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> soon can license the self driving tech My personal guess is that "soon" for fully autonomous cars is not any reasonable definition of soon. Even if you accep

by bo1024 8y ago

> soon can license the self driving tech My personal guess is that "soon" for fully autonomous cars is not any reasonable definition of soon. Even if you accept the tech is close to okay in Arizona (I wouldn't), think about the weather and driving conditions in most of the worlds' markets for these global companies.

rorykoehler 8y ago
50% of the worlds population live in cities. Car ownership is more expensive and has less utility in cities too. I'm also certain that we will start retrofitting AV enabling tech into our city streets soon to speed up the process. AV's will be "good enough" for many use cases very soon.
- lsc 8y ago
  mm. so I don't think driving in cities is easier - I mean, it's certainly harder for a human to drive in a city; I don't see any reason why it would be easier for a machine to drive in a city than in the country.
  - rorykoehler 8y ago
    Controlled environment with good lane marking etc. Obviously some cities are easier than others.
    - lsc 8y ago
      Controlled environment? well-maintained roads? this doesn't sound like any city I've spent much time in. I'm thinking like 101 seems reasonably straightforward, modulo the occasional construction, but once you get into san Francisco, there's a lot of dodging pedestrians, cyclists, skateboarders, shopping carts, stopped delivery vehicles, etc... It doesn't look nearly as controlled, to my eyes, as 101 does further out.
semi-extrinsic 8y ago
I agree. The other day I was driving and thinking about this, and I started noticing "how many times during this drive have I looked another human (driver or pedestrian) in the eyes in order to determine their intentions?" It was a significant number even in a 15 minute drive. I was still thinking about it during my bike ride later in the day, and I noticed that more than a dozen times I exchanged looks and nods with drivers to ensure they had seen me and that it was safe to do something. No self driving car is able to look a human in the eyes and determine their likely course of action. And it most certainly won't be able to signal to the human a message as complex as "I have understood your intentions".
- virgilp 8y ago
  I got bear-ish on self-driving cars when I realized that, in order to be able to drive in Bucharest, you _have to_ break the (letter of the) law fairly often[1]. Knowing when to do so requires "common sense" which is a notoriously difficult nut to crack - computer vision may be advanced enough, but it's simply not enough. I still think it will evolve in time and reach mass-market, it's just that it will take lots of time - it's not something that will have a purely-technological solution, it will likely require legal and social changes too, and those take time. [1] E.g. Car stopped in front; do you cross the continuous line to go to the opposite lane, or just wait a bit? Or merging from a side street into a busy main road.... some drivers will let you, but which ones? If you wait until "it's safe", well, good luck.
  - semi-extrinsic 8y ago
    This is another good point. There's a hardware store near to where I live where it's literally illegal (if you observe the signs) to enter or exit the parking lot of said store. Everyone just understands that someone forgot to remove a road sign saying "buses only, cars forbidden" for the lane where you enter this parking lot. But how would a computer understand this?
  - xyzzyz 8y ago
    I’m not sure that figuring out when to break the law in your example is any harder then figuring out when turning left is legal and safe on unprotected intersection. This is not to say that it's easy, but autonomous vehicles need to solve problems exactly like that one on a regular basis.

by bo1024 8y ago

rorykoehler 8y ago

50% of the worlds population live in cities. Car ownership is more expensive and has less utility in cities too. I'm also certain that we will start retrofitting AV enabling tech into our city streets soon to speed up the process. AV's will be "good enough" for many use cases very soon.

lsc 8y ago
mm. so I don't think driving in cities is easier - I mean, it's certainly harder for a human to drive in a city; I don't see any reason why it would be easier for a machine to drive in a city than in the country.
- rorykoehler 8y ago
  Controlled environment with good lane marking etc. Obviously some cities are easier than others.
  - lsc 8y ago
    Controlled environment? well-maintained roads? this doesn't sound like any city I've spent much time in. I'm thinking like 101 seems reasonably straightforward, modulo the occasional construction, but once you get into san Francisco, there's a lot of dodging pedestrians, cyclists, skateboarders, shopping carts, stopped delivery vehicles, etc... It doesn't look nearly as controlled, to my eyes, as 101 does further out.

semi-extrinsic 8y ago

I agree. The other day I was driving and thinking about this, and I started noticing "how many times during this drive have I looked another human (driver or pedestrian) in the eyes in order to determine their intentions?" It was a significant number even in a 15 minute drive. I was still thinking about it during my bike ride later in the day, and I noticed that more than a dozen times I exchanged looks and nods with drivers to ensure they had seen me and that it was safe to do something. No self driving car is able to look a human in the eyes and determine their likely course of action. And it most certainly won't be able to signal to the human a message as complex as "I have understood your intentions".

virgilp 8y ago
I got bear-ish on self-driving cars when I realized that, in order to be able to drive in Bucharest, you _have to_ break the (letter of the) law fairly often[1]. Knowing when to do so requires "common sense" which is a notoriously difficult nut to crack - computer vision may be advanced enough, but it's simply not enough. I still think it will evolve in time and reach mass-market, it's just that it will take lots of time - it's not something that will have a purely-technological solution, it will likely require legal and social changes too, and those take time. [1] E.g. Car stopped in front; do you cross the continuous line to go to the opposite lane, or just wait a bit? Or merging from a side street into a busy main road.... some drivers will let you, but which ones? If you wait until "it's safe", well, good luck.
- semi-extrinsic 8y ago
  This is another good point. There's a hardware store near to where I live where it's literally illegal (if you observe the signs) to enter or exit the parking lot of said store. Everyone just understands that someone forgot to remove a road sign saying "buses only, cars forbidden" for the lane where you enter this parking lot. But how would a computer understand this?
- xyzzyz 8y ago
  I’m not sure that figuring out when to break the law in your example is any harder then figuring out when turning left is legal and safe on unprotected intersection. This is not to say that it's easy, but autonomous vehicles need to solve problems exactly like that one on a regular basis.