully more efficient at getting the rate of accidents down than someone promising to themselves they’ll drive sober and well rested “next time”. In reality, the problems encountered by cars are fairly classic and predictably where computers can be very good at: computer vision, 3d projection and modeling, project patterns, control loops (stearing vs. drifting). The beginning was expectedly bad, but is it not a stretch to imagine those solvable, just like Moore’s law and expecting cheaper electronics with mass-market “makes sense”.
stcredzero 9y ago
what is the validation strategy to show where driverless cars can quantifiably improve? One big way in which automated drivers could improve traffic: By not being a jackass. I remember at one point driving down Westheimer, which is four lanes wide and one of the major thoroughfares of Houston, when I had to slow down for someone making a right turn to merge into traffic into a middle lane while their head was buried deep into the passenger side footwell looking through their stuff. Then, there are the people who feel like they have to tailgate you within 6 feet during rush hour traffic on the highway. Also, the people who won't let you in for some personal justice you can't possibly understand. It would only take a smallish fraction of cars implementing the "stay between" algorithm that CGP Grey mentions in his video to significantly improve traffic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE I've implemented this algorithm manually. (Much easier to do since I have the instant accelerator response of an electric car.) It does seem to improve traffic flow. Also, jackass tailgaters are sometimes confused by this, and decide to pass.
MarkMc 9y ago
Imagine it's April 2018 and Waymo releases this statement: "In the past year our autonomous cars have driven a total of 50 million miles in real-world conditions. Over that period there were 4 collisions, plus an estimated 12 which would have occurred if our trained staff in the drivers seat had not intervened. Insurance analysts estimate that if human drivers had driven under similar conditions there would have been 51 collisions." Would that be sufficient for you to support the introduction of Level 4 automation?
- monkmartinez 9y ago
  Depends on the price. I suspect it will be prohibitively expensive for the long foreseeable future.
- scottlegrand2 9y ago
  That depends on the nature of the collisions. Are those 4 fatal accidents vs 51 fender benders? The devil is in the details, not the executive summary.
  - function_seven 9y ago
    For purposes of the thought experiment, assume the distribution of severity is roughly the same between the two.
    - scottlegrand2 9y ago
      Doesn't change my opinion much because I am not a domain expert in self-driving cars. All this would do is make me question the nature of the data collected. For instance, is that 50 million miles of diverse roads and weather conditions or the same mile over and over again on a sunny day? Or were the human-driven cars equipped with contemporary collision-avoidance equipment or a motley representative assortment of cars from the past half-century? What would sway me is auto insurers offering a discount for relying on self-driving car technology. I can wait patiently for that to happen.
- unclesaamm 9y ago
narrowrail 9y ago
Waaay ahead of itself. There are just some people who see a catastrophe around ever corner, despite all the progess we've made in the last century (so called, "catastrophists"). At the same time, wild optimism about how we're going to have fully-autonomous, Level 5 vehicles doing our errands in 2030.
smlacy 9y ago
Your argument is about the same as "Humans can calculate arithmetic perfectly accurately, why do we need computers to do it for us?" There are a host of obvious reasons why even a "simple" L4 car will beat a human hands down: * Reaction time. * 360 awareness / visibility. * Lack of exaggerated "Human Reflex" to surprising events (i.e. swerving violently to avoid a dog, and hitting other vehicles) * Keeping perfect space around the vehicle for safe stopping at all times. (don't tailgate, don't get rear-ended) * Assuming a LIDAR-based system, virtually no difference in day vs. night vision. No "sun in your eyes" or "road glare". * No fatigue related accidents. * No DUI and related prescription drug accidents. * No distraction-based accidents. (kids, cellphone, food) * No "road rage" based accidents. I could go on, but this should drive the point home pretty clearly, IMHO.
- michael_storm 9y ago
  There are a host of obvious reasons why even a "simple" human will beat an L4 car hands-down: * Lack of software bugs due to careless programming. * Millions of years of brain evolution allows adapting to unforeseen circumstances. * Vastly decreased likelihood of being tricked by vandals exploiting flaws in recognition algorithms. * Inability to be hacked en masse and driven into each other/houses/pedestrians. * Much harder to back-door. * Can be judged in court if they swerve to avoid a pigeon and hit a crowd of pedestrians. I could go on, but this should drive the point home pretty clearly, IMHO.
  - smlacy 9y ago
    You seem to be under some delusion that a vehicle purchased in the year 2017 doesn't have any software in it, and isn't fully electronically actuated (steering, brakes, throttle) They sell these features as "parking assist" or "smart cruise control" or similar, but don't kid yourself into thinking that there's not a very sophisticated software system that could, if hacked, take over control. Has this ever happened? Have there been catastrophic bugs documented? More advanced vehicles (i.e. Tesla) have enough hardware to be be nearly fully autonomous today. (i.e. they could rend control from a driver and continue to pilot the vehicle to an alternate destination if hacked)
  - 9y ago
ajross 9y ago
> what is the validation strategy to show where driverless cars can quantifiably improve? That seems like an odd question to ask. There are huge reams of traffic safety data collected every year by the NTSB and others. Traffic accidents are one of the top two or three treatable public health issues in the modern world, and they get very significant public funding for their study. Honestly I think the question has to be the reverse: what is is about "driverless" safety data that makes you think it won't be well-measured by the existing "validation" regime?
regulation_d 9y ago
I feel like the question is not if "driverless vehicles = safety" but when. So, all other things being equal, the quicker we get to that point, the more lives we can save. Obviously not all other things are equal, and potentially we could create greater loss of life by attempting to get self-driving cars on the road too quickly. But that is the nature of problem: how do we avoid moving too quickly while recognizing that the current danger that is human drivers should be removed from the equation as quickly as feasible.
yeukhon 9y ago
What is crucial is data. I am not talking about training road condition, Google has been doing this for years. What is missing is traffic data. I have given this argument before on self-driving. One night a maintenance took place on a busy intersection in Flushing, NY. Police officers were asked to guide traffic. This is a planned event, but driveless car does not know; it doesn't have this data until the car shows up at the scene. Yes, map services like Google have been receiving some data from government in addition to collecting user's current location and user's generous feedback (e.g. Waze user) to determine best route. But we are no where near the condition we can know what's happening ahead of us. What about weather condition? On intersection who goes first? A safe driverless vehicles should be able to communicate (check, for as long as the communication is stable), and government and cars will share feedback to other cars. This is a crowd-sourcing effort to make fully autonomous car possible on road. If we just learn as we go on the road, these driverless cars will not work well in very complex road condition.
nradov 9y ago
If improving safety is the goal then the driverless vehicle companies are going at it backwards. Instead of having the computer drive the car most of the time and telling the human to take over in challenging situations they should have the human drive all of the time with the computer constantly monitoring and occasionally overriding the human's control inputs when necessary. Some mainstream vehicles already do this to a limited extent by controlling throttle, brakes, and even steering to prevent crashes. Let's keep expanding on that foundation; it's far more achievable than a true autonomous vehicle and would save more lives in the medium term. http://www.thedrive.com/tech/9548/the-biggest-opportunity-everyone-is-missing-in-self-driving-cars http://www.thedrive.com/tech/9548/the-biggest-opportunity-ev... There is a successful precedent in aviation. The latest fly-by-wire flight control systems treat the pilot's inputs as merely suggestions and will modify them as necessary to prevent departure from controlled flight, midair collisions, flight into terrain, and overstressing the airframe.
Merovius 9y ago
> In 2016, Philip Koopman of CMU discusses that there are non-trivial engineering challenges of achieving safety in NHTSA Level 4 vehicle automation: That seems like the most obvious statement I've read in the last year or so at least. I think the fact that Alphabet spent more than 10 years developing these self-driving cars already is a pretty strong indicator that there are non-trivial engineering challenges involved.

