10 ms·
Self-driving cars projected to reduce injuries by 90%, save $450B annually
- mmanfrin 13y agoI am really excited for the possible future of self-driving electric taxis. All the pieces kind of fit together: you can use an app to dispatch and gauge number of fleet vehicles to put out (Google just bought a huge stake in Uber), self-driving cabs can return themselves for a recharge when low on batter and another vehicle can replace it instantly, the amount of cars on the road can scale with demand fluidly. There'd be no need for a car ever in a metro area.
- mistercow 13y agoShhh, if the auto industry, public transit industry, and car rental industry hear you, they might band together and try to stop it from happening.
- tdyo 13y agoSomeone still has to build them. And buy them.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoLike airlines. Few own a private plane, but airlines front the capital and operations, just like mobility companies of tomorrow will be the bulk of self-driving car purchasers.
- mistercow 13y agoYes, but far, far fewer people. Most car hours are currently spent sitting in driveways and parking lots.
- sker 13y agoThey'll have to fight the insurance companies. Insurance companies will probably love to be collecting rent on every vehicle while having to cover 90% less accidents.
- nick007 13y agoActually I think this will kill insurance companies too. They will see their business fall inline with the cost of accidents.
- dman 13y agoSomeone will have to sell insurance to car manufacturers for the remaining 10 percent of accidents.
- objclxt 13y agoI don't think that's necessarily true - insurance companies make money out of insuring far safer modes of transport than driving (like air travel). The liability merely shifts from the driver to the software developer. Whoever is providing the self-driving cars will need to have large amounts of indemnity insurance to cover potential losses.
- shitlord 13y agoThe second part might be true, but human-driven cars are going to be on the road for a very long time. As long as they are here, accidents will happen, and insurance companies will find a way to charge you for it. Geico et al will never stop existing, so long as there is the possibility of human error.
- chaz 13y agoPeople will still want and demand car insurance. Stuff still happens, and I want my car and injuries paid for. So they'll still be around. It may be a smaller industry, but it won't kill them.
- cabalamat 13y ago> People will still want car insurance. I wasn't aware they wanted it now. People buy it because they are legally obliged to.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoAlso, think of the impact in congested and developing countries: in Beijing, there is nowhere else to build roads, yet the number of cars keeps increasing. Going all self-driving in the entire city would increase road bandwidth substantially. Not to mention the problem of people flaunting traffic rules and etiquette and causing backups as a result. This is going to be much bigger for the rest of the world than in the roads-a-plenty USA.
- jrs99 13y agotaxis won't need drivers to go back, so you could probably take a taxi from manhattan to like the middle of connecticut, which would be awesome.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoAlso, you could take a train and a self drive taxi would efficiently handle getting you to and from the train station. This is a huge enabler for public transit that can focus on more efficient high capacity routes.
- drewrv 13y agoThey will be a ton cheaper too. Lower fuel costs, maintenance costs, and labor costs. The three most expensive costs associated with operating a taxi will be lowered significantly.
- ekianjo 13y agoBy governments will probably still tax Taxi ownership just like they do now, and just like for the airline industry you'll end up with taxes doubling the price of your trip. I don't believe in a cheap future of transportation as long as government has a say in it...
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoAh, because like...roads are free, just like airports and air traffic control systems. Pesky governments building infrastructure. In a libercrazian future, the free market would make such trivialities free!
- ekianjo 13y agoYeah, like, because, airports need to see their taxes quadruple in 10 years, with no improvement whatsoever in their infrastructures ? Isn't that very obvious to you that they are just milking the cow and not just paying back for the operational costs ? Same for motorways.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoIf you are American, your cost of flying and driving is already quite low compared to the rest of the world, what's being "milked?" Since you used motorways and might be from the UK, I don't know what your situation is. Transportation infrastructure is one of those monopolies that the government is the best choice to take care of.
- ekianjo 13y ago> Transportation infrastructure is one of those monopolies that the government is the best choice to take care of. There are many countries around the world where the government has no money to take care of the infrastructure and you need private ventures to step in.
