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We need an infrastructure architect here in the us. The bus I commute on went under, and I can’t be trusted to drive 120 miles a day and keep my speed in check.

We need an infrastructure architect here in the us. The bus I commute on went under, and I can’t be trusted to drive 120 miles a day and keep my speed in check. I started looking at the most automated rides I could find (Tesla is leagues ahead if I’m not mistaken), and I’m still... driving. I for one, would be more than happy to prolong my commute, on a dedicated, reduced speed lane, if it meant I could sit in the back seat and work. The belief that we’ll incrementally get to level 5 besides human drivers on the extant infrastructure (lanes) is very misplaced. Fingers crossed that the feds can develop a roadmap (sorry!) to support the transition from level 2 to level 5. It will not happen on open roadways—lidar or not!

random5634 6y ago
I've thought this would be great for longer runs. Put a wire in the road or something for the vehicles to follow. Once you are on the wire some protocol for merge points (also marked on the wire) etc.
- CrazyCatDog 6y ago
  This is one of the options, have radar on board pointing down to follow the line, sensors are each end of the car...
zapita 6y ago
You’re in luck. The Democratic majority in US congress has just announced yesterday that their next priority after passing the American Rescue Act will be a national infrastructure plan. https://twitter.com/hugolowell/status/1370488211034755072 https://twitter.com/hugolowell/status/1370488211034755072
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  Like, "shovel ready jobs" ?
  - zapita 6y ago
    I don’t know what that means.
ph2082 6y ago
Whoever come up with a this levels in autonomous driving (L1-L5) must be marketing genius. Ideally it should have been Yes or No answer to "does your car support autonomous driving ?", just like alive or dead. Right now, it is just another reason in list of Road accident deaths, till it perfected.
- Karunamon 6y ago
  This is law, so now you have to define “autonomous driving” in an unambiguous way. Hence, levels. Besides, we're in a transitional period on this tech, so I think there's value in defining "how" automatic the experience is.
- ghaff 6y ago
  It seems a fairly reasonable set of levels. For example, L4 seems like something that may be achievable in the foreseeable future if it means something like full autonomy on designated interstates in some weather conditions. That actually sounds like something that would be very useful for a lot of people (and probably a big safety benefit). It just doesn't do anything about eliminating private car ownership or the need to be able to drive at all. But, personally, those are of less interest to me anyway.
- URSpider94 6y ago
  Quite the opposite. It was defined by engineers, not marketing people, and it’s based on clear descriptions of the capabilities of the system, as well as who is in control. The binary statement youre looking for comes between L2 and L3. A L2 system is a driver assist system, the driver is in command at all times. An L3 system can drive itself (driver napping or otherwise occupied) under specific well-defined conditions.
xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
>Tesla is leagues ahead if I’m not mistaken You are. Pretty much every other manufacturer offers adaptive cruise control, lane keeping, and the like. They're just honest about their capabilities.
- SECProto 6y ago
  Comparing Tesla's "full self driving" features to adaptive cruise control or lanekeeping is a very dishonest representation of the capabilities. edit: I'm pretty anti-Tesla (strongly dislike the focus on the central screen and other driver-hostile 'features', don't think "full self driving" should be advertised as such, etc). But I still think their capabilities are significantly above the other car manufacturers enough that they shouldn't be directly compared in that way. But I guess readers like the fact that calling them "adaptive cruise control" and "active lanekeeping" is more accurate and much less bullshitty than Tesla.
  - URSpider94 6y ago
    Tesla doesn’t have full self driving yet. For the core autopilot features, reviews I’ve seen of GM SuperCruise rate it ahead of Tesla for lane-keeping and adaptive cruise control. The other advanced features that Tesla offers - navigation on AP and summon - are not much more than parlor tricks. I say this as a Tesla driver with access to those features on my car ...
zhdc1 6y ago
> I can’t be trusted to drive 120 miles a day and keep my speed in check If it's a matter of occasionally going over or under the speed limit (or if the speed limit on your route has sudden changes), you may want to look into getting a vehicle with a manual speed limiter. That, along with something like Waze, can be a big help.
- eganist 6y ago
  I believe Jag and Land Rover (same company) both have this, and it's immensely helpful. It's basically the inverse of cruise: rather than setting a speed floor that the car cruises at, it sets a speed ceiling that you can't exceed (unless you push through the kickdown on the throttle in some cars with a limiter, in which case the car assumes an emergent circumstance and bypasses the limiter for that circumstance)
  - omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
    Tesla has that too (speed limit mode).
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - CrazyCatDog 6y ago
    My wife’s bmw has it too—but that’s too easy to disengage. Needing to pull over and get out to change the limiter would cool any road rage. I should have said: I’m willing to accept a longer commute and up to twice as costly autonomous vehicle over the alternative which is me having to pay attention and frustrated for 60 minutes twice a day—-even once a week!
