Lyft CEO: Self-Driving Cars Aren't the Future 451
Nerval's Lobster writes Google, Tesla, Mercedes and others are working hard to build the best self-driving car. But will anyone actually buy them? In a Q&A session at this year's South by Southwest, Lyft CEO Logan Green insisted the answer is "No." But does Green truly believe in this vision, or is he driven (so to speak) by other motivations? It's possible that Green's stance on self-driving cars has to do more with Uber's decision to aggressively fund research into that technology. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick announcing that self-driving cars were the future was something that greatly upset many Uber drivers, and Green may see that spasm of anger as an opportunity to differentiate Lyft in the hearts and minds of the drivers who work for his service. Whether or not Green's vision is genuine, we won't know the outcome for several more years, considering the probable timeframes before self-driving cars hit the road... if ever.
Buggy whip makers said automobiles aren't... (Score:2, Insightful)
Buggy whip makers said automobiles aren't the future.
Re:Buggy whip makers said automobiles aren't... (Score:4, Insightful)
That may be true. However, self driving cars are an entirely different matter. While they are really cool, do you really want to be in one hurling down the highway at 85MPH (I'm in Utah) and trusting that the automated systems are going to know the difference between a coyote or a tumbleweed? There are an incredible number of obstacles that a person can instantly recognize that even today, a computer can't. If a child and a dog run out into the street at the same time from opposite sides, do you trust the car to make the right decision as to which it will run over? How would you like to be legally responsible for your self driving car if it runs over a child? What about black ice? What if a person is in the road and the car has a choice of running over the person or crashing and possibly killing you. Do you trust the car to make the right decision?
As much as I like software (and writing it), there are IMHO too many judgement calls for a computer and in many situations too many for a lot of (supposedly sane) people.
The only way I can see self driving cars really working is to have special roads to carry them. These would be isolated from regular traffic and most of the regular road hazards. They would be in many ways analogous to a set of rail road tracks. (You don't see trains often running into problems with obstacles -- though when they do, the train usually comes out ahead.) Once you get to where you generally plan on going, you jump off and drive the rest of the way manually.
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I notice that a lot of your examples are the type of "You are already screwed."
The point of self driving cars is that they don't take the risks humans do and don't end up in those situations.
Also, in the examples you mentioned it is pretty common for humans drivers to panic and make the wrong or no decision, heck, I've even seen drivers let go of the steering wheel when panicking.
So to the question whether I trust a car to make the right decision the answer is that I know that I don't trust human drivers. I
Re:Buggy whip makers said automobiles aren't... (Score:5, Informative)
Not only do automated cars not panic, but they can notify and coordinate with other cars on the road. With human drivers, even if you spot the obstacle up ahead, what's to prevent the asshole behind you from rear-ending you as you brake? With automated cars, the braking car can signal the cars behind it, and they can start applying the brakes before it's even humanly possible to react.
Automated cars will surely not be perfect, but human drivers have an atrocious safety record.
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Compare the number of miles driven and/or the number of distinct trips to the number of accidents. I think you will find that humans are far from being atrocious drivers. Don't let confirmation bias cloud your thinking.
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I'd follow your own advice, and I'm be more courteous as well but that's mainly because I don't like looking like a keyboard warrior.
Nothing you said in any way highlighted a short coming of a automated car. You made a few unsubstantiated remarks about machines being 'moronic' etc. Personally when I look at the behaviour of many road users, and too many internet posters, it certainly seems like flesh-bag morons are p
Re:Bulls... since when will self driving cars have (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know that. It should be perfectly possible to make a machine that can drive as well as, or better than, a human can. Have we managed to make that already? I don't know, but from the info Google have been publishing, it actually looks like we have, or are pretty damn close.
Just because it's a machine doesn't automatically mean that it sucks at making decisions. Humans are machines too, and we let them drive.
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Re:Buggy whip makers said automobiles aren't... (Score:5, Insightful)
SDCs are not perfect. They will make mistakes. But, because of faster reaction times, and 100% attention span, they will make fewer mistakes than humans. If a dog and a child run into the road at the same time, a human might make a better decision, or a computer might make a better decision, but the computer will certainly have an extra 500ms of braking time.
