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I can imagine that there will be a very bloody political fight over self-driving vehicles as they become more mainstream, particularly when it comes to taxis an

I can imagine that there will be a very bloody political fight over self-driving vehicles as they become more mainstream, particularly when it comes to taxis and trucks, because of the vested interests of professional drivers.

BorgHunter 13y ago
There will be two big, competing points regarding automated vehicles in the public eye: * Automated vehicles can save a lot of people a lot of money, save lives, and completely transform the way transportation operates (and perhaps even how cities and suburbs look. See, for example, the vast swaths of parking lots in much of the United States, and think how utterly unnecessary they'll be in a world of fully autonomous vehicles.). The NHTSA policy document says this in the first paragraph, in fact. * Automated vehicles are untested and scary; would you trust your children's safety to a computer? The entrenched interests like taxi drivers, truckers, etc. will push the second quite a bit, I imagine. As with a lot of new technology being introduced to the public, that argument will initially have a lot of traction (especially if there are big, public incidents when it starts being rolled out) regardless of what the statistics say regarding safety, but it will gradually be marginalized as people get used to it, based on the strength of the first argument. But it'll be an arduous journey there. People don't like change. NHTSA press release, with link to the actual policy document (at the bottom): http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/U.S.+Department+of+Transportation+Releases+Policy+on+Automated+Vehicle+Development http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/U.S.+Departm...
- droopyEyelids 13y ago
  It's possible that the destruction of all driving-based livelihoods will take on symbolic importance in the public eye, too. It could come to represent the loss of blue collar and white collar jobs to everyone who doesn't have a career anymore, and that would really complicate the rollout.
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  > See, for example, the vast swaths of parking lots in much of the United States, and think how utterly unnecessary they'll be in a world of fully autonomous vehicles. I don't know that it would make that much difference. Most people want to drive at the same time to get to work and few people seem likely to want to have their car do an extra commute so that it can park up at home. Couple that with the fact that a car tends to be a personal space - and you'd be giving that up if you started having to share (even if you were the only person re-using a hired vehicle).... I just picture people using self-driving cars in more or less the way they use their normal car.
  - shawabawa3 13y ago
    Presumably self driving cars would lead to dirt cheap taxi and car sharing services, reducing the need for everyone to own a car. Yould even have things like letting your car be a taxi during the day while you work
  - BorgHunter 13y ago
    There's essentially no need to own a fully autonomous car for solely personal use. Big fleets of dispatched vehicles that you can order to show up at your door (with, this is key, low response times for on-demand service plus reliable scheduled service for your daily commute) would be a much better value proposition for most people, with superior economies of scale that you don't get with a dismal ~5% utilization that most private vehicles operate at. If such a dispatch service were done right and had a big enough variety of vehicle types and prompt enough service, it could easily supplant private car ownership for all but a relatively small group of individuals, because owning a car just wouldn't provide enough advantages to be worth the added cost and hassle.
