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This whole self driving, fully autonomous thing has become some sort of strange faux-religion. It's followers see no other possible solution as acceptable. In

by Alupis 7y ago

This whole self driving, fully autonomous thing has become some sort of strange faux-religion. It's followers see no other possible solution as acceptable. Instead of putting our heads together to make really good driver assistance technologies and being satisfied, the darn thing needs to also drive itself everywhere otherwise we're leaving something on the table! Untill we have zero deaths, we cannot stop demanding self driving - as if somehow AI is a magical solution that's always better than humans. Forget better frame, chassis, and body panel design to protect pedestrians! We won't need them if AI never hits anyone. Forget better braking systems that apply themselves automatically. We don't need that if AI can always avoid the need for sudden stops. Forget seat belt enhancements since that'll just inhibit nap time in my self driving car. No, forget it all. My car needs to drive me all by itself, everywhere I need to go, no matter how hard or impossible of a problem that is. Driver assist is boring... Level 5 is sexy, and that's what I want!

_pmf_ 7y ago
Comma.ai kind of follows the "improving lane detection until it drives you completely" line, at least according to what I get from this interview with Hotz: https://lexfridman.com/george-hotz/ https://lexfridman.com/george-hotz/ He's still a bit too optimistic for my taste.
- farisjarrah 7y ago
  I bought in to Comma.ai at first and even started porting my car over. But I quickly realized that the whole comma.ai crowd is way way to cavalier with safety. One day I was driving down the freeway and saw a small fender bender occur in front of me. I looked up at my dash and it was all ripped up with wires hanging everywhere because I was working on the Comma.ai stuff. If it had been me in that fender bender you know that insurance would definitely blame me for that given that I was messing with the OBDII and radar sensors. As cool as Comma.ai is, I really believe that their approach to allowing so much community involvement with little to no oversight is highly irresponsible. That being said.... If they do succeed, and get some sort of government approval or oversight.... You bet I'm putting that stuff back in. Its cool A.F.
sam_goody 7y ago
IMO, flying cars will eventually arrive. Perhaps it will be limited to specific "lanes" (it will be much more palatable to the masses if it must (like cars) keep to a limited area). But it will not need to recognize pedestrians and bikers and human driven cars, and some standard will be introduced to allow all them self driving cars to talk to each other. At that point, Level 5 will be much easier, even obvious. All he effort invested in assistive driving will seem silly.
- krzat 7y ago
  I wonder if it's possible to solve noise problem with flying cars. Maybe use active noise cancellation at the source? No idea if it's even theoretically possible, but would be neat.
  - arethuza 7y ago
    Aren't flying cars going to be much noisier than surface cars?
    - krzat 7y ago
      Yes, that was my point. We will need some clever tech to make the noise bearable.
    - briandear 7y ago
      Joby is using some low noise props that are very effective. Quieter than most of the ridiculous motorcycles and loud cars on the 101. If we care about noise, we should be addressing the motorcycle industry. I can’t hear a C-130 flying overhead at 1000 feet when I am in my house, but I can hear motorcycles zipping by on the freeway behind my house.
  - nradov 7y ago
    No, it's not physically possible to do any significant active cancellation of the noise caused by a rotor / propeller spinning through the air. The noise sources are too spread out (especially with multi-rotor designs) and cover too much of the audible range. Blade shape can be tuned to an extent for minimizing noise but that also reduces efficiency (not much to spare). Larger, slower turning blades are also quieter but there are practical physical limits on size and weight.
neuronic 7y ago
> This whole self driving, fully autonomous thing has become some sort of strange faux-religion. What really bugs me, as someone working in consulting as a hands-on backend developer with a previous background in technical consulting at an accounting Big4 (student job), is the insane amount of PR, politics and marketing talk by people who have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what they are talking about. I witnessed politicians and C-level industry people talking out of their asses to ... idk ... drive stocks? Look smart in the face of Tesla? PR? No clue. Self-proclaimed experts in magazines and talk shows raving about how AI is going to change everything. I had colleagues telling customers about the magnificent rise of AI and none of them could even spell "gradient descent". Backed by a law or accounting degree they KNOW that self-driving is just around the corner and they are very vocal about it while easily impressed by tightly controlled demos at some international tech fair. Everyone just seems to fall into the hype trap without a single brain-byte spent on researching the actual issues and what's most sad is actual engineers/technical people not doing their due diligence and informing themselves BUT THEN GOING OUT TO TELL THEIR NON-TECHNICAL FRIENDS ABOUT THE AUTONOMOUS FUTURE. Ugh. I held a minor internal talk at work about self-driving cars for people generally with other backgrounds but light superficial interest due to "Tesla" and "the hype". They were surprised to see that we are likely decades away from actual Level 4 (not the marketing garbage that some companies put out) because even a slight change in weather can really fuck with all systems on the roads right now.
- tim333 7y ago
  Yeah but speaking as someone kinda on the other side there are things like this 'actual Level 4' delivering stuff for real in Wuhan https://kr-asia.com/jd-com-uses-l4-autonomous-driving-solutions-to-deliver-goods-in-locked-down-wuhan https://kr-asia.com/jd-com-uses-l4-autonomous-driving-soluti... Fair enough it's not very good - that one just went 600m - but it's hard to argue it won't exist for decades when it exists now. And historically going form sorta works but is rubbish in info tech eg. early cellphones, internet and so on - to works well doesn't seem to take that long. Five to ten years perhaps typically.
  - ipsi 7y ago
    The issue is that there are so, so many edge cases to worry about. Simple example: someone decides to troll you in your self-driving car and steps out in front of it. You don't have controls in the car, so you can't go around them - you have to wait for them to move. In reality, it seems like it would resolve quickly - you get out and yell at them, call the police if that doesn't work, etc. But it can get more sinister - criminals _already_ block the road to force drivers out of their car to rob them[1][2]. Now, if you know that might happen, you can just drive around the obstacle. Unless, of course, you're in a self-driving car where you might not even be able to get it to do a u-turn. Related issues would be areas where the practical advice is "don't stop" - not even at red lights - if you're there late at night due to the risk of car jacking[3][4] (this might be out-of-date now, to be fair). Can rules like that be encoded into a self-driving car? OK, yes, you probably could find a way to do it. But that's almost certainly just the tip of the iceberg in terms of "ways people will fuck with self-driving cars" and "things people do that are technically illegal but still safer than the alternative." Could you solve enough of those in 5-10 years, _on top of_ making self-driving cars work in sun/rain/snow/fog/night/tornados/etc safely and consistently? I think that's very unlikely. Decades seems far more likely to me. [1] https://abc7chicago.com/593111/ https://abc7chicago.com/593111/ [2] (Non-EU only) https://wgntv.com/2015/03/31/robbers-set-up-fake-road-blocks-then-attack-drivers-on-south-side/ https://wgntv.com/2015/03/31/robbers-set-up-fake-road-blocks... [3] https://eu.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2018/12/11/man-carjacked-red-light-west-side/2274423002/ https://eu.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/201... [4] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLEO/comments/2rzsdz/are_there_any_neighborhoods_youll_forgive_someone/cnlbtfr/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLEO/comments/2rzsdz/are_there_an...