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      it's hard for me to see how this would be more safe. sometimes safety is best served by exceeding the speed limit. this is actually not uncommon. for example, a semi has pulled up next to me on the interstate and a turn is coming up. there is a car right behind me so I can't just hit the brakes and let the truck pull ahead. I really don't want to be right next to a semi during the turn, so I quickly accelerate past it.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bluefirebrand 6y ago
> The bus I commute on went under, and I can’t be trusted to drive 120 miles a day and keep my speed in check. I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest part of the problem here is a 60 mile commute twice a day. That's an absurd distance to drive for a job.
- CrazyCatDog 6y ago
  Totally agree but I serve two masters; both of which treat me very well—so not only is the commute the worst part of my day, it’s also the only negative part of the day.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    Are you certain you've considered all the negatives of a 60 mile commute? I'd encourage you to read this: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-commuting/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-...
    - kortilla 6y ago
      That analysis is pretty fatally flawed (at least for software jobs). When I was at google you could easily get by on working 6 hours in the office and commuting an hour each way. The housing cost difference was obscene and would easily offset the cost of a new car every other year. Like most Money Mustache article’s the analysis looks sound because “numbers” but the numbers have a bunch of fucked assumptions to reach them.
      - triceratops 6y ago
        > That analysis is pretty fatally flawed (at least for software jobs) > When I was at google So it's fatally flawed if you work at Google (or another high-paying tech company) as a SWE in Silicon Valley - which is a minuscule fraction of the working population of software engineers. It may not be the assumptions in the article that are "fucked". You might just be an edge case. > The housing cost difference was obscene and would easily offset the cost of a new car every other year. It's not just the cost of a new car. It's also the time and energy lost to the commute, the increased risk of a serious accident, the opportunity cost of all that time spent in traffic. As a SWE working at a big tech company in Silicon Valley, I've done pretty well financially by avoiding long commutes - and had lots more spare time. There's more than one way to skin a cat.
camjohnson26 6y ago
Trains solved this ages ago. More US cities should be investing in mass transit. Self-driving is a long tail problem because the number of things that can go wrong is infinite. Keeping the cars on tracks reduces the complexity substantially.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  trains are a great solution for point-to-point links between two dense areas (eg, city center to city center or intra-city transit). given that GP has a 120 mi commute, it's a fairly safe bet that they either live or work in a sparse area that would not be well served by a train. the appeal of a train drops off pretty fast if you have to drive to the station.
- kortilla 6y ago
  Trains didn’t solve this, they just made different problems. With trains you’re beholden to the schedules and the routes. They require dense living and comfort being packed in train cars with strangers.
  - burlesona 6y ago
    FWIW, while this is a representative description of trains in the US, it’s now how they work everywhere. When I lived in Italy there was very regular service from my little town to the nearby major cities, and while the trains were well-used they weren’t ever “packed.” We could have a similar train network if we wanted one, we just don’t want one enough to pay for it.
  - Fricken 6y ago
    Those aren't problems, they're solutions. The problem is in your head.
    - kortilla 6y ago
      No, schedules are absolutely a limitation
hanniabu 6y ago
Always nice to see people that still believe in the government to act competently. I mean really, we can't even maintain the roads. There's no way we'll be able to pull off some next level plan, let alone execute it in a reasonable timeframe. There's a fundamental breakdown that's happened somewhere in the past 50 years that's lead to the inability to properly manage the country's infrastructure and this doesn't just apply to roads. Is it a leadership issue? Self-serving corruption? I don't know, but what we have now is certainly broken.
- burlesona 6y ago
  Not in the last five years, but gradually over the last 40 or so. The reason is essentially that we’ve been building road networks that cost more to maintain than they generate in tax revenue, and thus our infrastructure balance sheet is running more and more negative. We’re very poor compared to the balance sheets governments in the US operated on as recently as the 1950s.
  - hanniabu 6y ago
    > Not in the last five years, but gradually over the last 40 or so Thanks for pointing that out. I meant 50, just edited
  - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
    The folks at Strong Towns make this case pretty well.
sjcoles 6y ago
Get a cheap 2017 Toyota Camry/Carolla and throw a Comma 2 in it. Car is half the price of a model 3 and for ~$1300 you can get level 2 ADAS. I have it in a less than optimal car (Honda Fit) and it has transformed how I drive.

random5634 6y ago

I've thought this would be great for longer runs. Put a wire in the road or something for the vehicles to follow. Once you are on the wire some protocol for merge points (also marked on the wire) etc.