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Re:Buggy whip makers said automobiles aren't... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's easy to see that self driving cars will come if you look at it as a feature. Take a normal car with a self driving button that you can switch on and off at your own judgement. You don't have to use it, but slowly you start to detect situations where the self driving button comes in really handy, such as traffic jams. And then some slow city traffic. And as confidence grows you switch it on on a long highway journey.
So you end up with all the cars having the option but some never use it, others sometime, some as much as possible.
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The only way I can see self driving cars really working is to have special roads to carry them.
This may well be the best way to do it, at least initially. A sort of small train wagons that could aggregate into whole train sets for part of the way and split off to different routes when appropriate. The biggest problem with public transport atm is that trains and buses are too inflexible - they don't go exactly to where people need them, and they too often aren't full to capacity - and when they are full, they are usually not big enough. A system of self-driving cars could address both problems, thereb
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The biggest problem with public transport atm is that trains and buses are too inflexible - they don't go exactly to where people need them,
The biggest problem with public transport is the lack of support from govt to implement it properly. If you design and zone your city around your public transport then it does indeed go everywhere you need it. The problem in the West is we planned cities around the dream of the motor car and sprawling suburbs, then when we finally realised that that design doesn't scale well, tried to tack some buses and trains in where could and ended up with a mess.
If you've ever been to Hong Kong or Singapore, they ha
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There are an incredible number of obstacles that a person can instantly recognize that even today, a computer can't. If a child and a dog run out into the street at the same time from opposite sides, do you trust the car to make the right decision as to which it will run over?
Odds are that if the car's in a residential location where that's likely, it's going slow enough that it can either stop in time to avoid hitting both, or it's so close that neither the human nor the computer would have the choice of which to hit.
In testing, the computer driven cars are generally able to stop so much faster than a human that, in a case where a human has to 'make' a horrible choice of what to hit, the computer driven car has already stopped short.
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Great examples. Self-driving cars will never become a reality for a simple reason: liability. Can you really hold a person responsible for "decisions" of less than perfect software? That means the entire liability falls on the company making/using the software. Even the mighty Google couldn't afford the insurance policy for something like that.
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Very likely the reverse.
I'd imagine that most accidents involving automated cars will *provably* (video and telemetry info and all that) be human operator's fault (or the other driver)... suddenly humans will find their insurance go sky high, while insuring a self driving car will be dirt cheap (they'll be harder to steal too).
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"While they are really cool, do you really want to be in one hurling down the highway at 85MPH (I'm in Utah) and trusting that the automated systems are going to know the difference between a coyote or a tumbleweed?"
First, it will be able to tell the difference about 50 times faster than you.
Second, are you afraid it would brake for the tumbleweed and lose you 2 seconds on the way?
"There are an incredible number of obstacles that a person can instantly recognize that even today, a computer can't."
On my bloc
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All your concerns are valid, BUT, do you really think that "average human driver" makes the right decisions that much better than the potentially *random* behavior an automated car will display in all these extreme scenarios? Yes, lets say an automated car runs over a child (and saves the dog)... but do you really think the "average human drive" would do any better???
My guess, automated systems will prove to be several orders of magnitude safer overall than current human operators... there will still be acc
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That may be true. However, self driving cars are an entirely different matter. While they are really cool, do you really want to be in one hurling down the highway at 85MPH (I'm in Utah) and trusting that the automated systems are going to know the difference between a coyote or a tumbleweed?
Yes. In fact hopefully it is (much) faster, since the self-driving cars will be so much more reliable than meat-popsicle cars.
There are an incredible number of obstacles that a person can instantly recognize that even today, a computer can't. If a child and a dog run out into the street at the same time from opposite sides, do you trust the car to make the right decision as to which it will run over?
First, a person can't instantly recognize anything. We have significantly longer reaction times than computer systems. If a child and a dog run out into the street at the same time, a self-driving car has a better chance of hitting neither of them. A human on the other hand will take a lot longer to start braking at all, and in all probability (if the time scales are so low), not act
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Seeing that in a more sane world ~90% of the people operating motor vehicles would not be allowed to as they lack the ability to do so in a consistently safe manner I find your argument spurious and rather myopic.