- jrs99 13y agoThere would never be a need for a car in the suburbs. If i had an app that would just bring me a car and be ready at an exact time right in front of my house, bring me to a store and leave, and when twenty minutes before I'm done shopping I order another taxi to be ready for me outside the store, not need to go to the DMV or any auto shop, that would be a huge win for the suburbs.
- jay_kyburz 13y agoErr. here in Australia thats what a taxi is now.
- Sami_Lehtinen 13y agoWhen Taxi adoption rate is high, one minute should be enough. Available cars are everywhere.
- cylinder 13y agoBeing driverless doesn't mean this kind of thing is necessarily going to be economically viable. You need density to optimize taxi operation and keep it affordable. There would need to be a lot of taxis driving themselves around for them to be so readily available in this kind of setting, and for that you need widespread adoption.
- jrs99 13y agoI'm in New Jersey which is pretty dense and already has a lot of human-driven taxi companies. It definitely might not work in a sparsely populated suburb.
- hayksaakian 13y agoisn't the human factor the largest cost among transportation service? if 1/2 of your fare went to the driver normally, now it can go to having more cars available. All I'm saying is the economics might work
- DannoHung 13y agoAlmost every non-rural area is going to be able to support the density required. I mean, drive through any suburb and count the number of unoccupied cars. Honestly, the biggest issue (assuming the technology is flawless) is going to be keeping them clean and maintained because of the very high usage rates.
- vincie 13y agoGo all the way! Tune the traffic signals preferentially for these electric taxis. Configure them to pick up multiple fares going the same direction. To use train tracks for long distance.
- mistercow 13y agoAnd perversely, if accidents happened one tenth as often, they'd become news, and people would think they were more common and dangerous than they do now. The question is whether we can get to a point of no return with self-driving cars before that effect takes hold.
- freyrs3 13y agoI think most rational people would come to realize that even if the 1/10 of deaths are caused by computer errors then at least the problem can be fixed over time. With human error, there's not much you can do.
- candydance 13y agoEveryone thinks they can drive without risking themselves harm though, otherwise no one would ever get in a car. Accidents happen to other people... until they don't.
- MichaelApproved 13y agoMost people aren't rational when presented with this type of situation.
- objclxt 13y ago> if the 1/10 of deaths are caused by computer errors then at least the problem can be fixed over time. This only follows through if you don't introduce new technology and innovations to your software (and thus new bugs), which isn't going to happen. If you look at air travel, the number of fatal accidents occurring each decade since the 1950s has stayed around the same, even though we've significantly improved automated systems and reduced the potential for pilot error.
- loolo 13y agoThe number of accidents has perhaps stayed roughly the same but there's a hell of a lot more planes flying every day now. So it's highly likely that the accident rate per flight has dropped dramatically. (Though I don't have the data handy to support either hypothesis).
- TIJ 13y agoI am closely following the development of self driving cars specially at google and i can assure everyone of its sophistication that it's the best driver you can get for your car. I know you all would be aware of the fact but i want to take this opportunity to state that is has covered thousands of miles without a single accident isn't that an extraordinary achievement for a car without a driver(but a computer instead) I will start to use the car the first it launches if it fits my budget but i must say these are one of the best developments of 21st century.
- grogenaut 13y agoso in all of those thousands of miles no one has rear ended the cars? Also call me when they get to tens of millions of miles, eg what's driven every day in the US.
- TIJ 13y agoIt's still in the testing phase sir... and i am not sure what you expect when you question no has rear ended the cars??? you want a mile by mile report from google isn't it too much to ask for from a company which is just testing its new product focusing on making it a more safe car to use. you want them to maintain a driving book for this i don't wanna go on with this... let hope they manage to make a really nice and safe car in the end.
