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All journalists covering the self-driving car beat are basically required to ignore Waymo so they can continue writing “When will cars drive themselves? Experts

All journalists covering the self-driving car beat are basically required to ignore Waymo so they can continue writing “When will cars drive themselves? Experts say nobody knows” articles. If you ignore Waymo it’s a race; if you include Waymo it’s not. This article makes the further error of assuming “AI” is required for self-driving cars, rather than just a shitload of code.

sandworm101 8y ago
>> “When will cars drive themselves? Experts say nobody knows” articles. Nobody knows because it has yet to happen. We have all seen demos and studies but that doesn't convince anyone not involved in the tech. Cars will be capable of driving themselves when I see one, sans humans, ask to merge in front of me on the highway. It will happen when I see one navigate the lineup to the ferry I take every week. It will happen when I see one accurately obey hand signals from a human directing traffic. Not youtube vids. It will happen when I see it with my own eyes. Just like electric cars, we will have to see them on the roads playing the game we all play every day. Until that tipping point, driverless remains a myth that happens in a faraway place. So put them on the road. Let's give it a try. Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't and people die and they sue. That's been part of driving since day one. Roll the dice. I'm sick of the endless debates.
- rifung 8y ago
  > So put them on the road. Let's give it a try. Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't and people die and they sue. That's been part of driving since day one. Roll the dice. I'm sick of the endless debates. Well I'd certainly hope that there is a high level of confidence that they don't kill people BEFORE they're put on the road with other people.
  - the8472 8y ago
    All we need is that they don't kill more people than average human drivers do per passenger-mile. Assuming ride-sharing we could even let them be a little more deadly than human drivers and still save lives.
    - sandworm101 8y ago
      >> Assuming ride-sharing Don't. Cost isn't stopping people today from ridesharing. Carpooling won't become cool just because there is no driver, in fact I could see it becoming less cool as you will be much more alone with strangers. Many people today would be uncomfortable on a bus at night without a third party present (ie the driver, or at least many other strangers). Think about all the extra traffic from autodriver cars doing jobs that today are too expensive. And the double-commute possibility. Your car takes you to work, drives itself home to park/recharge, then drives back to pick you up at the end of the day. Any 2-way trip could become 4-way, doubling the per-trip traffic. Or, rather than pay for parking while you shop downtown, you ask your car to drive around in circles until you are ready to go home.
      - chrisco255 8y ago
        Carpooling has already become much more practical with Lyft Line, etc. No driver would mean even cheaper rides. Also, there's no reason your car couldn't park itself at work...or rent itself out (via Lyft/Uber) while you're at work. Assuming we get to that level of tech.
    - notahacker 8y ago
      If cars which require no effort whatsoever to operate and cost significantly less than taxis are on the market, it's a safe bet that being slightly less dangerous per passenger mile will kill far more people than are currently killed on the roads due to more, longer car journeys. That's before we even get into the fact a car which is slightly less likely to cause a fatal accident than the average human driver on an accidents per mile basis is a lot more likely to cause a fatal accident than the average sober, careful and experienced human driver, the complications of estimating fatality rates from small test drive samples and the potential for new bugs to cause massive accident spikes.
      - the8472 8y ago
        Of course if people make more journeys, i.e. become more mobile, you could argue that the increased number of deaths should be balanced against life-hours of drivers freed up while also improving quality of life of passengers at the same time, i.e. it might still be QALY-neutral or even positive. > than the average sober, careful and experienced human driver But ultimately we do accept the fatality rates caused by all drivers and not just the good ones as a cost of having individual transportation. If we didn't only teetotalers would be allowed to operate cars to remove one risk factor. And we also accept the risk of inexperienced drivers because we have to teach them eventually, the same reasoning can be applied to autonomous cars (just substitute teaching with data gathering) The total distance driven also does not just depend on technology alone but on urban planning. AVs may change that dramatically over time.
