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Exactly, these are the things that count. The cones are a short term nuisance. Basically, the people putting them will probably get bored/distracted pretty soon

Exactly, these are the things that count. The cones are a short term nuisance. Basically, the people putting them will probably get bored/distracted pretty soon. Or run out of cones. Or get caught and fined. Etc. They'll grumble and stamp their feet for a while and that will be it. The more autonomous cars fail to do any harm whatsoever, the less of a case against them people will have. Most of the current fears are fueled by minor incidents, weird little bugs that these systems still have, and lots of irrational outrage and fears. And of course there are lots of armchair "experts" providing all sorts of reasons why the autonomous cars should not and cannot possibly work, even while they can easily be observed to be working just fine. That disconnect only stretches so far before it breaks. Raw economics will do the rest. Insurers will penalize manual driving and scrutinize things like liability when accidents happen. The raw math insurers use is already against manual driving and they already like cars with lots of safety features. Cities will want to reclaim the space occupied by useless parking spaces (i.e. expect to pay for those). And drivers licenses will become much more expensive as those are no longer required to get from A to B and will come with a lot more scrutiny.

minwcnt5 3y ago
Many of the supposed minor incidents aren't even real. Two recent examples that got a lot of attention were the mass shooting incident where a Cruise allegedly blocked first responders to a mass shooting (it didn't, the police later clarified), and a Waymo that supposedly blocked a bus and forced passengers to disembark (it was the other way around, the bus broke down and blocked the AV). Also, SF officials got caught misrepresenting safety numbers, and were called out by the state. At this point I'm very skeptical of issues that get attention. There definitely have been legitimate problems, but it seems like they're rare enough that people would tolerate them, thus fake incidents need to be created. This cone thing also might backfire because now even when there's a real incapacitated AV people will speculate it was due to external mischief.

minwcnt5 3y ago

Many of the supposed minor incidents aren't even real. Two recent examples that got a lot of attention were the mass shooting incident where a Cruise allegedly blocked first responders to a mass shooting (it didn't, the police later clarified), and a Waymo that supposedly blocked a bus and forced passengers to disembark (it was the other way around, the bus broke down and blocked the AV). Also, SF officials got caught misrepresenting safety numbers, and were called out by the state. At this point I'm very skeptical of issues that get attention. There definitely have been legitimate problems, but it seems like they're rare enough that people would tolerate them, thus fake incidents need to be created. This cone thing also might backfire because now even when there's a real incapacitated AV people will speculate it was due to external mischief.