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My concern is that one company can have a malfunction which shuts down traffic in a city. That seems new or historically rare. I understand large scale deployme

My concern is that one company can have a malfunction which shuts down traffic in a city. That seems new or historically rare. I understand large scale deployment will find new system design flaws so I’m not outraged, but I do think we should consider what this means for us, if anything.

mcny 10mo ago
I think the blog is strongly hinting us to focus on the real problem -- the electrical utility and I have to agree. The only other option I can think of is to build some kind of high density low power solar powered IoT network that is independent of current infrastructure but then where is the spectrum for that?
- trollbridge 10mo ago
  A power outage should not cause robot cars to block intersections.
  - TeMPOraL 10mo ago
    Lack of Internet access should not prevent cars - or any other devices - from starting, yet here we are.
- blendo 10mo ago
  5G C-V2X New Radio might be helpful. https://www.telecomtrainer.com/lte-v2x-vs-nr-v2x-key-differences-for-the-future-of-vehicle-to-everything-communication/ https://www.telecomtrainer.com/lte-v2x-vs-nr-v2x-key-differe...
gruez 10mo ago
>My concern is that one company can have a malfunction which shuts down traffic in a city. That's hardly new. What do you think happens to traffic when a semi flips over on a busy interstate, or electricity goes out, turning all traffic lights into 4 way stops and severely limiting throughput?
- mrguyorama 10mo ago
  It blocks a single road and yet that makes the news and people have to route around it and it disrupts a day. What happens when one company's engineering failure does that to most roads? For reference, the US considers tactically blocking traffic to be something that smart terrorists or nation state adversaries would want to do to significantly harm the US economically. What do these cars do if Google's entire self driving infrastructure falls over because some component gets misconfigured? It will happen eventually.

mcny 10mo ago

I think the blog is strongly hinting us to focus on the real problem -- the electrical utility and I have to agree. The only other option I can think of is to build some kind of high density low power solar powered IoT network that is independent of current infrastructure but then where is the spectrum for that?

trollbridge 10mo ago
A power outage should not cause robot cars to block intersections.
- TeMPOraL 10mo ago
  Lack of Internet access should not prevent cars - or any other devices - from starting, yet here we are.
blendo 10mo ago
5G C-V2X New Radio might be helpful. https://www.telecomtrainer.com/lte-v2x-vs-nr-v2x-key-differences-for-the-future-of-vehicle-to-everything-communication/ https://www.telecomtrainer.com/lte-v2x-vs-nr-v2x-key-differe...

gruez 10mo ago

>My concern is that one company can have a malfunction which shuts down traffic in a city. That's hardly new. What do you think happens to traffic when a semi flips over on a busy interstate, or electricity goes out, turning all traffic lights into 4 way stops and severely limiting throughput?

mrguyorama 10mo ago
It blocks a single road and yet that makes the news and people have to route around it and it disrupts a day. What happens when one company's engineering failure does that to most roads? For reference, the US considers tactically blocking traffic to be something that smart terrorists or nation state adversaries would want to do to significantly harm the US economically. What do these cars do if Google's entire self driving infrastructure falls over because some component gets misconfigured? It will happen eventually.