monkmartinez 9y ago

No you are not! HN seems to think the same way, and it is one of the worst cases of rose colored glasses I have ever witnessed. What about the cost? Who is going to be able to afford this? Also, what about people that rely on a vehicle for work? Retrofit $75K work trucks with another $75K in self driving gizmos? Find me a practical plumber, carpenter, A/C, lock smith, self-employed guy/gal that will sign up for that! Edit to add... Have the crazy expensive and downright hostile self-driving John Deere tractors eliminated farming deaths?

mattpavelle 9y ago
I'm curious - where did you come up with your $75k cost for retrofitting existing vehicles?
- monkmartinez 9y ago
  Out of thin air. Why would it be cheaper? If you made the product, would you try to maximize profit or do it for SAFETY and the good of society?
  - narrowrail 9y ago
    You seem to be arguing against technological progress in order to protect people. Most of us 'self-driving car' skeptics are just pointing out that the timelines presented in much of the press are wildly optimistic.
  - mattpavelle 9y ago
    Got it. I admittedly know nothing about what the pricing will be here - and comparing to Tesla may be apples to oranges, but per The Verge (https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/20/13346512/tesla-self-driving-autonomous-enhanced-autopilot-cost https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/20/13346512/tesla-self-driv...) the hardware for a Tesla is under $10k. Additionally maximizing profit (and this may read as condescending but I do not intend for it to be so) does not necessarily mean maximizing price. Obviously if you are not selling at a loss you can potentially make more money with a cheaper price point on volume. I do agree, however, that first adopters will likely pay a premium. Eventually I imagine insurance companies will help subsidize these things too - if the price does not become trivial.
gfodor 9y ago
Serious question: why is cost such a common argument made here against emerging tech? This argument seems to come up every time some new expensive technology is transitioning closer to consumers' hands, and the current price, which is obviously expected to go down at scale as it does for nearly all widely useful technology, is used as evidence nobody will be able to afford it. I've seen this argument made for technology that is still in the R&D phase, for goodness sake! Obviously, the assumption of all those involved is that the price will plummet as the technology becomes more adopted, so the goal is to get to a price point where the earliest adopters will be willing to pay. For self driving cars, talking about plumbers not buying this at the current price point is a bizarre argument.
- monkmartinez 9y ago
  Serious counter question; Why is nobody talking about cost? Cars are very expensive... is self-driving tech going to increase or decrease the cost of a vehicle? Do people generally want more freedom or less freedom choice? Why does everyone assume the cost will decrease with scale? How many people can afford a Tesla right now? Let alone a fully autonomous car? If flying were more affordable and less strict more people would own their own plane. It isn't and they don't. I see self-driving cars a lot like airplanes and John Deere tractors. That is, expensive proprietary tech that you have no control over. No thank you. Why does everyone assume that most people want to share a vehicle?
  - stdgy 9y ago
    We've already seen price drops for the most expensive self-driving components. LIDARs, GPUs and storage have already fallen in cost, and the products aren't even on the market yet. There is every reason to believe these price drops will continue as more resources are put into scaling production and more companies enter the game of component design and production.
    - monkmartinez 9y ago
      > There is every reason to believe these price drops will continue as more resources are put into scaling production and more companies enter the game of component design and production. Why? We literally never see that with top shelf products. This isn't an arduino solder job. This is going to be an integrated software and hardware package that will rival an aircraft autopilot/navigation. Please check you facts on the cost of these things. I don't want walmart brand, everday low price components on my self-driving vehicle. I want top of the line if my life is in the balance.
petters 9y ago
In my opinion, the primary use case of self-diving cars aren't personal ownership. Society as a whole wastes a lot of resources when every household has a car that stands still 95% of the time. With self-driving cars, we can plausibly improve that.
- notahacker 9y ago