- jpau 13y agoQuoth Wikpeida: "In August 2011, a human-controlled Google driverless car was involved in a crash near Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA. Google has stated that the car was being driven manually at the time of the accident. A previous incident involved a Google driverless car being rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_driverless_car#Incidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_driverless_car#Incidents
- pjbrunet 13y agoHow about oil slick James Bond style?
- 13y ago
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- papandrinko 13y agoWhen roads are fully automatic and electric, children will be able to play outside again; roads and cities will become quiet places in which to think and breathe
- driver 13y agoOne of the big advantages of completely self-driving cars will be for the elderly. Thing about it, currently our grandparents and great-grandparents who cannot drive anymore rely on family/ public transport and expensive taxis to get around. Once we reach the age of our grandparents we will be much for fortunate to be able to still travel independently wherever we want. This is a massive plus to look forward to.
- pjbrunet 13y agoYes and degrees of disability related to driving.
- Sir_Cmpwn 13y agoGoogle had a blind man try out one of their cars a while back. http://youtu.be/cdgQpa1pUUE http://youtu.be/cdgQpa1pUUE
- rogerbinns 13y agoLinked to this is deliveries. They can be made to your door front at any time (eg the vehicle can require you use a code or scan something to unlock your delivery). The drastically lower delivery costs would reduce the need to have to go to various places.
- nl 13y agoAs a cyclist, I long for the day when all cars (and especially heavy trucks!) are self driving.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoWhat about self driving bicycles? You just need to peddle, and the integrated road traffic system removed the error prone human element completely from the equation.
- recursive 13y agoA bicyclist must adjust his weight to handle the bike. That seems tough to automate away.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoGyros can do amazing things these days...i have no doubt we'll see something like this in our lifetime (I'm hoping for a self balancing unicycle).
- mike_esspe 13y agoIt's called Solowheel: http://solowheel.com/ http://solowheel.com/
- pjbrunet 13y agoSelf-driving cars = more time online = $GOOG profit
- rathish_g 13y agoThats exactly that they are looking for.
- Osiris 13y agoIt'll probably take at least 40-50 years before autonomous vehicles become the norm. The interesting thing will be what happens in the meantime, when there's a mix of autonomous and human driven vehicles. Will the laws change to have 'autonomous only' lanes? Will they replace HOV lanes? Will autonomous vehicles be allowed to make maneuvers that human driven cars cannot in order to improve traffic flow, such as driving through red lights if determined safe?
- jay_kyburz 13y agoI think it will be less. 20. I think in 50 years it will be illegal to drive manually on a public road.
- gtremper 13y agoIt was only 60 years between the Wright brothers and the moon landing. And considering the rate of technological advance is increasing, I think autonomous vehicles will take much less time. I can't even imagine what things will be like in 50 years.
- theblackswan 13y agoThe tech can make it possible in just 5-7 years what matters is how much time govt will take to formalize a law.. which probably you rightly said 40/50 years.
- mattlutze 13y agoAlso, getting people to buy them. There are still many, many cars from the mid 80's on the road, chugging along. The used car market is nothing to shake a stick at. I'm really, really hoping the manual drive cars abandoned for autonomous cars are maximally recycled and not just left to rot in myriad junk yards.
- jrs99 13y agoone thing: I do NOT like the idea of riding in a self-driven car when the majority of other cars are driven by humans. That doesn't seem ideal to me. I worry about a self-driving car driving exactly the speed limit and not being able to speed up whenever you need to, to either keep up with the traffic, or when someone is tailgating you. Especially at night, when you are driving and tired people drive straight up to you and don't slow down until the last second. I want to speed up in those instances.
- kevinnk 13y agoI think a solution for this would be to have the "self driving" speed limit be 10-15mph faster then the normal limit on highways. Since driverless cars can react faster this wouldn't cause more accidents and it would allow driverless cars to keep up with traffic. Plus, if traffic slows there's nothing stopping the driverless car from slowing down as well.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoRight. Speed limited are for humans. A computer could be allowed to objectively select a safe speed to travel.
- kingkilr 13y agoSpeed limits aren't even for people, modern highway speed limits in the US were set based on gas efficiency.
