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I'm getting kind of tired of these poorly-informed journalist hit pieces. Yes, self-driving cars are only ready in a handful of locations and still have some k

I'm getting kind of tired of these poorly-informed journalist hit pieces. Yes, self-driving cars are only ready in a handful of locations and still have some kinks to work out. No, that does not mean they are decades away or that the money invested is wasted. If you work in the industry or even follow the public announcements closely, it's very clear that the next 5 years will see a rapid uptick in deployments with improving ODD capabilities. It's just taking longer and is more complex than the marketers and pundits thought it would be. And let's be honest, if you want to see videos of cars doing funny or stupid things, the surest bet will always be the idiotsincars subreddit for human drivers. Cherrypicking incidents is easy.

blagie 4y ago
I live in a location where human drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians have lots of kinks to work out. As I'm getting older, I think I'll soon fall into the category of "human drivers with kinks to work out" too. I'm pretty sure my city would, on the net, be safer with self-driving cars. I think 90% of human drivers here will be better drivers than a self-driving car, but and it's not even the next 9% which scare me, but that 1% of least-safe human drivers. From a purely technical and apolitical perspective, if we could magically replace every car here with self-driving, I'd do it in a heart beat. I won't pretend, though, that technical perspectives are the most important. The financial, political, legal / liability, and similar organizational and human issues are important to get right. I'd like to see that before mass adoption. Today, I wouldn't buy a Tesla since I want to _own_ my car. If there is a new piece of shared infrastructure, I'd like to make sure it's run _in the public interest_. I don't see subscription-based, car-rental, cloud-based, algorithmic, freemium, network-effect tech-style models as something I'd want in my city.
Fricken 4y ago
Anthony Levabdowski might be an asshole, but he is not poorly informed. If you've been following the public announcements in self-driving for the last decade closely then you don't assign them much value, particularly with respects to timelines.
lelanthran 4y ago
> If you work in the industry or even follow the public announcements closely, it's very clear that the next 5 years will see a rapid uptick in deployments with improving ODD capabilities. I follow the public announcements very closely, and have seen your sentiment about "ready in five years" expressed since at least 2014.

blagie 4y ago

I live in a location where human drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians have lots of kinks to work out. As I'm getting older, I think I'll soon fall into the category of "human drivers with kinks to work out" too. I'm pretty sure my city would, on the net, be safer with self-driving cars. I think 90% of human drivers here will be better drivers than a self-driving car, but and it's not even the next 9% which scare me, but that 1% of least-safe human drivers. From a purely technical and apolitical perspective, if we could magically replace every car here with self-driving, I'd do it in a heart beat. I won't pretend, though, that technical perspectives are the most important. The financial, political, legal / liability, and similar organizational and human issues are important to get right. I'd like to see that before mass adoption. Today, I wouldn't buy a Tesla since I want to _own_ my car. If there is a new piece of shared infrastructure, I'd like to make sure it's run _in the public interest_. I don't see subscription-based, car-rental, cloud-based, algorithmic, freemium, network-effect tech-style models as something I'd want in my city.

Fricken 4y ago

Anthony Levabdowski might be an asshole, but he is not poorly informed. If you've been following the public announcements in self-driving for the last decade closely then you don't assign them much value, particularly with respects to timelines.

lelanthran 4y ago

> If you work in the industry or even follow the public announcements closely, it's very clear that the next 5 years will see a rapid uptick in deployments with improving ODD capabilities. I follow the public announcements very closely, and have seen your sentiment about "ready in five years" expressed since at least 2014.