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1/2 as many times as a human does. I've driven about 250,000 miles in my life and had 5 accidents, none with injury. But I think a self driving car could do a l

1/2 as many times as a human does. I've driven about 250,000 miles in my life and had 5 accidents, none with injury. But I think a self driving car could do a lot better.

ashtonkem 6y ago
My skepticism of self driving tech is all weather based. Here in LA, I’m confident that a self driving car could do fine; slow traffic (normally), good roads, low precipitation and clear lines make for easy driving. But back when I lived in Colorado I had multiple times when I had to drive on a highway with completely obscured lines, poor weather, and extremely dangerous consequences for failure. I recall one drive in a blizzard where all the cars driving had to negotiate their own space without any feedback of where the lines were supposed to be. If I recall correctly we all settled on 1 fewer lanes than the road “should” have. I do not believe that self driving tech is capable of doing that yet, especially on mixed human/robot roads.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  The guys who can cover California with AVs will already become extremely wealthy. Maybe the north gets them ten years later, twenty years later, a hundred years later. The economic benefits to local public transit in California alone would be huge. Add in commercial intra-state trucking and you've got a nutty advantage already. Maybe it'll turbo up California's massive economy even more.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  Maybe lane marker tracking isn’t the way to go? I’ve always wondered if it would be possible (in the US; through a massive initiative) to just paint lines (or embed something in or on the road) in the center of the lanes and have the cars just follow the lines. How much would that cost?
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    No paint will solve the problem of snow covering said paint. So you’ll have to embed them. The hardware alone would cost billions of dollars to purchase, and installation would cost either trillions of dollars to rework all the roads now, or decades to install as our road network ages out. Long story short, it’s not feasible.
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      But isn’t that what people said of the National Highway System? That it wasn’t feasible? And yet here we are almost half a century later...
      - ashtonkem 6y ago
        I doubt it. Sure, I’m sure there were complaints about the costs, but the value of a massive road network has been known for millennia. Spending a trillion ripping up a perfectly good road network in order to try out a new technology that’ll generate profits for a small number of companies is an insane plan, and genuinely might not work.
        colejohnson66 6y ago
        We don’t necessarily need to rip up the existing roads. We could just put some radio based markers on the road. Then when they do construction, they could be easily moved, too.
        ashtonkem 6y ago
        It’s true that markers on the pavement are cheaper to implement than markers in the pavement, I agree. I’m also not convinced it solves anything. In the scenario above the problem wasn’t the fact that the lines weren’t visible, the problem was other cars. This is particularly problematic when many of those other cars are human beings who will never have access to modified road information. In this scenario a smart car that knows where the lane should be is still forced to dynamically negotiate for space with other vehicles, sans communication protocols. That is a very hard problem, one I do not believe is currently solved.
  - joshribakoff 6y ago
    It would cost a lot more than just mapping the lines & state of the infrastructure like lanes & traffic lights in a database, which is what Waymo already does. Adding additional paint on the road(s) doesn't help the car know what to do when there are weird edge cases. Following lines on the road was already solved 10yrs ago and isn't really the problem.
- Shivetya 6y ago
  Two notes, I think it may be the opposite. Personal experience with my model 3, two cases. One, two lane road, flat, rain moderate to heavy, traffic in both directions, 55mph speed limit. I relied on the car to do most of the driving as oncoming lights from cars could make it hard for me to see, either had their brights on or misaligned. I could use the cars display out of the corner of my eye to see it knew the road lines second, in fog, it certainly sees better than I do, more readily picking out the road and even detecting a vehicle in front of me whose lights were basically out. still as I always say, with self driving I am a backseat driver sitting in the driver's seat.
  - aguyfromnb 6y ago
    >Personal experience with my model 3, two cases Hackernews takes pride in being a data-driven, scientific community, except when it comes to Tesla self-driving, in which case everyone leans on personal anecdotes.
microcolonel 6y ago
Not sure what the stats are on this, but I'm pretty sure people don't generally die on the freeway by steering directly into concrete barriers while accelerating.
aguyfromnb 6y ago
>But I think a self driving car could do a lot better. 1 accident every 50,000 miles is not a good record. I don't want 'self-driving' cars on the road that are only marginally better than the worst drivers out there.

