5 ms·

Look, I'm generally on the bull-ish side of autonomous driving, but this is almost akin to the feds passing laws on science fiction. Section 180.99 part alpha:

Look, I'm generally on the bull-ish side of autonomous driving, but this is almost akin to the feds passing laws on science fiction. Section 180.99 part alpha: "Minimum size of a Ringworld is mercury orbit around a red dwarf" I guess we can always drive with a USB-plugin gamepad if there's a glitch or a central system outage? This would actually represent progress if they eliminated the requirement for side mirrors, which from what I've read of good aerodynamic designs is responsible for as much drag as the body of the car.

TillE 5y ago
> if they eliminated the requirement for side mirrors Of course fully automated vehicles will look nothing like typical cars. There's this really common tendency to think way too small, to confuse the current prototypes with a final product. The mid-term future for SDVs looks more or less like a train compartment on wheels.
- pbhjpbhj 5y ago
  >a train compartment on wheels. // A bus? Yes, autonomous public vehicles seem likely - like a Flexi-bus - but people like to travel without random members of the public, private hire of small vehicles will definitely be a thing unless the public get priced out of it.
myrmidon 5y ago
> which from what I've read of good aerodynamic designs is responsible for as much drag as the body of the car. This seems way too high to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_drag_coefficient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_drag_coefficient says side mirrors contribute 2-7% drag. Still worth removing them of course, I'm just correcting you to prevent people from picking up wrong numbers.
- AtlasBarfed 5y ago
  I think I got that "as much as the rest of the body" from the Aptera newsfeeds. The Aptera claims some ridiculous efficiencies so who knows.
shkkmo 5y ago
There are currently self-driving vehicles operating on public roads with no safety driver. That tech exists now. It may have many severe limitations (precision mapping, weather, construction areas, etc), but it does exist. Reducing those limitations may be a long term project but it is already clear that self driving vehicles could be deployed today without human controls as long as the scope of deployment matches those limitations. This rules allows car manufacturers to work on new fully automous cars without controls that are designed to function as campus shuttles or taxis in a limited scope. There is still a lot of work to be done regulating the use self driving vehicles, but this removes a safety regulation hurdle that is stopping states and car makers from experimenting with different approaches.

TillE 5y ago

> if they eliminated the requirement for side mirrors Of course fully automated vehicles will look nothing like typical cars. There's this really common tendency to think way too small, to confuse the current prototypes with a final product. The mid-term future for SDVs looks more or less like a train compartment on wheels.

pbhjpbhj 5y ago
>a train compartment on wheels. // A bus? Yes, autonomous public vehicles seem likely - like a Flexi-bus - but people like to travel without random members of the public, private hire of small vehicles will definitely be a thing unless the public get priced out of it.

myrmidon 5y ago

> which from what I've read of good aerodynamic designs is responsible for as much drag as the body of the car. This seems way too high to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_drag_coefficient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_drag_coefficient says side mirrors contribute 2-7% drag. Still worth removing them of course, I'm just correcting you to prevent people from picking up wrong numbers.

AtlasBarfed 5y ago
I think I got that "as much as the rest of the body" from the Aptera newsfeeds. The Aptera claims some ridiculous efficiencies so who knows.

shkkmo 5y ago

There are currently self-driving vehicles operating on public roads with no safety driver. That tech exists now. It may have many severe limitations (precision mapping, weather, construction areas, etc), but it does exist. Reducing those limitations may be a long term project but it is already clear that self driving vehicles could be deployed today without human controls as long as the scope of deployment matches those limitations. This rules allows car manufacturers to work on new fully automous cars without controls that are designed to function as campus shuttles or taxis in a limited scope. There is still a lot of work to be done regulating the use self driving vehicles, but this removes a safety regulation hurdle that is stopping states and car makers from experimenting with different approaches.