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California Senate votes to allow self-driving cars
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoWay to go, Nevada! You broke the chicken & egg problem, allowing this to move forward. Thanks!
- mikepmalai 14y agoI think there are a couple interesting issues with self-driving cars. 1. Liability: How does an insurance company properly underwrite a self-driving auto policy? How is fault/liability determined if there's an accident? 2. Privacy: Does it make sense to have self-driving vehicles synced to each other to optimize road safety? Will there be a "black box" recording driving data? Or even a camera? Who will have the right to access that data?
- astrofinch 14y agoThanks to technology it is now safe to drive drunk.
- stephenhuey 14y agoIt is now safe to ride drunk.
- thezilch 14y agoThis is great of California's Govt, and I really can't wait to use this form of transit. However, which of the following is going to make this increasingly difficult, and how does Google and friends plan to supplant them? * car manufacturers -- less need for [fancy] cars when * no one is looking * computers are doing the handling * car manufacturers -- less need to purchase cars * there are less owners -- cars are more easily shared * there are less totals -- cars crash less * there is less wear and tear on autonomous driving * insurance providers -- less claims... less revenue * etc... Will atonomous cars hit these players' bottom lines? What can they do to lobby against autonomous cars actually coming to fruition? I see it being akin to the MAFIAA vs. Entertainment Industry and possibly worse.
- brc 14y agoUnlikely. Car ownership for status reasons would not change. The market would still be stratified by style, size, badge/brand and features. The introduction of driverless cars, if anything, is likely to make total miles driven go up. The actual number of cars purchased would go up as long as the miles are going up. The number of individual purchasers doesn't matter, it's how many old cars are getting worn out that matters. They get serviced as they wear out, and manufacturers would still make plenty of money doing that. Even more so, probably, because they could program the cars to come in for a service when needed, guaranteeing them more service revenue. Insurance providers would only be too happy to write out policies on overall crash/theft data that doesn't involve random events like people falling asleep or driving drunk. If anything, it would make vehicle insurance easier. But the number of claims doesn't really matter to an insurer - they expect to pay out all of their policy revenue on claims - what matters is investing the pool of funds well in the holding period between policy income and claims expense. Any new product can only be positive for the people who make them. The only ones looking at real trouble are those who don't enter the market (if it turns out to be a success) or those who chase the wrong ideas, plus people who make a living driving cars.
- cynest 14y agoGood. Early action will prevent this from being made controversial later on by groups who might see it as a threat (eg police unions trying to maintain traffic tickets as a revenue stream for departments).
- robomartin 14y agoWe are not going to evolve as a society until we abolish unionized labor. I know that this is a strong statement. And it is likely to attract serious disagreement. Take this as on man's opinion and nothing else. It is my contention that in modern times unionized labor has done absolutely nothing good for our society. I understand that they had a time and a place to exist. Today, there's far more evidence of the damage they cause than the positive effects they may have been intended to produce. Unions create a false economy. One where people are paid exorbitant amounts of money for work that could be done for less in an open market. Unions also create stagnation both in terms of innovation and of human capital. Union members exist in an isolated cocoon where there is no need to excel or evolve past your station. Unions damage competitiveness at a national and international level. Unions damage the economy and destroy industries by creating contracts with unreasonable terms, benefits and pensions. Unions in government create a nasty conflict-of-interest situation where hordes of people vote as a unified block supporting the very laws and politicians that regulate their own jobs (vote for your own pay raise, etc.). Unions also use this vote-by-mob approach to influence politics and the politicians that want their votes. It is my opinion that unionized workers, as individuals, are generally good hard-working people. However, once their thoughts and actions are controlled by the need to support their "team" (the union) the collective can, and often becomes, evil in many ways. Case in point: UAW contract clause that causes car companies to have to retain workers displaced by automation. These workers earn full salary to do absolutely nothing. The Chinese have got to be laughing their asses off when they see us self-destruct this way. Teacher unions are yet another example. The list of evils is too long to list here. The most basic one is the inability to fire bad or even down-right criminal teachers. We would be able to move at a very different pace if unions went away. I won't hold my breath.
- yardie 14y ago
- lumberjack 14y agoSo what does this mean? Does this mean that you can hop into the back seat and let the car drive unsupervised or is a driver in the driver seat still mandatory? And if a driver in a driver seat is still mandatory, then why do they need this piece of legislation in the first place. How is this different from driving a car using other less sophisticated yet still autonomous technologies.
- Timothee 14y agoAbsolutely. Where do you put the mark between a self-driving car and a car that has a bunch of technology for assisted driving?
- Tuna-Fish 14y agoWhen you can take a nap while getting where you are going.
