4 ms·

While I'd agree that driverless cars are not here today, that the hype is over-doing it, and that Tesla has tried to push too fast, there is a huge economic inc

While I'd agree that driverless cars are not here today, that the hype is over-doing it, and that Tesla has tried to push too fast, there is a huge economic incentive to have driverless cars. If a system can be built to replace long haul truck drivers with even being slightly safer than a human driver, that saves some on insurance and tons on labor, not to mention not having to limit driving time per day. With those kinds of incentives, trucking companies wouldn't blink an eye before going forward with it. People seem so focused on personal vehicles that they ignore that people won't want to give up control at first and don't realize how the change will take place.

mpweiher 8y ago
> If a system can be built to replace long haul truck drivers with even being slightly safer than a human driver I think such a system can be built. It's called a train.
- grigjd3 8y ago
  That's a disingenuous comment. Trains don't deliver to stores directly. In the US, there is a severe infrastructure imbalance. Trains don't make sense for smaller (less than train-sized) loads.
  - mpweiher 8y ago
    Thanks for the softball: the practice of heavy trucks delivering directly to stores is a scourge on our cities, a practice that needs to be banned as quickly as possible. Here in Berlin, two children were killed by these monsters on one day last month, with the children doing nothing wrong.
    - bachbach 8y ago
      I've always wanted a world in which pneumatic tubes played a bigger role - as they used to with mail in London and Paris. It used to be possible to get a letter in 4 hours. I was walking down a street the other day, early morning, and it stank with food scraps, garbage - it was one of those maintenance streets you find at the back or sometimes even the front of fast food outlets, delis and cafes. The backend of that industry looks unappealing and smells as bad even though the businesses and city are doing everything they can to keep it organized. With pneumatic tube rubbish disposal - which already exists - it would improve the quality of a large portion of the city, not to mention those children wouldn't have had to suffer. More generally as I see it we are in the Dark Ages of underground tunnel making but if it could be made 1000x affordable lots of problems start to go away for our infrastructure. I've seen The Boring Company's proposals of course but I suspect it's on the wrong track. What you want is a creation capable of creating a criss-cross of tunnels - a whole network (similar to dark fiber, just waiting for land development so it can be turned on) which is deep beneath any other infrastructure and is linked to the surface through vertical channels e.g. a connection to somebody's house goes up, not across as we assume pipes are supposed to. I think the cost of extra pump power would be as nothing to getting rid of every legal and utility availability headache!
      - bigpicture 8y ago
        What you are asking for existed 100 years ago. Cheap oil killed it. Oil isn't so cheap anymore, maybe it would be viable again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company
        bachbach 8y ago
        We must go back to the future! Seems like a recurring theme. It's near a half century for the moon landings. Should revisit the concept of batteries too. I'm reading a book called This Victorian Life and am constantly impressed by lots of little innovations now forgotten. Two concepts I think we'll have to revisit: heliostats for indoor natural lighting and terrariums aka self contained biospheres for space/underground.
    - Shorel 8y ago
      Here they only destroy all the tarmac in just six months, but surely what you mention is way worse.
MegaDeKay 8y ago
I don't think "slightly safer" is enough. Slightly safer would likely be determined based on the average accident rate, but the problems lie farther out on the bell curve. It is one thing if, say, a driverless Model 3 hits a bus full of people: almost everyone involved woud probably walk away from that. But if a driverless Tesla Semi hauling two full trailers of heavy batteries does the same thing, the results would be horrific. Lawyers would appear out of nowhere, claim that people aren't perfect sure, but the trucking company took an undue risk on a technology with known flaws etc. Bad press everywhere, said trucking company then gets sued out of existence, etc. Given our litigious society, I think that driverless systems for big trucks need to be far far safer than the human-guided equivalent. When accidents happen, they have the potential to do far more damage.

mpweiher 8y ago

> If a system can be built to replace long haul truck drivers with even being slightly safer than a human driver I think such a system can be built. It's called a train.

grigjd3 8y ago
That's a disingenuous comment. Trains don't deliver to stores directly. In the US, there is a severe infrastructure imbalance. Trains don't make sense for smaller (less than train-sized) loads.
- mpweiher 8y ago
  Thanks for the softball: the practice of heavy trucks delivering directly to stores is a scourge on our cities, a practice that needs to be banned as quickly as possible. Here in Berlin, two children were killed by these monsters on one day last month, with the children doing nothing wrong.
  - bachbach 8y ago
    I've always wanted a world in which pneumatic tubes played a bigger role - as they used to with mail in London and Paris. It used to be possible to get a letter in 4 hours. I was walking down a street the other day, early morning, and it stank with food scraps, garbage - it was one of those maintenance streets you find at the back or sometimes even the front of fast food outlets, delis and cafes. The backend of that industry looks unappealing and smells as bad even though the businesses and city are doing everything they can to keep it organized. With pneumatic tube rubbish disposal - which already exists - it would improve the quality of a large portion of the city, not to mention those children wouldn't have had to suffer. More generally as I see it we are in the Dark Ages of underground tunnel making but if it could be made 1000x affordable lots of problems start to go away for our infrastructure. I've seen The Boring Company's proposals of course but I suspect it's on the wrong track. What you want is a creation capable of creating a criss-cross of tunnels - a whole network (similar to dark fiber, just waiting for land development so it can be turned on) which is deep beneath any other infrastructure and is linked to the surface through vertical channels e.g. a connection to somebody's house goes up, not across as we assume pipes are supposed to. I think the cost of extra pump power would be as nothing to getting rid of every legal and utility availability headache!
    - bigpicture 8y ago
      What you are asking for existed 100 years ago. Cheap oil killed it. Oil isn't so cheap anymore, maybe it would be viable again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company
      - bachbach 8y ago
        We must go back to the future! Seems like a recurring theme. It's near a half century for the moon landings. Should revisit the concept of batteries too. I'm reading a book called This Victorian Life and am constantly impressed by lots of little innovations now forgotten. Two concepts I think we'll have to revisit: heliostats for indoor natural lighting and terrariums aka self contained biospheres for space/underground.
  - Shorel 8y ago
    Here they only destroy all the tarmac in just six months, but surely what you mention is way worse.

MegaDeKay 8y ago

I don't think "slightly safer" is enough. Slightly safer would likely be determined based on the average accident rate, but the problems lie farther out on the bell curve. It is one thing if, say, a driverless Model 3 hits a bus full of people: almost everyone involved woud probably walk away from that. But if a driverless Tesla Semi hauling two full trailers of heavy batteries does the same thing, the results would be horrific. Lawyers would appear out of nowhere, claim that people aren't perfect sure, but the trucking company took an undue risk on a technology with known flaws etc. Bad press everywhere, said trucking company then gets sued out of existence, etc. Given our litigious society, I think that driverless systems for big trucks need to be far far safer than the human-guided equivalent. When accidents happen, they have the potential to do far more damage.