  We could significantly improve it now with more Zipcar type apps (at least in cities where people live close together) but the most people want guaranteed access to a vehicle at 8am and 5:30pm weekday situation isn't easily solved just by making them mobile when not in operation. Nor - at least in the short term - is people's tendency to use cars, and especially cars with no previous owners, as a status symbol (many people could save more of their income not buying new models and premium marques than allowing it to be used by someone else at weekends and some evenings, but they choose the car that takes up more of their disposable income all the same)
  - onwchristian 9y ago
    Agreed. I also think another big reason for personal car ownership is having kids. With the increasing ages/weights recommended and/or required by law for car seats, that can be a hassle if trying to use a ride sharing service. It increases difficulty with increased number of kids at varying ages. For those without kids, while it's not crazy difficult to install a car seat, it can still take upwards of 5-15 minutes (depending on the style of seat). This amount of time lost can be a big hindrance. Yes, I know that Uber has started to tackle this problem, but as far as I know it only provides 1 car seat, and a car equipped this way may not always be nearby. Maybe this will be a completely solved problem soon, which would be great!
    - sxates 9y ago
      Lots of people are single. Lots of people's kids are grown. Lots of people could own one car for the kids stuff and car-share the second vehicle as needed. Even with private ownership for cases like children, the total number of cars on the road could decrease considerably.
yellow_viper 9y ago
People won't buy self-driving cars (well some will, but not the majority). These cars will be running 24/7 in a ride-sharing service.
- doczoidberg 9y ago
  Sure people will buy self-driving cars. People want to own things for themself. If a car has a higher value with this feature even more people want to have a car. Consumers don't think economically.
  - jsymolon 9y ago
    People want the convenience of having access to transportation 24/7 no matter where they are and when. Ever call a taxi (not in city) ? 30+ minutes. Also, tragedy of the commons ... who was the last one to use the car has to pay for clean up. How to accomplish that ? ... "No the other guy did it ..."
    - ghaff 9y ago
      I'm skeptical about the "no one will own" meme. That said, there's no reason cleaning would be any more of an issue than it is with Zipcar today. If you go to pickup a car and it needs cleaning, you refuse it and report the problem.
      - monkmartinez 9y ago
        Then what? What if you have something pressing to get to? All these rideshare arguments fall flat on their face when it is anything other than "going out" without much of a timeline.
        Noos 9y ago
        yeah, the idea that this could cause you to be late for work seems to escape people.
jayess 9y ago
That's why society needs rich people. They buy emerging tech first, then the tech drops in price as initial capital costs are recouped, manufacturing costs come down, and the tech improves. Remember when LCD screens came out and very few people could afford them? We were complaining then too about how could people possibly afford this and who will buy it??!
ForHackernews 9y ago
> Retrofit $75K work trucks with another $75K in self driving gizmos? Absolutely they will. That's [at least] $60K worth of driver's salary/benefits costs you've just eliminated. $75K is cheap to eliminate the cost of a human employee.
- monkmartinez 9y ago
  I don't know where to start with this. The whole point of the truck is to get the workers! to the site. Said vehicle is also there to support the workers during the day with storage for tools and materials. SO no, the damn truck isn't going to replace a plumber or a/c tech. wow.
  - ForHackernews 9y ago
    You said: "Also, what about people that rely on a vehicle for work?" Most people who rely on a vehicle for work are local or long-haul trucking drivers, not local trade workers. The important work a plumber or a/c tech performs is separate from the driving. You're right, those people probably won't move to automated vehicles immediately. But theoretically, in the future where they could have an automated van meet them at the job site with their tools? And return the tools to a secure storage facility afterwards? I don't see why they wouldn't go for that.
sxates 9y ago
Your arguments make no sense. 1. A Tesla with full self-driving hardware can be had today for ~$75k. And the model 3 will cut that in half. And the model after that will be even less. Millions of people can afford this. 2. Who said anything about retrofitting old cars? As far as I know, nobody is planning to do this. 3. This isn't a requirement, and it won't happen all at once. The plumber with an old F150 will continue to drive as he always has until the cost/benefit makes sense for him to upgrade. 4. Self driving tractors move at 3mph, and I don't think farm-field traffic fatalities are the big driver behind automated farming. Different use case.