throwaway92384 7y ago
It is a religion, nothing "faux" about it. It fills the same needs, and uses the same mechanisms within the human mind as more traditional religion. It is also completely bonkers, as it makes bold assertions about the real world, with which reality will eventually disagree, whereas older religions tended to keep their most dogmatic positions unfalsifiable (the afterlife, the soul, vague prophecies, ...)
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Calling it a religion makes about as much sense as calling efforts to cure AIDS or vaccinate Polio prior to the success of Salk a religion. There is a clear and obvious good to achieve, one which is theoretically implementatable and has predecessors for success. Reality can only disagree if it is outright proven impossible due to something - say in this counterfactual Polio has a 5% of turning any unique adjacent molecule it into more polio. otherwise they are literally Just like how taking the spit of a polio patient and putting it in saline with a sprig of mint will spread instead of vaccinating but it doesn't prove a polio vaccine is impossible because "we tried and people got sick". It is clearly a goal and a realistic one within even a few decades pessimisitcally given that its ability is creeping upwards.
  - snowwrestler 7y ago
    There is zero proof that autonomous vehicles can be safer than human drivers. There’s lots of proof that autonomous vehicles are technically possible, but the leap to “definitely better than humans” is a very big one and it’s really being taken on faith right now. In contrast, treating disease directly affect the incidence of that disease.
    - lovehashbrowns 7y ago
      There's "proof" that computers can be safer than humans. Faster reaction times, don't get tired, don't lose focus, can perform computations much faster than humans.
      - 7y ago
mcv 7y ago
I'm very excited about the possibility of self-driving cars. Let the car drive while I take a nap or read a book. But I have a hard time believing that the technology is anywhere close to being mature. You need a lot of contextual knowledge to drive safely in unusual circumstances. I totally believe that within well-defined limits, AI already outperforms humans, but traffic has no well-defined limits. Anything can happen.
- KurtMueller 7y ago
  Let the car go park itself while I walk into the restaurant. Let the car go fill itself up with gas at night while I am soundly asleep.
  - brandonmenc 7y ago
    > Let the car go fill itself up with gas at night while I am soundly asleep. I'm bearish on both self-driving and the universal adoption of electric cars, but everyone will be plugging their car in at home long before they can make one that drives itself to the gas station.
    - parliament32 7y ago
      >everyone will be plugging their car in at home Absolutely not. Having to wait for hours to get a few kms of driving distance is way too much of a friction point for EVs to ever be more than a novelty, in addition to the usual complaints of people with only street parking, garages without outlets, etc. Either we'll get the battery-swap situation rolling or invent a faster charging tech, but either way there'll be some sort of "station" in the picture.
    - skgoa 7y ago
      > everyone will be plugging their car in at home I realize that a lot of people here are privileged enough to own a single family home, but the majority of humanity lives in apartments and parks on the street. Trickle-charging at home is not a universal solution. The only practical solution seems to be some form of rapid charging of the car's energy storage. Either by pumping huge amounts of amps into a huge battery pack, or adding some kind of chemical fuel that gets reacted in an internal combustion engine or a fuel cell.
keanzu 7y ago
SAE Level 5 is completely transformative, it will utterly change the market and the use of cars. Once you can conveniently call up an automated Uber the need, at least in cities, to buy your own car will effectively vanish. This is Uber's endgame - get humans out of the loop. As long as cars still need human drivers this cost savings can't be realized. > Forget better braking systems that apply themselves automatically. This already exists: Mercedes, for example, first rolled out "Active Brake Assist" to a production model in 1996. Moreover any fully self driving vehicle will definitely need to be able to apply the brakes.
- TheAdamist 7y ago
  Uber has no relevance once level 5 exists. Vehicle manufacturers will run the vehicles directly if there is any profit to be made from a taxi service.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    I doubt it. Vertical integration only works so far. I think the manufactures will sell cars to those want to run a taxi company. This is, and will remain a race to the bottom because competition is fierce: people buy price and first to get to them. They will also sell cars to normal people. Most people don't think about how convenient it is to have the storage of their personal car. If parking is free or cheap (which is it in the suburbs) having your golf clubs in the trunk or a spare diaper in the glove box are worth the little extra cost, not to mention your car is always there so no need to wait for the taxi to in busy times. Of course there is also the city, but if you live in a city self driving cars still suffer from congestion and so public mass transit still has big advantages. In fact because the self driving taxi is spending time empty waiting for the next rider it adds to the problem meaning for even more people public transit is worth the hassles with it (which in turn means more demand to make transit better)
    - keanzu 7y ago
      Congestion problems are dramatically alleviated if you can convert your city over to self driving only. Once the cars can drive in platoons they are packed in tight, no more accordion effect. On the way something like UberPool would be needed. Or the taxi can just drive me to the nearest train station and I can take mass transit into the city. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platoon_(automobile) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platoon_(automobile)
KurtMueller 7y ago
Hey man, I want all of it, especially while on the way to full self-driving cars.
emiliobumachar 7y ago
Would Tesla be a heretic in this religion you just modeled? They're all about boring driver assistance, and acceptance of a low number of deaths. They don't even try Level 5 for now, and get a lot of criticism for requiring that the human pays attention at all times.
- fxtentacle 7y ago
  No they get criticism for calling the whole thing "autopilot" and presenting it as if paying attention was optional.
- ezzzzz 7y ago
  Even my engineer colleagues still operate under the impression that Tesla Autopilot == Self-Driving. One of the dangerous things, to me, is a combination of PR and user experience. The PR/advertisement creates the impression (directly or indirectly) that a Tesla drives itself, and the technology enforces the sentiment by working well 'most' of the time. This article just enforces this. The driver killed was an engineer, who noted that Tesla's auto-pilot would veer into danger (in the spot he was killed), filed a report/complaint, yet still, had enough confidence in the tech to read a quick text.
- Alupis 7y ago
  > and get a lot of criticism for requiring that the human pays attention at all times Because that's the law... and... > They don't even try Level 5 for now That's not what Elon has been telling us for years... Full Level 5 is just months away!
syshum 7y ago