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Do I trust self-driving cars today? No, but the thing about technology is that it is constantly being improved. The first generation of consumer model self driving cars will be glorified cruise control. You'll put in your destination and keep your hands ready to take over on a moment's notice. You might even have to do this once or twice a trip. It'll be better than human drivers in most situations, but you won't activate it (or will take over from it) during risky situations. (Similar to how you disab
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Re:Buggy whip makers said automobiles aren't... (Score:5, Insightful)
For what, +1 Irrational Fear? Seems like that should be -1 to me. You won't see ubiquitous self-driving cars until the system is better than meat-popsicle cars. Once that happens, the rational argument flips: "do you want some incompetent person driving a hunk of steel on a road near where your child plays? *shudder* Think of what would happen if that human had to react to something!"
Sure, you could say you don't think self-driving cars will ever be safer than meat-popsicle cars, but that's like saying "640 kB ought to be enough for anybody". Technology is advancing at a staggering pace, and these systems are only getting better and more reliable.
Re:Buggy whip makers said automobiles aren't... (Score:5, Interesting)
For what, +1 Irrational Fear? Seems like that should be -1 to me. You won't see ubiquitous self-driving cars until the system is better than meat-popsicle cars. Once that happens, the rational argument flips: "do you want some incompetent person driving a hunk of steel on a road near where your child plays? *shudder* Think of what would happen if that human had to react to something!"
Sure, you could say you don't think self-driving cars will ever be safer than meat-popsicle cars, but that's like saying "640 kB ought to be enough for anybody". Technology is advancing at a staggering pace, and these systems are only getting better and more reliable.
Amen, as long as avoiding risking behavior is a mandatory feature in autonomous driving software. I'd speculate a majority of accidents and road fatalities are nearly all avoidable, brought on by either poor choices, risky behavior, or bad driving habits. Case in point just today on my way to work I narrowly avoided two accidents. The first, the driver did not scrape his windows from ice and could not see any of the drivers around him - nearly plowing into me and others around him as he was changing lanes. The second, another driver decided to use the right lane as a passing lane in a 4 lane road, driving 55 while everyone else is going 35, denying anyone in the left lanes the ability to change lanes and make a right turn. Let me repeat, that was just today. Stuff like this happens everyday to millions of people. For myself, getting tail gated while I'm already going 10 above the limit is a regular *daily* occurrence. I'm barely even going to bring up the young, inexperienced, risk-loving drivers because all of the problems there should be understood without even saying.
I for one am eagerly looking forward to autonomous cars purely because of the minor few that make the roads dangerous for everyone else. But like the poster above, it's probably going to be awhile before they're reliable enough for use. But it will happen because technology will be improved over time. Changing, people's attitudes and driving habits? Yeah, far more difficult and expensive than technology with diminishing returns. Good luck on that!
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Barber tells me I need a haircut, shampoo maker says long hair is trendy.
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look, for majority of the roads it would take 50+ odd years to FOREVER to get them into shape for automatic cars.
besides, then lyft would just buy a bunch of those.
in closed areas and such.. sure.. automation works.. it's those areas where they're already being used in different industries.
despite the hype we are not really at a point where there would be even regular route automated taxis anywhere, which would be miles simpler than automated taxis from anywhere to anywhere.
Why should Uber drivers be upset?? (Score:2)
If Uber is right, and self driving cars are the future - the Uber drivers today can buy one, and send it off driving for Uber while they sit at home instead of driving. Or more likely they can sit inside reading, just to be present as a chaperone for the car in order to prevent their property from being part of a dramatic re-enactment of the Johnny Cab scene in Running Man...
Either way, less work.
Not a stakeholder (Score:2)
Lyft is Just In CYA Mode (Score:2)
Uber was just raided for harboring Skynet, after all. Sure, at first it's just staying inside lanes and stopping before you rear-end something; but after the evil-bit flips, the roadways look like Carmageddon minus the reset button.
Next up, (Score:2)
self fighting wars. Hell we don't even need a country, just set out bots to kill people and call that a war.
