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Robocars shuttling around actual people in SF at night in 2021 seems like it should surprise a lot of people who have been skeptics. The road to full, global, u
by gfodor 5y ago
Robocars shuttling around actual people in SF at night in 2021 seems like it should surprise a lot of people who have been skeptics. The road to full, global, universal autonomy will probably take decades if we are going to use that as the standard, but the standard of being certain that autonomy will eat the world seems to be getting very close to being met.
- mountainboy 5y agountil the first pedestrian gets killed...
- peter422 5y ago>10 pedestrians are killed each year by human drivers in SF, and almost exclusively they are the drivers fault (not only by definition, but also based on an impartial assessment of the situations). People will not care, and I also do not think these automated cars are going to kill any pedestrians anyways.
- aidenn0 5y agoWhen a human kills someone "that's a bad driver, take away their license" when a machine kills someone "that's a bad machine, ban it"
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoIf you're setting the over-under at 0.5, I'll take the over...
- DamnYuppie 5y agoAgreed most people will not care. The legacy auto manufacturers and their mainstream media lap dogs will jump all over it. There will be an outpouring of fabricated outrage. It is all so predictable I want to puke.
- jjulius 5y agoTake a deep breathe, you're going to be OK.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- wutbrodo 5y agoThe legacy manufacturers are pretty invested in the self-driving space at this point though, no? Cruise itself is owned by Honda and GM, among others. I believe waymo has similar investors. I think we'll see a situation more like nicotine vapes. Instead of trying to crush the industry, big cigarette manufacturers just bought them.
- jimmydorry 5y agoInvested to not fall behind. They will snipe at their opponents, and I don’t doubt they would do the numbers on torpedoing their own solution if it meant wiping the field clean. Long-term, self-driving cars taking will mean less cars sold to consumers. Between ride-sharing, commercial operations, etc. the end goal will be less cars on roads.
- amznthrwaway 5y agoYou “want to puke” because of a response to a problem, where you’re simply imagining both the problem _and_ the response? Calm down.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago> People will not care I don't believe that. One pregnant woman gets hi, and she and her unborn child die, and there will be so much anger and pressure on the politcians, everything will get outlawed. Human drivers are individuals... John Doe killed someone, blame John Doe. Autonomous car kills someone, blame all autonomous cars!
- vmception 5y agoConsensus is a gradient, and representative consensus is multiple gradients.
- oblio 5y agoTechies are a very narrow band in any of these gradients. Regular people are very wide bands, and there's a reason horror sci-fi movies where robots kill humankind are extremely popular.
- gfodor 5y agoYou're both right and wrong at the same time. The media gets to decide, as always, what we're collectively outraged about. Or to be more specific, the people who control the media. So if you want to predict if people are going to care when someone gets killed by a robocar, it depends on who stands to make or lose money if they do or don't.
- themacguffinman 5y agoIt seems more likely that the manufacturer will blamed. Society already has experience dealing with inhuman harm from devices. If a phone explodes on its own, no one is calling for all phones to be banned.
- jimmydorry 5y agoIf a phone explodes, many businesses outlaw that brand and maybe narrow that to a model. With prior example, do you think the same won’t happen with a self-driving car?
- bagels 5y agoPeople will care a disproportionate amount, I think.
- summerlight 5y agoTesla already did it. No one seems to care?
- notatoad 5y agoI don't remember in incident where a Tesla killed a pedestrian? I know Uber did, and now they don't have a self-driving car program anymore. not necessarily causation, but it can't have helped.
- jefftk 5y ago> not necessarily causation, but it can't have helped I do think it was causal: when the official report came out it was clear that their system was completely inappropriate for autonomous driving. https://www.jefftk.com/p/uber-self-driving-crash https://www.jefftk.com/p/uber-self-driving-crash
- jlmorton 5y agoBecause we don't know if it did it. All we know is that a Tesla was involved with a fatal crash involving a person changing their tire on the Long Island Expressway. [1] There's been no confirmation whether Autopilot was enabled. [1] https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-6127ae797c528ca1d5322efc43439a12 https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-6127ae797c528...
- summerlight 5y agoJust in case you're not aware of, Tesla has a long history of fatal cases driven by Autopilot[1] with the first case below: This entire incident occurred without any actual input or action taken by the driver of the Tesla vehicle, except that the driver had his hands on the steering wheel as measured by Tesla’s Autosteer system. Indeed, the Tesla Model X was equipped with an Event Data Recorder (EDR) which is intended to enable Tesla to collect data and record information from its vehicles and also provides information on various processes of the vehicle’s functioning systems when a crash occurs. The information regarding vehicle speed as extracted from the Tesla Model X provides proof of the foregoing facts[2] [1] https://www.tesladeaths.com/ https://www.tesladeaths.com/ [2] https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Tesla-Death.pdf https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Te...
- akira2501 5y agoIt's very easy to just distribute waste using these systems. I'm still not convinced by the single-vehicle on-demand for single-rider model. There's got to be a way to make public transportation stop being the least attractive option in low to medium density urban settings.
- b9a2cab5 5y agoFirst make public transportation as clean and safe as ride sharing, then you'll get demand. Nobody wants to sit next to people that smell like piss/weed/cigs/BO. If you were a Uber/Lyft driver that kind of thing would get you 1 star very quickly.
- gfodor 5y agoPost-COVID who wants to sit next to anyone
- dx034 5y agoI do, because hopefully we'll wear masks for a bit longer which also prevents the spread of many other diseases.
- andbberger 5y agoThat's just classism in a thin veneer of pretention. Frequency and reliability are what actually drive ridership
- rsj_hn 5y agoHave enough of your friends get robbed/raped/groped in public transit and spend enough time on transit with urine in the stations and blood stains on the seats, and you will come to understand that safety, security, and cleanliness also drive ridership.
- andbberger 5y ago
- KorematsuFredt 5y agoIf it is SF, I would worry more about people shitting in those cars or injecting themselves with heroine.
- mustacheemperor 5y agoI read a perspective once that posed driverless cars would first be adopted on specific commuter routes as a point to point taxi, and it's seeming increasingly plausible there will be such a service available for SFO to select highway-adjacent points around the Bay before long.