1/2 as many times as a human does. I've driven about 250,000 miles in my life and had 5 accidents, none with injury. But I think a self driving car could do a lot better.

ashtonkem 6y ago

My skepticism of self driving tech is all weather based. Here in LA, I’m confident that a self driving car could do fine; slow traffic (normally), good roads, low precipitation and clear lines make for easy driving. But back when I lived in Colorado I had multiple times when I had to drive on a highway with completely obscured lines, poor weather, and extremely dangerous consequences for failure. I recall one drive in a blizzard where all the cars driving had to negotiate their own space without any feedback of where the lines were supposed to be. If I recall correctly we all settled on 1 fewer lanes than the road “should” have. I do not believe that self driving tech is capable of doing that yet, especially on mixed human/robot roads.

renewiltord 6y ago
The guys who can cover California with AVs will already become extremely wealthy. Maybe the north gets them ten years later, twenty years later, a hundred years later. The economic benefits to local public transit in California alone would be huge. Add in commercial intra-state trucking and you've got a nutty advantage already. Maybe it'll turbo up California's massive economy even more.
colejohnson66 6y ago
Maybe lane marker tracking isn’t the way to go? I’ve always wondered if it would be possible (in the US; through a massive initiative) to just paint lines (or embed something in or on the road) in the center of the lanes and have the cars just follow the lines. How much would that cost?
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  No paint will solve the problem of snow covering said paint. So you’ll have to embed them. The hardware alone would cost billions of dollars to purchase, and installation would cost either trillions of dollars to rework all the roads now, or decades to install as our road network ages out. Long story short, it’s not feasible.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    But isn’t that what people said of the National Highway System? That it wasn’t feasible? And yet here we are almost half a century later...
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      I doubt it. Sure, I’m sure there were complaints about the costs, but the value of a massive road network has been known for millennia. Spending a trillion ripping up a perfectly good road network in order to try out a new technology that’ll generate profits for a small number of companies is an insane plan, and genuinely might not work.
      - colejohnson66 6y ago
        We don’t necessarily need to rip up the existing roads. We could just put some radio based markers on the road. Then when they do construction, they could be easily moved, too.
        ashtonkem 6y ago
        It’s true that markers on the pavement are cheaper to implement than markers in the pavement, I agree. I’m also not convinced it solves anything. In the scenario above the problem wasn’t the fact that the lines weren’t visible, the problem was other cars. This is particularly problematic when many of those other cars are human beings who will never have access to modified road information. In this scenario a smart car that knows where the lane should be is still forced to dynamically negotiate for space with other vehicles, sans communication protocols. That is a very hard problem, one I do not believe is currently solved.
- joshribakoff 6y ago
  It would cost a lot more than just mapping the lines & state of the infrastructure like lanes & traffic lights in a database, which is what Waymo already does. Adding additional paint on the road(s) doesn't help the car know what to do when there are weird edge cases. Following lines on the road was already solved 10yrs ago and isn't really the problem.
Shivetya 6y ago
Two notes, I think it may be the opposite. Personal experience with my model 3, two cases. One, two lane road, flat, rain moderate to heavy, traffic in both directions, 55mph speed limit. I relied on the car to do most of the driving as oncoming lights from cars could make it hard for me to see, either had their brights on or misaligned. I could use the cars display out of the corner of my eye to see it knew the road lines second, in fog, it certainly sees better than I do, more readily picking out the road and even detecting a vehicle in front of me whose lights were basically out. still as I always say, with self driving I am a backseat driver sitting in the driver's seat.
- aguyfromnb 6y ago
  >Personal experience with my model 3, two cases Hackernews takes pride in being a data-driven, scientific community, except when it comes to Tesla self-driving, in which case everyone leans on personal anecdotes.

microcolonel 6y ago

Not sure what the stats are on this, but I'm pretty sure people don't generally die on the freeway by steering directly into concrete barriers while accelerating.

aguyfromnb 6y ago

>But I think a self driving car could do a lot better. 1 accident every 50,000 miles is not a good record. I don't want 'self-driving' cars on the road that are only marginally better than the worst drivers out there.