Actually one of the biggest obstacles to Level 5 is expectation of Zero Deaths for Level 5 autonomous operations. The standard should be fewer deaths than human-operated (or even auto assisted ) cars. When you have thousands of machines traveling in close proximity at speeds exceeding 50mph there will be deaths, this is unavoidable. We need to reduce those as much as possible but to demand ZERO before the technology can be used is just unrealistic That said, Just because some people are working towards Level 5, does not mean all of the other things you are asking for are not also being worked on, it is not a zero sum game. There are enough people that we can have teams working on both. This complaint is repeated for everything, "Well if people were not working on X drug that I don't care about they could cure cancer" We can have a better braking system, better frames, etc AND still try to achieve level 5 autonomous driving. It is not an either-or proposition
- aguyfromnb 7y ago
  >The standard should be fewer deaths than human-operated (or even auto assisted ) cars. How do we go about testing this? By tallying up autonomous deaths until there are fewer per year than human drivers? >We need to reduce those as much as possible but to demand ZERO before the technology can be used is just unrealistic Human driver skill varies immensely by person. The idea that anyone who is (or even considers themselves to be) a "good" driver will never accept "average death rates" as a risk when getting in an autonomous car. I know I wouldn't. The goal has to be zero or it will never be accepted by the public.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    It isn't hard to show an order of magnitude less deaths even with non-zero deaths. At that point expect government to mandate level 5 on all cars.
  - galangalalgol 7y ago
    The goal is always zero, but we all know that will never happen. Nothing is perfect. And assistance technologies may be more dangerous than level 5 because we physically cannot maintain concentration when few actions or decisions ar required from us. Some studies even indicate manual tranamissions make us safer, possibly for that reason. When level 5 is available, and it will be, because forever is a long time, good drivers shouldn't have to buy those cars. Assuming money is still a thing. Insurance comapnies may start forcing people financially towards sel drive only cars by hiking rates on humans, but if you give up your privacy with a driving monitor and they asses that you are safer, they would probably rather you drive and waive the hike.
fxtentacle 7y ago
Count me guilty then, because I am also hoping to one day take a nap while the car drives me around. Until then, I found the next best thing is booking an Uber. They'll even use venture capital to subsidize my ride :) But wait, isn't that exactly why they are now in such a rush and cannot accept anything less than full autonomy? From what I heard, Uber has been burning billions of VC money to capture market share. And their model just won't work financially if they need to pay drivers a living wage. So they attempted trickery to pay them less as "independent" contractors, but now that governments are stepping in to prevent that, there is only one option left: Uber needs self-driving cars or else they'll go bankrupt. At least, that's my theory.
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  I'm not certain self-driving cars are going to save them. Right now, what they pay their driver's is the all-in cost for their fleet. When they switch to fleet Management, they are going to be paying capital costs and maintenance instead. I don't think the latter costs are much lower, if at all, than what they pay drivers now.
- khafra 7y ago
  > Uber needs self-driving cars or else they'll go bankrupt. > At least, that's my theory. I believe it--at least, I hope it would take an existential threat to make them push kludged-together pedestrian-killers into use on the roads.
- env123 7y ago
  There is this other technology called "chauffeur"
  - copperx 7y ago
    And in the third world (e.g., Mexico), they are an order of magnitude cheaper than a Tesla.
- briandear 7y ago
  > So they attempted trickery to pay them less as "independent" contractors An Uber driver is the very definition of an independent contractor. Many drivers also drive for Lyft. How can they be “employees” of Uber while also driving Lyft? Or doing Door Dash? If Uber drivers were employees, they would have to work where and when assigned. As it is now, Uber drivers come and go as they please. I am not sure how an Uber driver is any different than a freelance journalist or musician.
matwood 7y ago
> This whole self driving, fully autonomous thing has become some sort of strange faux-religion. Just follow the money. The near future financials of companies like Uber and Lyft (and to a lesses extent Tesla), rely on fully autonomous self driving.
- brokenmachine 7y ago
  And that is why they will fail. You heard it here first.
ghaff 7y ago
In addition to all the hype-sters and scammers, you're probably seeing a lot of the often young urbanites with dreams of never owning a car and getting chauffeured around by super-cheap robo-Ubers all their lives. Many of them are either in denial or are feeling pretty betrayed at the moment. That said, there are legitimate issues with incrementally improving assistive driving. People text and drive today without assistive driving. If a car can mostly make its way in rush hour down the highway autonomously, does anyone think that people won't routinely watch Netflix on their commute?
overcast 7y ago
Exactly. For anything but open highway, self driving is so far into the future, that we should be focusing on making smaller pieces safer, ultimately building up to the end goal. If there is a self driving car in my lifetime that will drive up the windy mountain road to Yosemite, in the winter, then I'm the Pope. This all or nothing shit has to stop.
- ghaff 7y ago
  I honestly don't understand why there isn't more attention paid/focus on the fully autonomous limited access highway driving in "good" weather use case. That would be hugely attractive for a lot of people. Read a book/watch a movie while heading up to the mountains for the weekend or, for many, take a nap for part of their morning commute. I suspect it's because it's less interesting to the demographic that's more concerned about being driven to and from bars on their night out or who just don't want to own a car period. But highway driving seems like a huge convenience and safety enhancement even if you just punt on city driving for at least the next few decades.
NotATroll 7y ago
> Forget better frame, chassis, and body panel design to protect pedestrians! We won't need them if AI never hits anyone. Most car manufacturers have had this figured out for a long time with crumple zones and the like. > Forget better braking systems that apply themselves automatically Assisted braking technology is already implemented in some cars. Hell, Tesla implements basically exactly what you're asking for... > Forget seat belt enhancements since that'll just inhibit nap time in my self driving car. Teslas don't let you sleep in your car, you have to move the steering wheel periodically to prove you're still paying attention or it'll pull over and shut down. Also, I'm not quite sure what you're expecting seat belt enhancements to be. Far be it for me to defend the AI hype, but your "things we should be focusing on instead" don't make much sense when we ARE focusing on them.
- wbl 7y ago
  Modern cars are deadly to pedestrians, especially SUVs.
  - amflare 7y ago
    Most 1-3 ton objects moving with any sort of momentum are. What is your point?
    - MereInterest 7y ago
      70% more likely to be killed when struck by a larger car [1]. With a higher front face, pedestrians are struck in the chest, rather than the legs. Turns out, broken legs are a lot more survivable than damage to internal organs. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/oct/07/a-deadly-problem-should-we-ban-suvs-from-our-cities https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/oct/07/a-deadly-prob...