Future? (Score:2)
Are self driving cars the future of transportation? Yes. The only question is how far in the future. Current technology can do many of the tasks of driving a car very well. Lane following is a good example of that. They also do many tasks very poorly. Differentiating someone waving hello from someone trying to warn you of danger is an example. To do the more complex tasks requires great leaps in AI. When will these advances happen? I think it will take at least a few decades. Ever heard of the 80/20 rule? I
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In this case that last 20% is consciousness and knowledge and judgement.
It's gonna take a good 99.999999% of the effort
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We're all missing the potential (Score:2)
:) just wait till terrorist nerds are programming self driving cars to cause accidents on purpose. It will be fun like battlebots!
greedy liar (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll tell you what the future is, and the CEOs of Lyft, Uber, etc. know it as well:
Self-driving car-sharing vehicles.
I'm a huge fan of the new car-sharing services that have popped up in recent years. The ones where you simply pick up a car wherever you find it (your iPhone App will show you the nearest ones if you are looking), drive to where you want, and leave it there for the next person to take.
You have a car when you need it, don't need to bother with it when you don't, you don't need to worry about fuel, inspections, washing it - nothing. And you can take the car you need for today. Good weather? Cabrio. Need to transport something? Bigger trunk. etc.
Main disadvantage? Sometimes there's no car nearby, and of course the usual parking space hunt in the city.
Solution: Self-driving cars. Tap a button on your smartphone, the nearest car comes and picks you up. Just exit it at destination and it'll go away by itself, either finding a parking space or going to the next person who called one. If it's an electric car, it can also go and find a charging station if it wants.
Who needs taxis? Who needs Lyft?
They know this, of course, and they know it's coming.
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Hey you mentioned something that I never thought of before. How does the car sharing service pay for parking? If you use a car that's been parked for 10 days do you have to pay $300 in parking fees?
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1. It's a self driving car, it has 'all day' to make it to the cheap lot
2. If it's cheaper to drive home, have it do that.
3. If you're commuting, it's generally cheaper to pay by the month, not by the day, so the car would have an RFID or something for the lot of choice.
Oh, you're talking about the current car-sharing services with non-self driving cars.
The answer there is that they lease dedicated parking spaces for their vehicles. They get agreements with the parking garages and such to get 'group rat
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How does the car sharing service pay for parking?
The ones I use have agreements with the city that they can park on any public parking spot for free, even if you need to pay with your private car there. I don't know if they pay a yearly flat sum to the city or if the city sees it as a quid-pro-quo deal because of the reduced space usage and traffic.
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Main disadvantage? Sometimes there's no car nearby, and of course the usual parking space hunt in the city.
You think THAT is the main disadvantage?
I suppose to people who are used to public transportation, your idea makes sense. To the rest of us who don't ride public transport, it is a horrible idea.
Bleah, getting into a car that 500 people have been in? NO THANK YOU...
Just not gonna do it, it isn't a tech issue, it is a "I like my car because I'm the only one who drives it" issue...
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Yeah, I just don't get that attitude. Well, when you own a Lambo or a vintage car or something that's special, yes I get that. But "this Honda Civic is mine, it's so special from the other 20 mio. that came off the same production line" - sorry, I don't get that.
Agreed, sometimes you get a car just before they take it for cleaning and washing and it's a little dirty. But in several years of doing this, I had one car that was actually so dirty I would've taken the next one if I hadn't been in a rush. Most of
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I would never share my car with strangers. I have some tools in the trunk, a good audio system, some tapes etc. I like my car. I would not want to essentially give it to somebody and get a different car in return. Even if all cars were completely identical, I would have to carry a suitcase with the stuff that I leave in the car now, which would be inconvenient.
The ones where you simply pick up a car wherever you find it (your iPhone App will show you the nearest ones if you are looking), drive to where you want, and leave it there for the next person to take.
And those cars don't get stolen?
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I would never share my car with strangers.
That's because you consider it an additional room in your house. I know people who do that, but I never did even when I had a car there was almost nothing in it. Note that I didn't say self-driving car-sharing will replace all private car ownership, that would be stupid. But it will replace taxis and ride-sharing.
And those cars don't get stolen?
They're equipped with GPS, you sign up with your drivers license to these services and unlock the car with an RFID card. So basically they know who you are and that it was you who took the car.