- tempestn 13y agoOr even better, just set speed limits at realistic levels (around the 85th percentile of natural traffic flow) for everyone. That said, I assume the driverless vehicles would at least be programmed to exceed the speed limit if necessary for an emergency maneuver.
- div 13y agoThere's no reason for a self-driving car to prioritise adhering to the speed limit over avoiding a collision though. Any sufficiently advanced self-driving AI will try to avoid being rear-ended like that. Even better, when a collision is unavoidable, an AI has a much better chance at making the 'right' decision as to how to crash.
- vladikoff 13y agoWe can't even implement NFC payments because carriers are interested in the percentage of the revenue. Sadly judging from this, there's no way self-driving are going to be in mainstream reality. With all the insurance, oil and other companies in the way.... I hope I'm proven wrong.
- tikhonj 13y agoI also imagine that some sort of centralized routing could significantly improve traffic and avoid major traffic jams. Networking protocols, but in the real world :P.
- theblackswan 13y agoIt has some great cost advantages especially for those who run the business with multiple taxi. You can grow your fleet without worrying about the human resource. Sadly technologies like these have not even point percentage acceptance. Trains and planes are capable of auto driven since ages but we don't actually see them put to use.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoAuto pilots have been used on trains and planes for a long time. We just haven't gotten rid of the human pilots on planes and most trains yet.
- theblackswan 13y agoWith this there would be huge possibilities of new age designer automatic-cars as you will have all the place to yourself. Don't assume it to look anything like regular cars. Infact some designs will enable people to live in it. It would probably be auto-driven homes.
- rogerbinns 13y agoI wonder how the cars will deal with inevitable accidents - what does the self driving car prioritise? If there is no choice but to hit one of two different cars does it pick the one with the fewest occupants? Is there calculation of likely injuries (eg bounce off two cars causing less severe injuries to both than hitting one harder). Avoid all other vehicles resulting in more severe injuries to the occupant? Cars can't stop instantly and the energy has to go somewhere.
- hrjet 13y agoThis. I am reminded of Isaac Asimov's three robot rules. I am also led to wonder, who will be implicated if an accident happens? What if the auto-driving car has a bug? Or if it was infected with a virus or hacked? What if the driver deliberately modified a self-driving car to cause injury to a target?
- loup-vaillant 13y ago> What if the driver deliberately modified a self-driving car to cause injury to a target? The same as what would happen today if someone mess with the brakes?
- georgemcbay 13y agoCommunication between "smart" cars opens up some good possibilities to increase safety even when the inevitable accident occurs. Consider: Car #1 suddenly realizes (for whatever reason) it is going to impact car #2 or car #3 at approximately equal energy for either crash, pings both, #3 isn't "smart", no reply. #2 pongs back, car #1 heads for car #2, reports this to #2, car #2 deploys air bags proactively using a lowered-energy inflation mode since there is some advanced warning of the impact and sets its own transmission mode and braking (or lack thereof) to be optimal for safest possible (to inside occupants and other detected cars in the impact area) energy transfer.
- landryraccoon 13y agoDoes anyone think that self driving cars will lead to increased traffic? I think they're an amazingly good idea, but a lot of people live close to the city center and take public transportation because a long driving commute is a pain. If you can work or surf the web while commuting, why not have an hour and a half commute both ways? This could actually lead to way more driving and way more petrol burned.
- jl6 13y agoIt's important to note that that $450bn isn't just ploughed into the ground each year. That's the wages of taxi drivers, truck drivers, mechanics, engineers, and all their associated support. While losing all that will be a net win for the economy, we're talking about millions of people becoming unemployed. This is not a new problem. Automation has already rendered a very large part of the world's population economically unnecessary.