      - anon73044 7y ago
        By that logic, a low slung sports car is the most pedestrian safe and Ferrari's should get a pedestrian safety rebate. I'll take one!
dwild 7y ago
> Forget better frame, chassis, and body panel design to protect pedestrians! We won't need them if AI never hits anyone. > Forget better braking systems that apply themselves automatically. We don't need that if AI can always avoid the need for sudden stops. > Forget seat belt enhancements since that'll just inhibit nap time in my self driving car. Source? I never seen anyone arguing theses things for the sake of self driving. Are you just assuming that because people that want self driving really want self driving and the auto industry couldn't possible works on 2 things at the same time?
asah 7y ago
For selected use cases, self driving makes a ton of sense to me. example: stop-and-go traffic - instead we could unlock millions of hours of human productivity (or provide entertainment). example: self-parking and come-to-me, esp in closed garages. Parallel parking is hard for humans and we're poor at space utilization. example: environments where obstructions are unlikely... airplanes have had auto-pilot for a long time... why not highway 80 in the middle of nowhere? why not trucks queuing to load/unload containers at port (or conference centers) - just drive up your incoming truck, grab your personal effects and take over the next outgoing truck while it queues for hours delivering a load and getting the next load. There's lots of uses for self driving vehicles even before we deal with the hard cases. But they're not sexy and of course a tiny fraction of the labor savings and freedom-making.
- briandear 7y ago
  > airplanes have had auto-pilot for a long time... why not highway 80 in the middle of nowhere? You don’t get a stalled car on a Victor airway in the sky. You also don’t have to worry about obstacle avoidance for the most part, in the sky. If an aviation autopilot can’t hold the altitude or heading (such as in turbulence or in mountain up and downdrafts,) it will simply keep the wings level. Airplane autopilots follow explicit instructions: fly heading 143 at 14000 feet; descend at 500 fpm. Hold over a VOR using 1 minute legs at 200kts. A car autopilot on the other hand, has to react to the physical surroundings. Not only “follow the I-10 at 75mph,” but also, watch out for incoming traffic, lane closures, or some kid on a bicycle that wanders into the road, or a dead animal in the road, or wet roads, icy roads, etc. There is no such thing as Instrument Flight Rules for driving, meaning a car autopilot has to be aware of the visual, while an airplane doesn’t: it just flies the precise route programmed without any awareness that the route might fly through a flock of geese. An airplane autopilot will fly you right into the ground if you let it. There is a lot of skill and training around airplane autopilot, and while it’s amazing and useful, it’s a lot more than simply turning it on and it flies you automatically to Denver.
nicpottier 7y ago
I'm not sure what you are saying actually maps to reality. Frame and chassis have never been safer and manufacturers continue to improve. Many (most) new cars have automatic emergency braking that continue to improve. New cars seem to have an ever increasing number of air bags to protect passengers. All these things are happening at the same time that self-driving is taking place. Tesla FWIW is pretty good at all the above despite their focus on self driving as well. I agree it is just as ridiculous to say we need level 5 to be make something useful. Will it be decades before we have cars without steering wheels? Sure, maybe even longer. But what exists is already pretty great in most environments and only getting better. (IE, crawling along in a traffic jam at ~15mph is something I would really love to never do again and it seems self driving systems can handle this with aplomb these days)
winter_blue 7y ago
We could have achieved "self driving" in a sense, even back in the 80s, if we had the will to spend billions (maybe over a trillion) on putting monorail power line tracks on roads, having designed electric cars that latch onto them, and have a national traffic control system that controls/drives them. The traffic control system would have perfect knowledge of where every car is, and could direct traffic in a highly optimal manner from point A to point B for each vehicle. The vehicle's themselves would have systems in place that prevent collision (similar to the system that NYC subway has). Altogether, it could have been achieved, but would have required an unprecedented level of public spending.
kbenson 7y ago
What's really annoying to me is that we've been sold computer vision as the current solution, when it's obvious that if it is the eventual solution it's a long time out because our understanding of the field just isn't nearly as strong as it needs to be, but it's edged out a lot of interim solutions that could have been a lot safer, even if they have downsides. For example, we could have embedded special markers (or spikes with RFID, or more active wireless, or any number of things that could have provided far more accurate lane detection as long as we were willing to require some up-front work to deploy it for special routes. Combined with very reliable lane detection and restricted to specific deployed areas where it could be tested, computer vision and/or radar/lidar for vehicle and large object detection (which would be mostly sufficient for most highway/freeway use) could likely provide a very safe system. The lower requirements for achieving safety might mean we could actually get some busses outfitted as well. But that would require some actual state action, as no private company would (or should, if they were to keep it proprietary at least) deploy along large stretches of highway freeway. Covering I-5 from Northern California to Southern California would provide many opportunities, but be an enormous cost.
clairity 7y ago
technology has made good progress improving safety, to the point that it's mainly a social problem at this point. we've allowed cars to be all sorts of things (status symbols, entertainment centers, etc.) other than transportation devices requiring high skill and attention to operate safely, at the expense of life and limb. for cars to be safe for drivers and riders, we need to optimize two things and strip away the rest (especially an over-reliance on technology as savior): 1. minimize distraction and maximize attention on the act of driving 2. maximize the skill of the driver in controlling the vehicle in all sorts of (unexpected) conditions technology can actually reduce safety, either because it allows drivers to pay less attention or it lowers the skill bar. driver assist technologies--lane assist or automatic braking--fall into this category. that's not to say safety technologies shouldn't continue to be developed--structural crash safety improvements, for example, don't have the same detrimental effects on driver attention or skill (with the caveat that ever-increasing weights can decrease control and increase lethality). it's important to distinguish technological advancements that acually improve safety rather than our perceptions of it.
turk73 7y ago
Totally agree. We skipped right over "better driver training" in order to have meme stock stocks that short squeeze to nearly $1000. Such awful anti-patterns in humanity.
judge2020 7y ago
All of the other solutions you mention is where engineering resources are actually going, save for maybe the seatbelt enhancements. Every new car effectively comes with pedestrian crash prevention[0]; also, Volvo had a car with a hood airbag in 2013, and it looks like other auto manufacturers are looking into it[1]. Self-driving is only as hyped as it is due to the futuristic lure of the idea. 0: https://youtu.be/6owYPHpmDLU https://youtu.be/6owYPHpmDLU 1: https://www.autoblog.com/2017/12/13/patent-gm-external-airbags-for-pedestrians/ https://www.autoblog.com/2017/12/13/patent-gm-external-airba...
JKCalhoun 7y ago
Self-driving? It's called a bus.