CrazyCatDog 6y ago
This is one of the options, have radar on board pointing down to follow the line, sensors are each end of the car...

zapita 6y ago

You’re in luck. The Democratic majority in US congress has just announced yesterday that their next priority after passing the American Rescue Act will be a national infrastructure plan. https://twitter.com/hugolowell/status/1370488211034755072 https://twitter.com/hugolowell/status/1370488211034755072

throwawayboise 6y ago
Like, "shovel ready jobs" ?
- zapita 6y ago
  I don’t know what that means.

ph2082 6y ago

Whoever come up with a this levels in autonomous driving (L1-L5) must be marketing genius. Ideally it should have been Yes or No answer to "does your car support autonomous driving ?", just like alive or dead. Right now, it is just another reason in list of Road accident deaths, till it perfected.

Karunamon 6y ago
This is law, so now you have to define “autonomous driving” in an unambiguous way. Hence, levels. Besides, we're in a transitional period on this tech, so I think there's value in defining "how" automatic the experience is.
ghaff 6y ago
It seems a fairly reasonable set of levels. For example, L4 seems like something that may be achievable in the foreseeable future if it means something like full autonomy on designated interstates in some weather conditions. That actually sounds like something that would be very useful for a lot of people (and probably a big safety benefit). It just doesn't do anything about eliminating private car ownership or the need to be able to drive at all. But, personally, those are of less interest to me anyway.
URSpider94 6y ago
Quite the opposite. It was defined by engineers, not marketing people, and it’s based on clear descriptions of the capabilities of the system, as well as who is in control. The binary statement youre looking for comes between L2 and L3. A L2 system is a driver assist system, the driver is in command at all times. An L3 system can drive itself (driver napping or otherwise occupied) under specific well-defined conditions.

xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago

>Tesla is leagues ahead if I’m not mistaken You are. Pretty much every other manufacturer offers adaptive cruise control, lane keeping, and the like. They're just honest about their capabilities.

SECProto 6y ago
Comparing Tesla's "full self driving" features to adaptive cruise control or lanekeeping is a very dishonest representation of the capabilities. edit: I'm pretty anti-Tesla (strongly dislike the focus on the central screen and other driver-hostile 'features', don't think "full self driving" should be advertised as such, etc). But I still think their capabilities are significantly above the other car manufacturers enough that they shouldn't be directly compared in that way. But I guess readers like the fact that calling them "adaptive cruise control" and "active lanekeeping" is more accurate and much less bullshitty than Tesla.
- URSpider94 6y ago
  Tesla doesn’t have full self driving yet. For the core autopilot features, reviews I’ve seen of GM SuperCruise rate it ahead of Tesla for lane-keeping and adaptive cruise control. The other advanced features that Tesla offers - navigation on AP and summon - are not much more than parlor tricks. I say this as a Tesla driver with access to those features on my car ...

zhdc1 6y ago

> I can’t be trusted to drive 120 miles a day and keep my speed in check If it's a matter of occasionally going over or under the speed limit (or if the speed limit on your route has sudden changes), you may want to look into getting a vehicle with a manual speed limiter. That, along with something like Waze, can be a big help.

eganist 6y ago
I believe Jag and Land Rover (same company) both have this, and it's immensely helpful. It's basically the inverse of cruise: rather than setting a speed floor that the car cruises at, it sets a speed ceiling that you can't exceed (unless you push through the kickdown on the throttle in some cars with a limiter, in which case the car assumes an emergent circumstance and bypasses the limiter for that circumstance)
- omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
  Tesla has that too (speed limit mode).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- CrazyCatDog 6y ago
  My wife’s bmw has it too—but that’s too easy to disengage. Needing to pull over and get out to change the limiter would cool any road rage. I should have said: I’m willing to accept a longer commute and up to twice as costly autonomous vehicle over the alternative which is me having to pay attention and frustrated for 60 minutes twice a day—-even once a week!
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    it's hard for me to see how this would be more safe. sometimes safety is best served by exceeding the speed limit. this is actually not uncommon. for example, a semi has pulled up next to me on the interstate and a turn is coming up. there is a car right behind me so I can't just hit the brakes and let the truck pull ahead. I really don't want to be right next to a semi during the turn, so I quickly accelerate past it.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

bluefirebrand 6y ago

> The bus I commute on went under, and I can’t be trusted to drive 120 miles a day and keep my speed in check. I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest part of the problem here is a 60 mile commute twice a day. That's an absurd distance to drive for a job.

