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> I suspect that the current google car is already safer than the overall average driver. Based on what? Even Google admits that the car is essentially blind (

> I suspect that the current google car is already safer than the overall average driver. Based on what? Even Google admits that the car is essentially blind (~30 feet visibility) in light rain. They've done little to no road testing in poor weather conditions. The vast majority of their "total miles driven" are highway miles in good weather, with the tricky city-driving bits at either end taken over by humans. Google often leaves the impression that, as a Google executive once wrote, the cars can “drive anywhere a car can legally drive.” However, that’s true only if intricate preparations have been made beforehand, with the car’s exact route, including driveways, extensively mapped. Data from multiple passes by a special sensor vehicle must later be pored over, meter by meter, by both computers and humans. It’s vastly more effort than what’s needed for Google Maps. http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530276/hidden-obstacles-for-googles-self-driving-cars/ http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530276/hidden-obstacles...

zanny 12y ago
A self-driving car that can only do highways and can't drive in bad weather still destroys the trucker industry overnight. And that is today. No, I'm not drinking the AI koolaid here thinking there will be some breakout solution to fuzzy visibility problems these cars have. The difficulty differentiating contextual moving objects correctly, knowing what is "safe" debris and what is not, etc, are all neural net problems that will take years of development and even then just be heuristics. But you don't really need all that. All you need is something that, given a sunny day and a highway, beats the human at driving the truck, and suddenly you lose three million jobs when it hits the market.
- vinceguidry 12y ago
  It's going to be awhile before they can actually eliminate the human. They've had self-driving tankers and self-driving airplanes for awhile now, they still need human operators for various reasons. They just don't have to actually drive.
- krapp 12y ago
  >All you need is something that, given a sunny day and a highway, beats the human at driving the truck, and suddenly you lose three million jobs when it hits the market. I don't see how, given a sunny day and a highway, an autonomous vehicle can quantifiably beat a human driver to the degree of 'destroying the trucker industry overnight.' Unless you're assuming that there are few human drivers capable of managing a trip down a highway under the best possible conditions, the results between the two would have to be more or less equal. Those human drivers can, meanwhile, still manage night, sleet, snow, fog, and arbitrary backroads and detours.
- renox 12y ago
  > A self-driving car that can only do highways and can't drive in bad weather still destroys the trucker industry overnight. Destroying the trucker industry with a self-driving car which can't drive in bad weather?? I don't think so! Trucker's clients usually care a lot about predictability, and they would NOT be happy to hear "sorry it is raining and the robot car couldn't arrive".

zanny 12y ago

A self-driving car that can only do highways and can't drive in bad weather still destroys the trucker industry overnight. And that is today. No, I'm not drinking the AI koolaid here thinking there will be some breakout solution to fuzzy visibility problems these cars have. The difficulty differentiating contextual moving objects correctly, knowing what is "safe" debris and what is not, etc, are all neural net problems that will take years of development and even then just be heuristics. But you don't really need all that. All you need is something that, given a sunny day and a highway, beats the human at driving the truck, and suddenly you lose three million jobs when it hits the market.

vinceguidry 12y ago
It's going to be awhile before they can actually eliminate the human. They've had self-driving tankers and self-driving airplanes for awhile now, they still need human operators for various reasons. They just don't have to actually drive.
krapp 12y ago
>All you need is something that, given a sunny day and a highway, beats the human at driving the truck, and suddenly you lose three million jobs when it hits the market. I don't see how, given a sunny day and a highway, an autonomous vehicle can quantifiably beat a human driver to the degree of 'destroying the trucker industry overnight.' Unless you're assuming that there are few human drivers capable of managing a trip down a highway under the best possible conditions, the results between the two would have to be more or less equal. Those human drivers can, meanwhile, still manage night, sleet, snow, fog, and arbitrary backroads and detours.
renox 12y ago
> A self-driving car that can only do highways and can't drive in bad weather still destroys the trucker industry overnight. Destroying the trucker industry with a self-driving car which can't drive in bad weather?? I don't think so! Trucker's clients usually care a lot about predictability, and they would NOT be happy to hear "sorry it is raining and the robot car couldn't arrive".