by Alupis 7y ago

_pmf_ 7y ago

Comma.ai kind of follows the "improving lane detection until it drives you completely" line, at least according to what I get from this interview with Hotz: https://lexfridman.com/george-hotz/ https://lexfridman.com/george-hotz/ He's still a bit too optimistic for my taste.

farisjarrah 7y ago
I bought in to Comma.ai at first and even started porting my car over. But I quickly realized that the whole comma.ai crowd is way way to cavalier with safety. One day I was driving down the freeway and saw a small fender bender occur in front of me. I looked up at my dash and it was all ripped up with wires hanging everywhere because I was working on the Comma.ai stuff. If it had been me in that fender bender you know that insurance would definitely blame me for that given that I was messing with the OBDII and radar sensors. As cool as Comma.ai is, I really believe that their approach to allowing so much community involvement with little to no oversight is highly irresponsible. That being said.... If they do succeed, and get some sort of government approval or oversight.... You bet I'm putting that stuff back in. Its cool A.F.

sam_goody 7y ago

IMO, flying cars will eventually arrive. Perhaps it will be limited to specific "lanes" (it will be much more palatable to the masses if it must (like cars) keep to a limited area). But it will not need to recognize pedestrians and bikers and human driven cars, and some standard will be introduced to allow all them self driving cars to talk to each other. At that point, Level 5 will be much easier, even obvious. All he effort invested in assistive driving will seem silly.

krzat 7y ago
I wonder if it's possible to solve noise problem with flying cars. Maybe use active noise cancellation at the source? No idea if it's even theoretically possible, but would be neat.
- arethuza 7y ago
  Aren't flying cars going to be much noisier than surface cars?
  - krzat 7y ago
    Yes, that was my point. We will need some clever tech to make the noise bearable.
  - briandear 7y ago
    Joby is using some low noise props that are very effective. Quieter than most of the ridiculous motorcycles and loud cars on the 101. If we care about noise, we should be addressing the motorcycle industry. I can’t hear a C-130 flying overhead at 1000 feet when I am in my house, but I can hear motorcycles zipping by on the freeway behind my house.
- nradov 7y ago
  No, it's not physically possible to do any significant active cancellation of the noise caused by a rotor / propeller spinning through the air. The noise sources are too spread out (especially with multi-rotor designs) and cover too much of the audible range. Blade shape can be tuned to an extent for minimizing noise but that also reduces efficiency (not much to spare). Larger, slower turning blades are also quieter but there are practical physical limits on size and weight.

neuronic 7y ago

> This whole self driving, fully autonomous thing has become some sort of strange faux-religion. What really bugs me, as someone working in consulting as a hands-on backend developer with a previous background in technical consulting at an accounting Big4 (student job), is the insane amount of PR, politics and marketing talk by people who have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what they are talking about. I witnessed politicians and C-level industry people talking out of their asses to ... idk ... drive stocks? Look smart in the face of Tesla? PR? No clue. Self-proclaimed experts in magazines and talk shows raving about how AI is going to change everything. I had colleagues telling customers about the magnificent rise of AI and none of them could even spell "gradient descent". Backed by a law or accounting degree they KNOW that self-driving is just around the corner and they are very vocal about it while easily impressed by tightly controlled demos at some international tech fair. Everyone just seems to fall into the hype trap without a single brain-byte spent on researching the actual issues and what's most sad is actual engineers/technical people not doing their due diligence and informing themselves BUT THEN GOING OUT TO TELL THEIR NON-TECHNICAL FRIENDS ABOUT THE AUTONOMOUS FUTURE. Ugh. I held a minor internal talk at work about self-driving cars for people generally with other backgrounds but light superficial interest due to "Tesla" and "the hype". They were surprised to see that we are likely decades away from actual Level 4 (not the marketing garbage that some companies put out) because even a slight change in weather can really fuck with all systems on the roads right now.

tim333 7y ago
Yeah but speaking as someone kinda on the other side there are things like this 'actual Level 4' delivering stuff for real in Wuhan https://kr-asia.com/jd-com-uses-l4-autonomous-driving-solutions-to-deliver-goods-in-locked-down-wuhan https://kr-asia.com/jd-com-uses-l4-autonomous-driving-soluti... Fair enough it's not very good - that one just went 600m - but it's hard to argue it won't exist for decades when it exists now. And historically going form sorta works but is rubbish in info tech eg. early cellphones, internet and so on - to works well doesn't seem to take that long. Five to ten years perhaps typically.
- ipsi 7y ago
  The issue is that there are so, so many edge cases to worry about. Simple example: someone decides to troll you in your self-driving car and steps out in front of it. You don't have controls in the car, so you can't go around them - you have to wait for them to move. In reality, it seems like it would resolve quickly - you get out and yell at them, call the police if that doesn't work, etc. But it can get more sinister - criminals _already_ block the road to force drivers out of their car to rob them[1][2]. Now, if you know that might happen, you can just drive around the obstacle. Unless, of course, you're in a self-driving car where you might not even be able to get it to do a u-turn. Related issues would be areas where the practical advice is "don't stop" - not even at red lights - if you're there late at night due to the risk of car jacking[3][4] (this might be out-of-date now, to be fair). Can rules like that be encoded into a self-driving car? OK, yes, you probably could find a way to do it. But that's almost certainly just the tip of the iceberg in terms of "ways people will fuck with self-driving cars" and "things people do that are technically illegal but still safer than the alternative." Could you solve enough of those in 5-10 years, _on top of_ making self-driving cars work in sun/rain/snow/fog/night/tornados/etc safely and consistently? I think that's very unlikely. Decades seems far more likely to me. [1] https://abc7chicago.com/593111/ https://abc7chicago.com/593111/ [2] (Non-EU only) https://wgntv.com/2015/03/31/robbers-set-up-fake-road-blocks-then-attack-drivers-on-south-side/ https://wgntv.com/2015/03/31/robbers-set-up-fake-road-blocks... [3] https://eu.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2018/12/11/man-carjacked-red-light-west-side/2274423002/ https://eu.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/201... [4] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLEO/comments/2rzsdz/are_there_any_neighborhoods_youll_forgive_someone/cnlbtfr/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLEO/comments/2rzsdz/are_there_an...

throwaway92384 7y ago

It is a religion, nothing "faux" about it. It fills the same needs, and uses the same mechanisms within the human mind as more traditional religion. It is also completely bonkers, as it makes bold assertions about the real world, with which reality will eventually disagree, whereas older religions tended to keep their most dogmatic positions unfalsifiable (the afterlife, the soul, vague prophecies, ...)