  - notheguyouthink 8y ago
    And people will die anyways. It would be the biggest miracle on earth I think if those things ended up being perfect (at least, the ones that work.. not Uber, obviously). So it's all a numbers game. What's acceptable, and what we can improve on.
    - ryanmarsh 8y ago
      I had a famous cancer researcher at a world famous cancer treatment hospital tell me (paraphrasing) “we won’t ever see the kinds of breakthroughs we saw in the past because we were reckless back then, foolish even. It was the Wild West.” I’m not saying I want the highways to be a Wild West for self driving cars, but it’s worth admitting it would probably accelerate the pace of innovation.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
- admax88q 8y ago
  > Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't and people die and they sue. Jesus... Let's kill people because you're sick of the debate on whether self driving cars will work.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  Living around the Mountain View area, this is one of those moments where I'm like "Oh, the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed." I've been driving next to these cars for the past 7 years. A number of my friends & former coworkers have ridden in them; a couple of them work on them. They've stopped for me at pedestrian crosswalks. I've gotten stuck behind them, driving 25mph on El Camino. I've waved them on to make a left in front of me (I'm still not entirely sure how they do that, but I think that if they detect that the driver at the intersection is stopped and has not gone within any reasonable time period, they creep out and eventually go if no movement is detected). I saw one last week attempt to switch lanes, find that the car behind it had sped up and it was no longer safe to make the lane change, turn off its blinker, pull ahead in its own lane, and then make the lane change safely several cars up. They are on the road, and they work pretty well. I trust them a lot more than cars that say "Student Driver Onboard", or even the average Californian driver.
InclinedPlane 8y ago
Nobody has self-driving cars, not even Waymo. Every "self-driving car" has "disengagements" (a euphemism for "it stopped working") periodically every few thousand miles. That's simply unacceptable and needs to be sorted out. If a human driver was performing a panic stop for no reason or hitting a pedestrian or another car every 3 months or so we would take away their license. Waymo is doing better than almost everyone else, a testament to their skill and their rigor, but they are still a long distance away from truly autonomous vehicles. The temptation is to say "well, they are so close, I'm sure they'll finish up the niggling details", but the reality is that the stuff they are failing at are some of the hardest remaining problems and will probably require at least as much work as they've put in already, if not significantly more, to tackle. I think we'll end up with self-driving cars eventually but probably not on a time scale of within the next 5-10 years, more likely it'll take that long or longer for the technology to reach maturity and then yet another decade plus for it to start seeing practical application.
- xbkingx 8y ago
  It's the classic problem of truly appreciating magnitude and scale. Humans are amazing at it within a very narrow realm, and then terrible beyond that narrow range. This is the sad realization I had about brain-computer interfaces towards the end of my research. 99.9% is NOT good enough when the stakes are life and death and the factors within events that the environment throws at you are basically independent and continuous. At least with self driving cars we can enforce some hard boundaries. In BCIs implementing boundaries is tantamount to denying the user of their free will.
- tim333 8y ago
  The cars that have been driving around Phoenix certainly seem self driving. Humans also drive imperfectly and that doesn't mean they don't exist. see >A select group of Arizonans has been shuttling around the Phoenix area in self-driving cars for the past year, providing insight into the future of the technology. http://ktar.com/story/2105890/waymo-early-rider-program-provides-insight-into-self-driving-car-technology/ http://ktar.com/story/2105890/waymo-early-rider-program-prov...
- rohit2412 8y ago
a008t 8y ago
Is part of Waymo's perceived success in that they are more conservative with deploying their technology? I.e. it is tested at lower speed, on specific routes, in specific weather etc.?