vkou 9y ago

It is. We've seen some spectacular self-driving vehicle failures in the past while. Teslas running into half-opened garage doors, vehicles pulled over on the shoulder, the side of a semi, navigating roundablouts by driving into the ditch, driving on the wrong side of the road, yelling at the driver for staying in their lane...

stevenh 9y ago

Imagine ransomware infecting your car that gives you 30 minutes to pay or you'll be rammed into a tree at 90mph. I don't care about any contrived and well-funded narratives about how unthinking, unfeeling, driverless cars will somehow save lives. No thanks, I'd rather take my chances continuing to share roads with human drivers who are careful because they fear their own death just as much as I do.

fucking_tragedy 9y ago
Or the inability to drive your car because of an unpaid parking ticket.
- tempestn 9y ago
  Except that with a self-driving car you'll never get a parking ticket in the first place!
Qwertious 9y ago
In all seriousness, ransomware that would kill someone won't be a remotely common thing - for one thing, it will be represented as "$COMPANY's lack of security KILLS PERSON X", and the bill for the ransom will need to be paid by them. And then the cops/secret-service would get involved. If there's a death involved (and reason to believe more will occur in the future, which would be necessary for ransom as a prolonged business model), then they will come down on any ransomware (and responsible negligent parties, such as auto companies with shitty security) like a TON OF BRICKS. Plus, there's still a lucrative malware model that goes like this: Infect the car, then quietly make it steal itself in the middle of the night (or at your moment of choice). Bam, you now have a stolen car that you can't be connected to, and nobody will notice for a while.
- ForHackernews 9y ago
  I think this is correct. Criminals aren't stupid. It'd be much safer (in terms of risk of authorities coming after them) to have ransomware where the car just refuses to go anywhere, or drives you to a far-away location, until you pay up. People will pay a fair amount of money to avoid a major inconvenience, but "my car won't start" is a lot less likely to have the FBI beating down your door.