CrazyCatDog 6y ago
Totally agree but I serve two masters; both of which treat me very well—so not only is the commute the worst part of my day, it’s also the only negative part of the day.
- triceratops 6y ago
  Are you certain you've considered all the negatives of a 60 mile commute? I'd encourage you to read this: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-commuting/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-...
  - kortilla 6y ago
    That analysis is pretty fatally flawed (at least for software jobs). When I was at google you could easily get by on working 6 hours in the office and commuting an hour each way. The housing cost difference was obscene and would easily offset the cost of a new car every other year. Like most Money Mustache article’s the analysis looks sound because “numbers” but the numbers have a bunch of fucked assumptions to reach them.
    - triceratops 6y ago
      > That analysis is pretty fatally flawed (at least for software jobs) > When I was at google So it's fatally flawed if you work at Google (or another high-paying tech company) as a SWE in Silicon Valley - which is a minuscule fraction of the working population of software engineers. It may not be the assumptions in the article that are "fucked". You might just be an edge case. > The housing cost difference was obscene and would easily offset the cost of a new car every other year. It's not just the cost of a new car. It's also the time and energy lost to the commute, the increased risk of a serious accident, the opportunity cost of all that time spent in traffic. As a SWE working at a big tech company in Silicon Valley, I've done pretty well financially by avoiding long commutes - and had lots more spare time. There's more than one way to skin a cat.

camjohnson26 6y ago

Trains solved this ages ago. More US cities should be investing in mass transit. Self-driving is a long tail problem because the number of things that can go wrong is infinite. Keeping the cars on tracks reduces the complexity substantially.

leetcrew 6y ago
trains are a great solution for point-to-point links between two dense areas (eg, city center to city center or intra-city transit). given that GP has a 120 mi commute, it's a fairly safe bet that they either live or work in a sparse area that would not be well served by a train. the appeal of a train drops off pretty fast if you have to drive to the station.
kortilla 6y ago
Trains didn’t solve this, they just made different problems. With trains you’re beholden to the schedules and the routes. They require dense living and comfort being packed in train cars with strangers.
- burlesona 6y ago
  FWIW, while this is a representative description of trains in the US, it’s now how they work everywhere. When I lived in Italy there was very regular service from my little town to the nearby major cities, and while the trains were well-used they weren’t ever “packed.” We could have a similar train network if we wanted one, we just don’t want one enough to pay for it.
- Fricken 6y ago
  Those aren't problems, they're solutions. The problem is in your head.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    No, schedules are absolutely a limitation

hanniabu 6y ago

Always nice to see people that still believe in the government to act competently. I mean really, we can't even maintain the roads. There's no way we'll be able to pull off some next level plan, let alone execute it in a reasonable timeframe. There's a fundamental breakdown that's happened somewhere in the past 50 years that's lead to the inability to properly manage the country's infrastructure and this doesn't just apply to roads. Is it a leadership issue? Self-serving corruption? I don't know, but what we have now is certainly broken.

burlesona 6y ago
Not in the last five years, but gradually over the last 40 or so. The reason is essentially that we’ve been building road networks that cost more to maintain than they generate in tax revenue, and thus our infrastructure balance sheet is running more and more negative. We’re very poor compared to the balance sheets governments in the US operated on as recently as the 1950s.
- hanniabu 6y ago
  > Not in the last five years, but gradually over the last 40 or so Thanks for pointing that out. I meant 50, just edited
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  The folks at Strong Towns make this case pretty well.

sjcoles 6y ago

Get a cheap 2017 Toyota Camry/Carolla and throw a Comma 2 in it. Car is half the price of a model 3 and for ~$1300 you can get level 2 ADAS. I have it in a less than optimal car (Honda Fit) and it has transformed how I drive.