- PeterisP 13y agoAs far as I understand from the article, they are talking about the estimated benefit from crashes. If in the end we need less ER surgeons and less cars go to junkyards then that is still clearly a good thing, as per classic 'broken window' economic thesis. Anyway, truck driving is exactly the kind of job (e.g., http://io9.com/5933246/why-truck-driving-is-one-of-the-most-unhealthy-jobs-in-america http://io9.com/5933246/why-truck-driving-is-one-of-the-most-... ) that we should make sure that no homo sapiens should be forced to do in the future.
- thesash 13y agoI can't wait to explain to my grandkids someday that back when I was young we used to let humans drive big hunks of plastic and steel at breakneck speeds, with nothing more than our laughably slow reflexes standing between life and death. They'll rightfully think it was barbaric and tragic that we let thousands of people died each year in accidents caused by distraction, drunkenness, exhaustion, and plain old human error, all at the hands of people granted the right to operate killing machines by way of a test passable by the average teenager.
- smokinn 13y agoThousands is kind of downplaying it too. 32 thousand in the us alone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in... Probably in the hundreds of thousands globally. Self-driving cars can't come fast enough.
- anonymfus 13y agoAccording to mentioned in neighbour Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-re... ) WHO report (http://www.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/78256/1/9789241564564_eng.pdf http://www.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/78256/1/978924156456... , "Preface", page V), it's about 1.24 millions deaths in 2010.
- bolder88 13y agoJust to give a counterpoint (I know this opinion will be extremely unpopular on HN) I'd explain how there was a time when we were free to drive our own cars, and make our own decisions. And simply hop in a car and drive. Not like now where you get in the car and it asks you to download the latest software update, then it monitors your every move, sending back data to the car makers/NSA and showing you ads as you drive along at ridiculously slow speeds. It'll probably also drive you past a certain shop if they pay the car maker enough money! Oh no, the car has crashed. Better turn it off and on again and hope for the best. Nothing like putting my life in some low paid software engineers hands! Oh dear, the car maker has gone bust. Now you can't get any software updates, and the software has stopped working as it can't dial home anymore. Oh well, tough luck! You didn't really think you could buy a car to own and do what you want with did you? You can only pay subscription fees for cars now. Freedom is certainly a double edged sword. With freedom comes responsibility. But taking away freedom isn't the answer. Making people more responsible is. It's going to be pretty impossible to take away the peoples right to drive cars (Even harder than taking away the right to bear arms in the US!) Stop drinking the kool-aid. It's not going to happen. I'm rooting for some massive disasters/scandals with self driven cars, to put the idea to bed. And you can be pretty sure there will be some big disasters if they ever get anywhere with it.
- EricDeb 13y agoAs someone who just had occipital nerve decompression surgery due to a whiplash injury, I can say I am very excited for self-driving cars. The amount of scar tissue the surgeon removed from those nerves was horrifying, and it was a relatively minor accident.
- jballanc 13y agoI think a lot of the objections/concerns in this thread would more-or-less melt away when you consider that we already have practically self-flying planes. Crashes? Contingency protocols? Hacking? Bugs? All these have and are continuing to be addressed by the airline industry. In fact, while I don't know this for a fact, I would highly suspect that the number of airline accidents that are the result of a flaw in the automated systems is dwarfed by the number of accidents caused by humans overriding the automated systems. (If you want a feel for just how automated flying has become, I particularly like this video of an A380 landing at SFO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3HKN-FWNq0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3HKN-FWNq0 . Just look at how much the pilots aren't doing.)
- glibgil 13y agoThe objections will melt away when my self driving car pulls up to the curb, I roll out of the bed I had installed in place of the back seat and I toss my martini glass into the bin. The person next to me will care fuckall for safety when they see all that comfort and distraction.
- DannoHung 13y agoI have a question that is possibly very simply answered: How do multiple LIDAR systems interact when they are in a very close vicinity? Say bumper to bumper traffic in NYC at rush hour?
- intoxnet 13y agojust imagine a world where you can't drive your (super)car anymore on the common roads. because once that takes off, we know where is going to go: safe and controlled traffic, special highways, no human touch of the wheel, etc. therefore the question is, is that really what we want?