bertil 9y ago

The case that I have heard is that the decisions will be taken (or rather have been) by a team of software engineers with problem-fixing methods that are meaningfully more efficient at getting the rate of accidents down than someone promising to themselves they’ll drive sober and well rested “next time”. In reality, the problems encountered by cars are fairly classic and predictably where computers can be very good at: computer vision, 3d projection and modeling, project patterns, control loops (stearing vs. drifting). The beginning was expectedly bad, but is it not a stretch to imagine those solvable, just like Moore’s law and expecting cheaper electronics with mass-market “makes sense”.

stcredzero 9y ago

what is the validation strategy to show where driverless cars can quantifiably improve? One big way in which automated drivers could improve traffic: By not being a jackass. I remember at one point driving down Westheimer, which is four lanes wide and one of the major thoroughfares of Houston, when I had to slow down for someone making a right turn to merge into traffic into a middle lane while their head was buried deep into the passenger side footwell looking through their stuff. Then, there are the people who feel like they have to tailgate you within 6 feet during rush hour traffic on the highway. Also, the people who won't let you in for some personal justice you can't possibly understand. It would only take a smallish fraction of cars implementing the "stay between" algorithm that CGP Grey mentions in his video to significantly improve traffic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE I've implemented this algorithm manually. (Much easier to do since I have the instant accelerator response of an electric car.) It does seem to improve traffic flow. Also, jackass tailgaters are sometimes confused by this, and decide to pass.

MarkMc 9y ago

Imagine it's April 2018 and Waymo releases this statement: "In the past year our autonomous cars have driven a total of 50 million miles in real-world conditions. Over that period there were 4 collisions, plus an estimated 12 which would have occurred if our trained staff in the drivers seat had not intervened. Insurance analysts estimate that if human drivers had driven under similar conditions there would have been 51 collisions." Would that be sufficient for you to support the introduction of Level 4 automation?

monkmartinez 9y ago
Depends on the price. I suspect it will be prohibitively expensive for the long foreseeable future.
scottlegrand2 9y ago
That depends on the nature of the collisions. Are those 4 fatal accidents vs 51 fender benders? The devil is in the details, not the executive summary.
- function_seven 9y ago
  For purposes of the thought experiment, assume the distribution of severity is roughly the same between the two.
  - scottlegrand2 9y ago
    Doesn't change my opinion much because I am not a domain expert in self-driving cars. All this would do is make me question the nature of the data collected. For instance, is that 50 million miles of diverse roads and weather conditions or the same mile over and over again on a sunny day? Or were the human-driven cars equipped with contemporary collision-avoidance equipment or a motley representative assortment of cars from the past half-century? What would sway me is auto insurers offering a discount for relying on self-driving car technology. I can wait patiently for that to happen.
unclesaamm 9y ago

narrowrail 9y ago

Waaay ahead of itself. There are just some people who see a catastrophe around ever corner, despite all the progess we've made in the last century (so called, "catastrophists"). At the same time, wild optimism about how we're going to have fully-autonomous, Level 5 vehicles doing our errands in 2030.

smlacy 9y ago

Your argument is about the same as "Humans can calculate arithmetic perfectly accurately, why do we need computers to do it for us?" There are a host of obvious reasons why even a "simple" L4 car will beat a human hands down: * Reaction time. * 360 awareness / visibility. * Lack of exaggerated "Human Reflex" to surprising events (i.e. swerving violently to avoid a dog, and hitting other vehicles) * Keeping perfect space around the vehicle for safe stopping at all times. (don't tailgate, don't get rear-ended) * Assuming a LIDAR-based system, virtually no difference in day vs. night vision. No "sun in your eyes" or "road glare". * No fatigue related accidents. * No DUI and related prescription drug accidents. * No distraction-based accidents. (kids, cellphone, food) * No "road rage" based accidents. I could go on, but this should drive the point home pretty clearly, IMHO.