  - tolmasky 13y ago
    This is basically the way it works in cities anyways. No one really cares in NY that taxis aren't their 'personal' space. In my eyes, autonomous cars would just allow a city-style car culture in suburbia, since it will finally be practical to not own (several) cars. You should really think of self-driving cars as providing scale to a lot of existing car-share economies. For example, consider how many families today have 2 cars. Right now if the husband drives to work at 7AM and the wife at 9AM, this necessarily requires two cars. In an autonomous car world, the car would just drive back home to pick up the wife, instead of sitting in a parking lot for 9 hours. Now, extrapolate this to an apartment complex: What if part of the renters agreement is access to one of their 20 autonomous cars. Its very rare that at any given moment every single occupant of an apartment complex is using the car, so this would be totally feasible. In fact, it would be feasible today with normal cars except that when one person takes the car, they block access to that car for more time than they are actually using it. A 15 minute drive to the grocery store blocks usage of the car for up to 2 hours since it can't go back and service other members.
rayiner 13y ago
Why do people on HN always jump to "vested interests?" The NHTSA is conducting a study to determine whether a new kind of vehicle should be allowed on public roads. This is the prudent course of action, whether or not anyone stands to benefit from it. I worked at a company that does what you'd call today whitespace wireless technologies. I remember when I was young and naive, my reaction was: "why doesn't the FCC just get out of our way and let us put this stuff on the public airwaves?" And I distinctly remember when Microsoft did the test with their whitespace technology, where it couldn't handle, of all things, unlicensed wireless microphones (commonly used by churches and sporting events). And my thought was: "who the fuck cares about churches? They're standing in the way of progress!" Then I worked for a summer at the FCC and realized: "shit, the world is really complicated." There are tons of stakeholders who use the public airwaves and it's imprudent do anything without first being sure what the impact will be (measure twice, cut once, as they say). Self-driving cars will happen, and have to happen, the same way. The governments of the country spend $160 billion a year on the public roads, and the people of the country are absolutely dependent on them, and before they let a bunch of yahoos run computerized cars everywhere they are going to have to be convinced of what impact they will have on the system.
- GuiA 13y ago
  > Why do people on HN always jump to "vested interests?" Because, while I fully agree with the rest of your post, it'd be equally as naive to think that those processes are NOT influenced by people with "vested interests".
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- w1ntermute 13y ago
  > Why do people on HN always jump to "vested interests?" The NHTSA is conducting a study to determine whether a new kind of vehicle should be allowed on public roads. This is the prudent course of action, whether or not anyone stands to benefit from it. Why do people on HN always make assumptions about other people's comments? I wasn't criticizing this particular NHTSA study, I was just saying that there will likely be a bloody political fight over allowing a technology that will take away a lot of blue collar jobs that can't be outsourced.
Avshalom 13y ago
Yeah, vested interests like feeding their family. I mean yeah yeah luddites retraining rising tide etc... but "I'd like to not starve" isn't exactly a sinister motivation.
- polymatter 13y ago
  Its not sinister, its entirely predictable. But that doesn't make it any less selfish and callous towards the lives it could save.