- Swizec 14y agoFrom what I've seen in ai-class.com and cs373 on udacity: The cars are completely autonomous. The only reason there's a human in the driver's seat is legislation because it's mandatory that there is a person in the driver's seat. But, the cars are already at the stage where you can feel safe just reading a book while sitting in there. They work in normal San Francisco traffic without any intervention at any time by the human. They even plan their own routes and can change them when something strange happens on the road so they're forced to take a detour. They even wait for pedestrians crossing streets, follow all traffic rules and so on. It's really quite amazing when you think that just 8 years ago the DARPA challenge wasn't finished by a single car that entered the race. (and that was without traffic, just a desert with roads)
- vegardx 14y agoA little side note, riding in the desert might seem like a no-brainer, but it's really really really hard for a computer to make sense of the terrain or what's ahead, which is why it took some time for the first cars to even finish the race. A lot of the technology that has been developed just to make sense of the terrain is now used to keep track of pedestrians, other cars and obstacles. But this is so freaking awesome!
- Timothee 14y agoOn one hand I think this is great because it will help research in that domain move forward (no pun intended), but I can't help but think of the very strong lobbying from Google that had to have been necessary for it. "The California bill, which passed in a 37-0 vote" A 37-0 vote for something that is far from being productized or even clearly defined (what defines "self-driving car" vs. other assistive technologies?) and has very serious and legitimate safety and legal (e.g. who's responsible of accidents?) concerns, is at the least surprising.
- adgar 14y agoAs a Google employee unaware of any of our lobbying in this matter, I would suggest you ask yourself these questions: 1. Why would Google lobby to produce a unanimous vote, which is not necessary to pass such a law? 2. If Google did so, what would the marginal cost of each superfluously lobbied vote be? Consider that the 37th voter on the fence can ask for a whole lot in such a scenario. 3. Is the marginal cost of lobbying to convince each and every of the 37 voters worth whatever benefit you derived in the first question?
- mwd_ 14y agoI wonder how much this industry could be or already is locked down by patents? Anybody know? The cynical part of me worries that, if this isn't bogged down by obstructionists, then most of the economic advantage will be captured by Google or some other big monopoly. I believe that, if this works out, it will be a huge technological improvement that will dramatically improve the quality of life of a lot of people. Imagine all the people who can't drive right now because they are disabled, for example. Many of those people who live in suburban or rural areas are just stuck inside a lot of the time. Having a car that can park itself somewhere away from where its passengers are dropped off is another big advantage. Or maybe it won't be much of a net benefit to average people because they'll have to fork over tons of money to have an automated vehicle.
- andyl 14y agoSelf-driving cars are a risky technology that requires large, long-term capital investments and genuine innovations. If Google is granted a 20-year monopoly on their in-house inventions, to me that would be a fair and proper use of the patent systems. I'm opposed to the patent-troll business practices that have arisen recently, but not opposed to a patent system that grants rights to genuine innovators who take risks to bring new developments to market.
- waterlesscloud 14y agoThe other companies who will want this technology (car companies) are extremely well connected politically, and infinitely more experienced than Google at lobbying (see gas mileage requirements). Google simply won't be allowed to monopolize the technology, no matter what patents they have.
- obtu 14y agoSeems like they are looking for partnerships (they wouldn't really want to get into the business of integrating and building the whole hardware I expect): > While Google had no immediate plans to commercially develop the system, the company hopes to develop a business which would market the system and the data behind it to automobile manufacturers (from the Wikipedia page).
- anigbrowl 14y agoBill: http://leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/sen/sb_1251-1300/sb_1298_bill_20120416_amended_sen_v97.html http://leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/sen/sb_1251-1300/sb_129... Overview: http://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/legislation/2230 http://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/legislation/2230 As for why it passed 37-0, it's almost all upside; all the data indicate that it can only reduce the externalities of vehicle usage (pollution, accidents), which externalities are already very well documented and understood. Even where the technology breaks down, a single point of failure (autonomous driving system) is far easier to analyze, budget for, and litigate from a product liability point of view. Google is much more likely to be a rational actor than an aggregated population of vehicle users, and risk premium can be very easily calculated for the number of vehicles that are deployed. As adoption increases, the roads are likely to get safer and faster; my only real worry would be about whether manual driving would be restricted and penalized. Then again, since I don't have a car that's largely an academic concern to me. I used to enjoy riding a motorcycle but I feel fairly confident that an automated driver would do a better job than I would over the long haul. The other big reason is economic; with all the data pointing towards automated driving as the wave of the future and the leading commercial innovator being here in California, and California facing a $16 billion deficit, the prospect of Mountain View becoming Detroit 2.0 for a global market is a no-brainer. California has also been quietly stepping towards building an electric car infrastructure: Gov. Brown used his powers to take a windfall legal settlement related to the CA power crisis a decade ago (think Enron) and apply it to the construction of charging infrastructure without needing to get legislative approval. http://gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=17463 http://gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=17463 I'm thinking that automated clean vehicle swarms are the increasingly-credible strategic alternative to high-speed rail in California. I really like trains, but the HSR project looks like a fiscal, bureaucratic, and legal disaster. If we can slash the costs of driving then we could probably cut down the cost of vehicle construction, not to mention creating an entirely new set of goods for manufacture. With reliable automated vehicles, you don't necessarily need people to drive them, so pickup and delivery could essentially be done by autonomous large wheelbarrows instead of needing to have cabs on the front for humans to sit in. Also, Johnny cabs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjRXyWFLkEY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjRXyWFLkEY
- scarmig 14y ago
- ktizo 14y agoHow long before certain tolled roads mandate autonomous cars, citing safety reasons.