michael_storm 9y ago
There are a host of obvious reasons why even a "simple" human will beat an L4 car hands-down: * Lack of software bugs due to careless programming. * Millions of years of brain evolution allows adapting to unforeseen circumstances. * Vastly decreased likelihood of being tricked by vandals exploiting flaws in recognition algorithms. * Inability to be hacked en masse and driven into each other/houses/pedestrians. * Much harder to back-door. * Can be judged in court if they swerve to avoid a pigeon and hit a crowd of pedestrians. I could go on, but this should drive the point home pretty clearly, IMHO.
- smlacy 9y ago
  You seem to be under some delusion that a vehicle purchased in the year 2017 doesn't have any software in it, and isn't fully electronically actuated (steering, brakes, throttle) They sell these features as "parking assist" or "smart cruise control" or similar, but don't kid yourself into thinking that there's not a very sophisticated software system that could, if hacked, take over control. Has this ever happened? Have there been catastrophic bugs documented? More advanced vehicles (i.e. Tesla) have enough hardware to be be nearly fully autonomous today. (i.e. they could rend control from a driver and continue to pilot the vehicle to an alternate destination if hacked)
- 9y ago

ajross 9y ago

> what is the validation strategy to show where driverless cars can quantifiably improve? That seems like an odd question to ask. There are huge reams of traffic safety data collected every year by the NTSB and others. Traffic accidents are one of the top two or three treatable public health issues in the modern world, and they get very significant public funding for their study. Honestly I think the question has to be the reverse: what is is about "driverless" safety data that makes you think it won't be well-measured by the existing "validation" regime?

regulation_d 9y ago

I feel like the question is not if "driverless vehicles = safety" but when. So, all other things being equal, the quicker we get to that point, the more lives we can save. Obviously not all other things are equal, and potentially we could create greater loss of life by attempting to get self-driving cars on the road too quickly. But that is the nature of problem: how do we avoid moving too quickly while recognizing that the current danger that is human drivers should be removed from the equation as quickly as feasible.

yeukhon 9y ago

What is crucial is data. I am not talking about training road condition, Google has been doing this for years. What is missing is traffic data. I have given this argument before on self-driving. One night a maintenance took place on a busy intersection in Flushing, NY. Police officers were asked to guide traffic. This is a planned event, but driveless car does not know; it doesn't have this data until the car shows up at the scene. Yes, map services like Google have been receiving some data from government in addition to collecting user's current location and user's generous feedback (e.g. Waze user) to determine best route. But we are no where near the condition we can know what's happening ahead of us. What about weather condition? On intersection who goes first? A safe driverless vehicles should be able to communicate (check, for as long as the communication is stable), and government and cars will share feedback to other cars. This is a crowd-sourcing effort to make fully autonomous car possible on road. If we just learn as we go on the road, these driverless cars will not work well in very complex road condition.

nradov 9y ago

If improving safety is the goal then the driverless vehicle companies are going at it backwards. Instead of having the computer drive the car most of the time and telling the human to take over in challenging situations they should have the human drive all of the time with the computer constantly monitoring and occasionally overriding the human's control inputs when necessary. Some mainstream vehicles already do this to a limited extent by controlling throttle, brakes, and even steering to prevent crashes. Let's keep expanding on that foundation; it's far more achievable than a true autonomous vehicle and would save more lives in the medium term. http://www.thedrive.com/tech/9548/the-biggest-opportunity-everyone-is-missing-in-self-driving-cars http://www.thedrive.com/tech/9548/the-biggest-opportunity-ev... There is a successful precedent in aviation. The latest fly-by-wire flight control systems treat the pilot's inputs as merely suggestions and will modify them as necessary to prevent departure from controlled flight, midair collisions, flight into terrain, and overstressing the airframe.

Merovius 9y ago

> In 2016, Philip Koopman of CMU discusses that there are non-trivial engineering challenges of achieving safety in NHTSA Level 4 vehicle automation: That seems like the most obvious statement I've read in the last year or so at least. I think the fact that Alphabet spent more than 10 years developing these self-driving cars already is a pretty strong indicator that there are non-trivial engineering challenges involved.