Nasrudith 7y ago
Calling it a religion makes about as much sense as calling efforts to cure AIDS or vaccinate Polio prior to the success of Salk a religion. There is a clear and obvious good to achieve, one which is theoretically implementatable and has predecessors for success. Reality can only disagree if it is outright proven impossible due to something - say in this counterfactual Polio has a 5% of turning any unique adjacent molecule it into more polio. otherwise they are literally Just like how taking the spit of a polio patient and putting it in saline with a sprig of mint will spread instead of vaccinating but it doesn't prove a polio vaccine is impossible because "we tried and people got sick". It is clearly a goal and a realistic one within even a few decades pessimisitcally given that its ability is creeping upwards.
- snowwrestler 7y ago
  There is zero proof that autonomous vehicles can be safer than human drivers. There’s lots of proof that autonomous vehicles are technically possible, but the leap to “definitely better than humans” is a very big one and it’s really being taken on faith right now. In contrast, treating disease directly affect the incidence of that disease.
  - lovehashbrowns 7y ago
    There's "proof" that computers can be safer than humans. Faster reaction times, don't get tired, don't lose focus, can perform computations much faster than humans.
    - 7y ago

mcv 7y ago

I'm very excited about the possibility of self-driving cars. Let the car drive while I take a nap or read a book. But I have a hard time believing that the technology is anywhere close to being mature. You need a lot of contextual knowledge to drive safely in unusual circumstances. I totally believe that within well-defined limits, AI already outperforms humans, but traffic has no well-defined limits. Anything can happen.

KurtMueller 7y ago
Let the car go park itself while I walk into the restaurant. Let the car go fill itself up with gas at night while I am soundly asleep.
- brandonmenc 7y ago
  > Let the car go fill itself up with gas at night while I am soundly asleep. I'm bearish on both self-driving and the universal adoption of electric cars, but everyone will be plugging their car in at home long before they can make one that drives itself to the gas station.
  - parliament32 7y ago
    >everyone will be plugging their car in at home Absolutely not. Having to wait for hours to get a few kms of driving distance is way too much of a friction point for EVs to ever be more than a novelty, in addition to the usual complaints of people with only street parking, garages without outlets, etc. Either we'll get the battery-swap situation rolling or invent a faster charging tech, but either way there'll be some sort of "station" in the picture.
  - skgoa 7y ago
    > everyone will be plugging their car in at home I realize that a lot of people here are privileged enough to own a single family home, but the majority of humanity lives in apartments and parks on the street. Trickle-charging at home is not a universal solution. The only practical solution seems to be some form of rapid charging of the car's energy storage. Either by pumping huge amounts of amps into a huge battery pack, or adding some kind of chemical fuel that gets reacted in an internal combustion engine or a fuel cell.

keanzu 7y ago

SAE Level 5 is completely transformative, it will utterly change the market and the use of cars. Once you can conveniently call up an automated Uber the need, at least in cities, to buy your own car will effectively vanish. This is Uber's endgame - get humans out of the loop. As long as cars still need human drivers this cost savings can't be realized. > Forget better braking systems that apply themselves automatically. This already exists: Mercedes, for example, first rolled out "Active Brake Assist" to a production model in 1996. Moreover any fully self driving vehicle will definitely need to be able to apply the brakes.

TheAdamist 7y ago
Uber has no relevance once level 5 exists. Vehicle manufacturers will run the vehicles directly if there is any profit to be made from a taxi service.
- bluGill 7y ago
  I doubt it. Vertical integration only works so far. I think the manufactures will sell cars to those want to run a taxi company. This is, and will remain a race to the bottom because competition is fierce: people buy price and first to get to them. They will also sell cars to normal people. Most people don't think about how convenient it is to have the storage of their personal car. If parking is free or cheap (which is it in the suburbs) having your golf clubs in the trunk or a spare diaper in the glove box are worth the little extra cost, not to mention your car is always there so no need to wait for the taxi to in busy times. Of course there is also the city, but if you live in a city self driving cars still suffer from congestion and so public mass transit still has big advantages. In fact because the self driving taxi is spending time empty waiting for the next rider it adds to the problem meaning for even more people public transit is worth the hassles with it (which in turn means more demand to make transit better)
  - keanzu 7y ago
    Congestion problems are dramatically alleviated if you can convert your city over to self driving only. Once the cars can drive in platoons they are packed in tight, no more accordion effect. On the way something like UberPool would be needed. Or the taxi can just drive me to the nearest train station and I can take mass transit into the city. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platoon_(automobile) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platoon_(automobile)

KurtMueller 7y ago

Hey man, I want all of it, especially while on the way to full self-driving cars.

emiliobumachar 7y ago

Would Tesla be a heretic in this religion you just modeled? They're all about boring driver assistance, and acceptance of a low number of deaths. They don't even try Level 5 for now, and get a lot of criticism for requiring that the human pays attention at all times.

fxtentacle 7y ago
No they get criticism for calling the whole thing "autopilot" and presenting it as if paying attention was optional.
ezzzzz 7y ago
Even my engineer colleagues still operate under the impression that Tesla Autopilot == Self-Driving. One of the dangerous things, to me, is a combination of PR and user experience. The PR/advertisement creates the impression (directly or indirectly) that a Tesla drives itself, and the technology enforces the sentiment by working well 'most' of the time. This article just enforces this. The driver killed was an engineer, who noted that Tesla's auto-pilot would veer into danger (in the spot he was killed), filed a report/complaint, yet still, had enough confidence in the tech to read a quick text.
Alupis 7y ago
> and get a lot of criticism for requiring that the human pays attention at all times Because that's the law... and... > They don't even try Level 5 for now That's not what Elon has been telling us for years... Full Level 5 is just months away!