BorgHunter 13y ago

There will be two big, competing points regarding automated vehicles in the public eye: * Automated vehicles can save a lot of people a lot of money, save lives, and completely transform the way transportation operates (and perhaps even how cities and suburbs look. See, for example, the vast swaths of parking lots in much of the United States, and think how utterly unnecessary they'll be in a world of fully autonomous vehicles.). The NHTSA policy document says this in the first paragraph, in fact. * Automated vehicles are untested and scary; would you trust your children's safety to a computer? The entrenched interests like taxi drivers, truckers, etc. will push the second quite a bit, I imagine. As with a lot of new technology being introduced to the public, that argument will initially have a lot of traction (especially if there are big, public incidents when it starts being rolled out) regardless of what the statistics say regarding safety, but it will gradually be marginalized as people get used to it, based on the strength of the first argument. But it'll be an arduous journey there. People don't like change. NHTSA press release, with link to the actual policy document (at the bottom): http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/U.S.+Department+of+Transportation+Releases+Policy+on+Automated+Vehicle+Development http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/U.S.+Departm...

droopyEyelids 13y ago
It's possible that the destruction of all driving-based livelihoods will take on symbolic importance in the public eye, too. It could come to represent the loss of blue collar and white collar jobs to everyone who doesn't have a career anymore, and that would really complicate the rollout.
6d0debc071 13y ago
> See, for example, the vast swaths of parking lots in much of the United States, and think how utterly unnecessary they'll be in a world of fully autonomous vehicles. I don't know that it would make that much difference. Most people want to drive at the same time to get to work and few people seem likely to want to have their car do an extra commute so that it can park up at home. Couple that with the fact that a car tends to be a personal space - and you'd be giving that up if you started having to share (even if you were the only person re-using a hired vehicle).... I just picture people using self-driving cars in more or less the way they use their normal car.
- shawabawa3 13y ago
  Presumably self driving cars would lead to dirt cheap taxi and car sharing services, reducing the need for everyone to own a car. Yould even have things like letting your car be a taxi during the day while you work
- BorgHunter 13y ago
  There's essentially no need to own a fully autonomous car for solely personal use. Big fleets of dispatched vehicles that you can order to show up at your door (with, this is key, low response times for on-demand service plus reliable scheduled service for your daily commute) would be a much better value proposition for most people, with superior economies of scale that you don't get with a dismal ~5% utilization that most private vehicles operate at. If such a dispatch service were done right and had a big enough variety of vehicle types and prompt enough service, it could easily supplant private car ownership for all but a relatively small group of individuals, because owning a car just wouldn't provide enough advantages to be worth the added cost and hassle.
- tolmasky 13y ago
  This is basically the way it works in cities anyways. No one really cares in NY that taxis aren't their 'personal' space. In my eyes, autonomous cars would just allow a city-style car culture in suburbia, since it will finally be practical to not own (several) cars. You should really think of self-driving cars as providing scale to a lot of existing car-share economies. For example, consider how many families today have 2 cars. Right now if the husband drives to work at 7AM and the wife at 9AM, this necessarily requires two cars. In an autonomous car world, the car would just drive back home to pick up the wife, instead of sitting in a parking lot for 9 hours. Now, extrapolate this to an apartment complex: What if part of the renters agreement is access to one of their 20 autonomous cars. Its very rare that at any given moment every single occupant of an apartment complex is using the car, so this would be totally feasible. In fact, it would be feasible today with normal cars except that when one person takes the car, they block access to that car for more time than they are actually using it. A 15 minute drive to the grocery store blocks usage of the car for up to 2 hours since it can't go back and service other members.

rayiner 13y ago

Why do people on HN always jump to "vested interests?" The NHTSA is conducting a study to determine whether a new kind of vehicle should be allowed on public roads. This is the prudent course of action, whether or not anyone stands to benefit from it. I worked at a company that does what you'd call today whitespace wireless technologies. I remember when I was young and naive, my reaction was: "why doesn't the FCC just get out of our way and let us put this stuff on the public airwaves?" And I distinctly remember when Microsoft did the test with their whitespace technology, where it couldn't handle, of all things, unlicensed wireless microphones (commonly used by churches and sporting events). And my thought was: "who the fuck cares about churches? They're standing in the way of progress!" Then I worked for a summer at the FCC and realized: "shit, the world is really complicated." There are tons of stakeholders who use the public airwaves and it's imprudent do anything without first being sure what the impact will be (measure twice, cut once, as they say). Self-driving cars will happen, and have to happen, the same way. The governments of the country spend $160 billion a year on the public roads, and the people of the country are absolutely dependent on them, and before they let a bunch of yahoos run computerized cars everywhere they are going to have to be convinced of what impact they will have on the system.

GuiA 13y ago
> Why do people on HN always jump to "vested interests?" Because, while I fully agree with the rest of your post, it'd be equally as naive to think that those processes are NOT influenced by people with "vested interests".
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
w1ntermute 13y ago
> Why do people on HN always jump to "vested interests?" The NHTSA is conducting a study to determine whether a new kind of vehicle should be allowed on public roads. This is the prudent course of action, whether or not anyone stands to benefit from it. Why do people on HN always make assumptions about other people's comments? I wasn't criticizing this particular NHTSA study, I was just saying that there will likely be a bloody political fight over allowing a technology that will take away a lot of blue collar jobs that can't be outsourced.

Avshalom 13y ago

Yeah, vested interests like feeding their family. I mean yeah yeah luddites retraining rising tide etc... but "I'd like to not starve" isn't exactly a sinister motivation.

polymatter 13y ago
Its not sinister, its entirely predictable. But that doesn't make it any less selfish and callous towards the lives it could save.