sandworm101 8y ago

>> “When will cars drive themselves? Experts say nobody knows” articles. Nobody knows because it has yet to happen. We have all seen demos and studies but that doesn't convince anyone not involved in the tech. Cars will be capable of driving themselves when I see one, sans humans, ask to merge in front of me on the highway. It will happen when I see one navigate the lineup to the ferry I take every week. It will happen when I see one accurately obey hand signals from a human directing traffic. Not youtube vids. It will happen when I see it with my own eyes. Just like electric cars, we will have to see them on the roads playing the game we all play every day. Until that tipping point, driverless remains a myth that happens in a faraway place. So put them on the road. Let's give it a try. Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't and people die and they sue. That's been part of driving since day one. Roll the dice. I'm sick of the endless debates.

rifung 8y ago
> So put them on the road. Let's give it a try. Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't and people die and they sue. That's been part of driving since day one. Roll the dice. I'm sick of the endless debates. Well I'd certainly hope that there is a high level of confidence that they don't kill people BEFORE they're put on the road with other people.
- the8472 8y ago
  All we need is that they don't kill more people than average human drivers do per passenger-mile. Assuming ride-sharing we could even let them be a little more deadly than human drivers and still save lives.
  - sandworm101 8y ago
    >> Assuming ride-sharing Don't. Cost isn't stopping people today from ridesharing. Carpooling won't become cool just because there is no driver, in fact I could see it becoming less cool as you will be much more alone with strangers. Many people today would be uncomfortable on a bus at night without a third party present (ie the driver, or at least many other strangers). Think about all the extra traffic from autodriver cars doing jobs that today are too expensive. And the double-commute possibility. Your car takes you to work, drives itself home to park/recharge, then drives back to pick you up at the end of the day. Any 2-way trip could become 4-way, doubling the per-trip traffic. Or, rather than pay for parking while you shop downtown, you ask your car to drive around in circles until you are ready to go home.
    - chrisco255 8y ago
      Carpooling has already become much more practical with Lyft Line, etc. No driver would mean even cheaper rides. Also, there's no reason your car couldn't park itself at work...or rent itself out (via Lyft/Uber) while you're at work. Assuming we get to that level of tech.
  - notahacker 8y ago
    If cars which require no effort whatsoever to operate and cost significantly less than taxis are on the market, it's a safe bet that being slightly less dangerous per passenger mile will kill far more people than are currently killed on the roads due to more, longer car journeys. That's before we even get into the fact a car which is slightly less likely to cause a fatal accident than the average human driver on an accidents per mile basis is a lot more likely to cause a fatal accident than the average sober, careful and experienced human driver, the complications of estimating fatality rates from small test drive samples and the potential for new bugs to cause massive accident spikes.
    - the8472 8y ago
      Of course if people make more journeys, i.e. become more mobile, you could argue that the increased number of deaths should be balanced against life-hours of drivers freed up while also improving quality of life of passengers at the same time, i.e. it might still be QALY-neutral or even positive. > than the average sober, careful and experienced human driver But ultimately we do accept the fatality rates caused by all drivers and not just the good ones as a cost of having individual transportation. If we didn't only teetotalers would be allowed to operate cars to remove one risk factor. And we also accept the risk of inexperienced drivers because we have to teach them eventually, the same reasoning can be applied to autonomous cars (just substitute teaching with data gathering) The total distance driven also does not just depend on technology alone but on urban planning. AVs may change that dramatically over time.
- notheguyouthink 8y ago
  And people will die anyways. It would be the biggest miracle on earth I think if those things ended up being perfect (at least, the ones that work.. not Uber, obviously). So it's all a numbers game. What's acceptable, and what we can improve on.
  - ryanmarsh 8y ago
    I had a famous cancer researcher at a world famous cancer treatment hospital tell me (paraphrasing) “we won’t ever see the kinds of breakthroughs we saw in the past because we were reckless back then, foolish even. It was the Wild West.” I’m not saying I want the highways to be a Wild West for self driving cars, but it’s worth admitting it would probably accelerate the pace of innovation.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
admax88q 8y ago
> Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't and people die and they sue. Jesus... Let's kill people because you're sick of the debate on whether self driving cars will work.
nostrademons 8y ago
Living around the Mountain View area, this is one of those moments where I'm like "Oh, the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed." I've been driving next to these cars for the past 7 years. A number of my friends & former coworkers have ridden in them; a couple of them work on them. They've stopped for me at pedestrian crosswalks. I've gotten stuck behind them, driving 25mph on El Camino. I've waved them on to make a left in front of me (I'm still not entirely sure how they do that, but I think that if they detect that the driver at the intersection is stopped and has not gone within any reasonable time period, they creep out and eventually go if no movement is detected). I saw one last week attempt to switch lanes, find that the car behind it had sped up and it was no longer safe to make the lane change, turn off its blinker, pull ahead in its own lane, and then make the lane change safely several cars up. They are on the road, and they work pretty well. I trust them a lot more than cars that say "Student Driver Onboard", or even the average Californian driver.

InclinedPlane 8y ago

Nobody has self-driving cars, not even Waymo. Every "self-driving car" has "disengagements" (a euphemism for "it stopped working") periodically every few thousand miles. That's simply unacceptable and needs to be sorted out. If a human driver was performing a panic stop for no reason or hitting a pedestrian or another car every 3 months or so we would take away their license. Waymo is doing better than almost everyone else, a testament to their skill and their rigor, but they are still a long distance away from truly autonomous vehicles. The temptation is to say "well, they are so close, I'm sure they'll finish up the niggling details", but the reality is that the stuff they are failing at are some of the hardest remaining problems and will probably require at least as much work as they've put in already, if not significantly more, to tackle. I think we'll end up with self-driving cars eventually but probably not on a time scale of within the next 5-10 years, more likely it'll take that long or longer for the technology to reach maturity and then yet another decade plus for it to start seeing practical application.

xbkingx 8y ago
It's the classic problem of truly appreciating magnitude and scale. Humans are amazing at it within a very narrow realm, and then terrible beyond that narrow range. This is the sad realization I had about brain-computer interfaces towards the end of my research. 99.9% is NOT good enough when the stakes are life and death and the factors within events that the environment throws at you are basically independent and continuous. At least with self driving cars we can enforce some hard boundaries. In BCIs implementing boundaries is tantamount to denying the user of their free will.
tim333 8y ago
The cars that have been driving around Phoenix certainly seem self driving. Humans also drive imperfectly and that doesn't mean they don't exist. see >A select group of Arizonans has been shuttling around the Phoenix area in self-driving cars for the past year, providing insight into the future of the technology. http://ktar.com/story/2105890/waymo-early-rider-program-provides-insight-into-self-driving-car-technology/ http://ktar.com/story/2105890/waymo-early-rider-program-prov...
rohit2412 8y ago

a008t 8y ago

Is part of Waymo's perceived success in that they are more conservative with deploying their technology? I.e. it is tested at lower speed, on specific routes, in specific weather etc.?