- reitzensteinm 14y agoI think economic reasons will actually come first. Traffic jams will be a thing of the past if all the cars on the road are automated, and the length and slow speed of the daily commute is a bigger issue than the risk of death from driving for nearly everyone I know (of course that's anecdotal).
- deserted 14y agoI can picture carpool lanes being turned into automated vehicle lanes.
- sigzero 14y agoThat is one way to control the population in Kalifornia.
- fennecfoxen 14y agoYou say that as if human-operated cars aren't already the planet's foremost killing machines. Honestly, in terms of safety, having your automated car do "better than a human driver" is a pretty low bar, compared to the risks faced everywhere else in your life.
- waterlesscloud 14y agoRemote control of cars by government authorities will be inevitable once this tech is in use. It's as certain a thing as there is. Government access to your navigational records, which will exist on a centralized service, is only slightly less certain. Not that I think it's a conspiratorial threat to our freedoms, but there are tradeoffs that will come with this.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- andywood 14y agoEvery time the subject of Google's driverless cars comes up, here or anywhere, almost 100% of the discussion always seems to presume that this technology is heading directly towards consumers as a travel solution. While I'm sure it'll get around to that eventually, I think the realization of a scifi-like fantasy might be distracting people from a more obvious, practical reason for Google to be doing this. Sebastian Thrun co-developed Street View. You know, with all those cars driving around gathering information about meatspace? One might say... crawling meatspace? Thrun is also a major force behind the driverless car project. Isn't it likely that for Google, at least for now, this is all about making a system of real-world crawlers, exactly analogous to its web crawlers?
- glhaynes 14y agoSounds really expensive, to achieve ... what?
- andywood 14y agoExactly analogous to its web crawlers means fully-automated, regular, scheduled collection of GIS data.
- scarmig 14y agoIt does seem rather limited. 1) It's not real-time: it would likely refresh data every couple of weeks. That limits the number of applications. 2) The data gathered would be... well, my lack of imagination is stumping me here. The number and species of trees people have? The color of their houses? New business openings? Typical length of lines outside the door? The existence and extent of potholes on the road? 3) I'm sure even expanding street view would be valuable. But the leap from effective autonomous vehicles providing street view data on public roads to autonomous vehicles providing transportation to real consumers seems pretty small to me.
- andywood 14y agoI have a strong hunch on this one that the limitations are on our imaginations, and not on the potential applications once such an infrastructure existed. I agree that the leap to transportation is small and that it will happen. I just can't see why Google would have been motivated to do it for that reason, but I can see World Crawlers as a natural evolution of their core mission.
- blhack 14y agoHello same-day delivery for everything. Think about how this changes freight transportation. This is going to be bigger than google.com was.
- cmelbye 14y agoI can't wait to see self-driving cars that come out of other companies (as the article briefly mentioned at the end). This is a complex system that Google and its computer scientists are well suited to build. Not so much the same story at GM or Toyota, I'd imagine.
- waterlesscloud 14y agoBecause cars aren't complex systems? Because manufacturing processes are simple and straight-forward?
- base698 14y agoIs there an alternative to the current Lidar they use to generate the world map? I imagine something more integrated into the car would be better for commercialization. Maybe a series of smaller sensors?
- rhino42 14y agoSelf driving cars well have to be specially equipped- it's not unreasonable to add LIDAR as the standard fare for these cars. After all, it's extremely well suited for the task
- waiwai933 14y agoWould someone mind explaining how Google tested its cars on the road before this bill? I'm presuming they did so legally, at least.
- misnome 14y agoThey had a "Safety Driver" in the drivers seat at all times, ready to take control.
- dsrguru 14y agoCalifornia state Senator Alan Lowenthal said of the autonomous car he rode in, "I have to say that there are some still [sic] issues with it, but it's a better driver than I am." I just read this after hearing Larry Page tell Charlie Rose that the autonomous cars as of May 21st are currently better than most drunk drivers but less skilled than the average human. I really hope he stays off the road for a while.