syshum 7y ago

Actually one of the biggest obstacles to Level 5 is expectation of Zero Deaths for Level 5 autonomous operations. The standard should be fewer deaths than human-operated (or even auto assisted ) cars. When you have thousands of machines traveling in close proximity at speeds exceeding 50mph there will be deaths, this is unavoidable. We need to reduce those as much as possible but to demand ZERO before the technology can be used is just unrealistic That said, Just because some people are working towards Level 5, does not mean all of the other things you are asking for are not also being worked on, it is not a zero sum game. There are enough people that we can have teams working on both. This complaint is repeated for everything, "Well if people were not working on X drug that I don't care about they could cure cancer" We can have a better braking system, better frames, etc AND still try to achieve level 5 autonomous driving. It is not an either-or proposition

aguyfromnb 7y ago
>The standard should be fewer deaths than human-operated (or even auto assisted ) cars. How do we go about testing this? By tallying up autonomous deaths until there are fewer per year than human drivers? >We need to reduce those as much as possible but to demand ZERO before the technology can be used is just unrealistic Human driver skill varies immensely by person. The idea that anyone who is (or even considers themselves to be) a "good" driver will never accept "average death rates" as a risk when getting in an autonomous car. I know I wouldn't. The goal has to be zero or it will never be accepted by the public.
- bluGill 7y ago
  It isn't hard to show an order of magnitude less deaths even with non-zero deaths. At that point expect government to mandate level 5 on all cars.
- galangalalgol 7y ago
  The goal is always zero, but we all know that will never happen. Nothing is perfect. And assistance technologies may be more dangerous than level 5 because we physically cannot maintain concentration when few actions or decisions ar required from us. Some studies even indicate manual tranamissions make us safer, possibly for that reason. When level 5 is available, and it will be, because forever is a long time, good drivers shouldn't have to buy those cars. Assuming money is still a thing. Insurance comapnies may start forcing people financially towards sel drive only cars by hiking rates on humans, but if you give up your privacy with a driving monitor and they asses that you are safer, they would probably rather you drive and waive the hike.

fxtentacle 7y ago

Count me guilty then, because I am also hoping to one day take a nap while the car drives me around. Until then, I found the next best thing is booking an Uber. They'll even use venture capital to subsidize my ride :) But wait, isn't that exactly why they are now in such a rush and cannot accept anything less than full autonomy? From what I heard, Uber has been burning billions of VC money to capture market share. And their model just won't work financially if they need to pay drivers a living wage. So they attempted trickery to pay them less as "independent" contractors, but now that governments are stepping in to prevent that, there is only one option left: Uber needs self-driving cars or else they'll go bankrupt. At least, that's my theory.

vonmoltke 7y ago
I'm not certain self-driving cars are going to save them. Right now, what they pay their driver's is the all-in cost for their fleet. When they switch to fleet Management, they are going to be paying capital costs and maintenance instead. I don't think the latter costs are much lower, if at all, than what they pay drivers now.
khafra 7y ago
> Uber needs self-driving cars or else they'll go bankrupt. > At least, that's my theory. I believe it--at least, I hope it would take an existential threat to make them push kludged-together pedestrian-killers into use on the roads.
env123 7y ago
There is this other technology called "chauffeur"
- copperx 7y ago
  And in the third world (e.g., Mexico), they are an order of magnitude cheaper than a Tesla.
briandear 7y ago
> So they attempted trickery to pay them less as "independent" contractors An Uber driver is the very definition of an independent contractor. Many drivers also drive for Lyft. How can they be “employees” of Uber while also driving Lyft? Or doing Door Dash? If Uber drivers were employees, they would have to work where and when assigned. As it is now, Uber drivers come and go as they please. I am not sure how an Uber driver is any different than a freelance journalist or musician.

matwood 7y ago

> This whole self driving, fully autonomous thing has become some sort of strange faux-religion. Just follow the money. The near future financials of companies like Uber and Lyft (and to a lesses extent Tesla), rely on fully autonomous self driving.

brokenmachine 7y ago
And that is why they will fail. You heard it here first.

ghaff 7y ago

In addition to all the hype-sters and scammers, you're probably seeing a lot of the often young urbanites with dreams of never owning a car and getting chauffeured around by super-cheap robo-Ubers all their lives. Many of them are either in denial or are feeling pretty betrayed at the moment. That said, there are legitimate issues with incrementally improving assistive driving. People text and drive today without assistive driving. If a car can mostly make its way in rush hour down the highway autonomously, does anyone think that people won't routinely watch Netflix on their commute?

overcast 7y ago

Exactly. For anything but open highway, self driving is so far into the future, that we should be focusing on making smaller pieces safer, ultimately building up to the end goal. If there is a self driving car in my lifetime that will drive up the windy mountain road to Yosemite, in the winter, then I'm the Pope. This all or nothing shit has to stop.

ghaff 7y ago
I honestly don't understand why there isn't more attention paid/focus on the fully autonomous limited access highway driving in "good" weather use case. That would be hugely attractive for a lot of people. Read a book/watch a movie while heading up to the mountains for the weekend or, for many, take a nap for part of their morning commute. I suspect it's because it's less interesting to the demographic that's more concerned about being driven to and from bars on their night out or who just don't want to own a car period. But highway driving seems like a huge convenience and safety enhancement even if you just punt on city driving for at least the next few decades.

NotATroll 7y ago

> Forget better frame, chassis, and body panel design to protect pedestrians! We won't need them if AI never hits anyone. Most car manufacturers have had this figured out for a long time with crumple zones and the like. > Forget better braking systems that apply themselves automatically Assisted braking technology is already implemented in some cars. Hell, Tesla implements basically exactly what you're asking for... > Forget seat belt enhancements since that'll just inhibit nap time in my self driving car. Teslas don't let you sleep in your car, you have to move the steering wheel periodically to prove you're still paying attention or it'll pull over and shut down. Also, I'm not quite sure what you're expecting seat belt enhancements to be. Far be it for me to defend the AI hype, but your "things we should be focusing on instead" don't make much sense when we ARE focusing on them.

wbl 7y ago
Modern cars are deadly to pedestrians, especially SUVs.
- amflare 7y ago
  Most 1-3 ton objects moving with any sort of momentum are. What is your point?
  - MereInterest 7y ago
    70% more likely to be killed when struck by a larger car [1]. With a higher front face, pedestrians are struck in the chest, rather than the legs. Turns out, broken legs are a lot more survivable than damage to internal organs. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/oct/07/a-deadly-problem-should-we-ban-suvs-from-our-cities https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/oct/07/a-deadly-prob...
    - anon73044 7y ago
      By that logic, a low slung sports car is the most pedestrian safe and Ferrari's should get a pedestrian safety rebate. I'll take one!

dwild 7y ago

> Forget better frame, chassis, and body panel design to protect pedestrians! We won't need them if AI never hits anyone. > Forget better braking systems that apply themselves automatically. We don't need that if AI can always avoid the need for sudden stops. > Forget seat belt enhancements since that'll just inhibit nap time in my self driving car. Source? I never seen anyone arguing theses things for the sake of self driving. Are you just assuming that because people that want self driving really want self driving and the auto industry couldn't possible works on 2 things at the same time?

asah 7y ago

For selected use cases, self driving makes a ton of sense to me. example: stop-and-go traffic - instead we could unlock millions of hours of human productivity (or provide entertainment). example: self-parking and come-to-me, esp in closed garages. Parallel parking is hard for humans and we're poor at space utilization. example: environments where obstructions are unlikely... airplanes have had auto-pilot for a long time... why not highway 80 in the middle of nowhere? why not trucks queuing to load/unload containers at port (or conference centers) - just drive up your incoming truck, grab your personal effects and take over the next outgoing truck while it queues for hours delivering a load and getting the next load. There's lots of uses for self driving vehicles even before we deal with the hard cases. But they're not sexy and of course a tiny fraction of the labor savings and freedom-making.

briandear 7y ago
> airplanes have had auto-pilot for a long time... why not highway 80 in the middle of nowhere? You don’t get a stalled car on a Victor airway in the sky. You also don’t have to worry about obstacle avoidance for the most part, in the sky. If an aviation autopilot can’t hold the altitude or heading (such as in turbulence or in mountain up and downdrafts,) it will simply keep the wings level. Airplane autopilots follow explicit instructions: fly heading 143 at 14000 feet; descend at 500 fpm. Hold over a VOR using 1 minute legs at 200kts. A car autopilot on the other hand, has to react to the physical surroundings. Not only “follow the I-10 at 75mph,” but also, watch out for incoming traffic, lane closures, or some kid on a bicycle that wanders into the road, or a dead animal in the road, or wet roads, icy roads, etc. There is no such thing as Instrument Flight Rules for driving, meaning a car autopilot has to be aware of the visual, while an airplane doesn’t: it just flies the precise route programmed without any awareness that the route might fly through a flock of geese. An airplane autopilot will fly you right into the ground if you let it. There is a lot of skill and training around airplane autopilot, and while it’s amazing and useful, it’s a lot more than simply turning it on and it flies you automatically to Denver.

nicpottier 7y ago

I'm not sure what you are saying actually maps to reality. Frame and chassis have never been safer and manufacturers continue to improve. Many (most) new cars have automatic emergency braking that continue to improve. New cars seem to have an ever increasing number of air bags to protect passengers. All these things are happening at the same time that self-driving is taking place. Tesla FWIW is pretty good at all the above despite their focus on self driving as well. I agree it is just as ridiculous to say we need level 5 to be make something useful. Will it be decades before we have cars without steering wheels? Sure, maybe even longer. But what exists is already pretty great in most environments and only getting better. (IE, crawling along in a traffic jam at ~15mph is something I would really love to never do again and it seems self driving systems can handle this with aplomb these days)

winter_blue 7y ago

We could have achieved "self driving" in a sense, even back in the 80s, if we had the will to spend billions (maybe over a trillion) on putting monorail power line tracks on roads, having designed electric cars that latch onto them, and have a national traffic control system that controls/drives them. The traffic control system would have perfect knowledge of where every car is, and could direct traffic in a highly optimal manner from point A to point B for each vehicle. The vehicle's themselves would have systems in place that prevent collision (similar to the system that NYC subway has). Altogether, it could have been achieved, but would have required an unprecedented level of public spending.

kbenson 7y ago

What's really annoying to me is that we've been sold computer vision as the current solution, when it's obvious that if it is the eventual solution it's a long time out because our understanding of the field just isn't nearly as strong as it needs to be, but it's edged out a lot of interim solutions that could have been a lot safer, even if they have downsides. For example, we could have embedded special markers (or spikes with RFID, or more active wireless, or any number of things that could have provided far more accurate lane detection as long as we were willing to require some up-front work to deploy it for special routes. Combined with very reliable lane detection and restricted to specific deployed areas where it could be tested, computer vision and/or radar/lidar for vehicle and large object detection (which would be mostly sufficient for most highway/freeway use) could likely provide a very safe system. The lower requirements for achieving safety might mean we could actually get some busses outfitted as well. But that would require some actual state action, as no private company would (or should, if they were to keep it proprietary at least) deploy along large stretches of highway freeway. Covering I-5 from Northern California to Southern California would provide many opportunities, but be an enormous cost.

clairity 7y ago

technology has made good progress improving safety, to the point that it's mainly a social problem at this point. we've allowed cars to be all sorts of things (status symbols, entertainment centers, etc.) other than transportation devices requiring high skill and attention to operate safely, at the expense of life and limb. for cars to be safe for drivers and riders, we need to optimize two things and strip away the rest (especially an over-reliance on technology as savior): 1. minimize distraction and maximize attention on the act of driving 2. maximize the skill of the driver in controlling the vehicle in all sorts of (unexpected) conditions technology can actually reduce safety, either because it allows drivers to pay less attention or it lowers the skill bar. driver assist technologies--lane assist or automatic braking--fall into this category. that's not to say safety technologies shouldn't continue to be developed--structural crash safety improvements, for example, don't have the same detrimental effects on driver attention or skill (with the caveat that ever-increasing weights can decrease control and increase lethality). it's important to distinguish technological advancements that acually improve safety rather than our perceptions of it.

turk73 7y ago

Totally agree. We skipped right over "better driver training" in order to have meme stock stocks that short squeeze to nearly $1000. Such awful anti-patterns in humanity.

judge2020 7y ago

All of the other solutions you mention is where engineering resources are actually going, save for maybe the seatbelt enhancements. Every new car effectively comes with pedestrian crash prevention[0]; also, Volvo had a car with a hood airbag in 2013, and it looks like other auto manufacturers are looking into it[1]. Self-driving is only as hyped as it is due to the futuristic lure of the idea. 0: https://youtu.be/6owYPHpmDLU https://youtu.be/6owYPHpmDLU 1: https://www.autoblog.com/2017/12/13/patent-gm-external-airbags-for-pedestrians/ https://www.autoblog.com/2017/12/13/patent-gm-external-airba...

JKCalhoun 7y ago

Self-driving? It's called a bus.