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- Kids can use it (for instance when you don't want to have to pick up your kids at their soccer training)
- Older persons can use it when they are not able to drive anymore
- When you get home at 3 AM half drunk
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Kids can use it (for instance when you don't want to have to pick up your kids at their soccer training)
That's a really great thought. Better yet: You can program the car to allow only a set of destinations, so the kids can hop in and get home, but not get lost somewhere else.
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Hey - if I had the choice to buy an iphone (I'm an android guy actually) and not have all the hassles and expenses of car ownership when I don't need them (there are days I don't drive, but my car still depreciates, gets one day closer to service, gets one day closer to breaking down, etc.). That'd be a trade I'd make.
I mentioned to my wife last night that it'd be great, I could nap with her and the kidlet, instead of being awake because they frown on napping while driving!
Min
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I love the lack of self-awareness in this.
There's a lot telling that in a long post you zeroed in on the one word that triggered you.
You live in the center of the city, don't you? How do your kids like the schools there? Just curious.
So much subtle aggression. Go outside, the weather is beautiful today.
Yes, I live in the city - Lyft and Uber don't exactly serve the countryside, do they? The rest is not your business and is irrelevant to the topic at hand.
Honest Thought (Score:2)
I think that autonomous vehicles will come and go, but they'll be around almost as long as cars with drivers. I'd bet that in the long-long term, urban planning will change such that cars become entirely unnecessary in all but the most remote places. I don't think that we'll ever become so densely populated that the world is one big city, but I'll bet that we'll see large high-rise condos become much much more common, and then it'll be a ride down an elevator to do your shopping and a walk or train ride t
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I don't think that we'll ever become so densely populated that the world is one big city, but I'll bet that we'll see large high-rise condos become much much more common, and then it'll be a ride down an elevator to do your shopping and a walk or train ride to school.
It's not that suburbia isn't awesome. It's just the direction I kind of envision things going in. I could be wrong. This sort of radical shift in urban planning would take centuries, to take hold in the west.
This already exists in places like Hong Kong and Singapore, and is starting to take hold elsewhere. The exodus to the suburbs in the 60's is slowly being reversed as people appreciate the convenience of living close to amenities. Inner cities are being gentrified, more people are choosing apartment living, because convenience beats everything. Being within walking distance to everything means never having to worry about a car, self-driven or not.
There is actually such a thing as intelligence (Score:2)
and software doesn't have it.
Really. I can't believe that all these nerds like to pretend that their toys are actually thinking. They're not. And "self driving cars" won't know that they're driving, won't know what a human is, won't know what a horse is, won't know what ANY OF THE THINGS IN THE ENVIRONMENT ARE. They won't recognize when trillion of possible conditions are strange.
You want something totally insentient DRIVING A CAR?
Are you all insentient yourselves?
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Headline got cut off (Score:2)
Lyft CEO: Self-Driving Cars Aren't the Future
"...I hope."
It won't understand situations, it shouldn't make (Score:2)
life and death situations. I'm a big fan of A.I. including "strong AI" (means actually sentient) a big enough fan that I know that we're no\where near having competent general A.I. let alone some incompetent version of strong A.I.
Only sentient beings should be allowed to drive. Period.
Re:It won't understand situations, it shouldn't ma (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm really sorry to have to be so direct but that is the dumbest argument I've ever heard.
Driving is not a matter of intelligence. It's a matter of reaction. Sure, intelligence and experience help you anticipate when other drivers are being idiots, but there is very little involved in driving that can not be compensated by reaction time and adhering to proper distances.
The biggest hurdle to take is to correctly measure the surroundings. If you did that via image recognition, then yes, AI would be important. But there is laser, radar, GPS and so many other sensors involved that do nothing more than note distances to targets, location on road etc.
Autonomous driving certainly isn't trivial, but the other thing you have to keep in mind is that your oh so intelligent human drivers are actually driving like morons a lot of the time.
Please stop putting the bar for autonomous driving so high the systems have to practically be perfect the be viable. The moment they are twice as good as a human should be the moment we start switching. And we're not far from that.
Remember how badly the average driver actually drives. And then remember that half of them drive worse than that.
Add on top of that networked driving, where cars coordinate over several hundred meters and you'll see so much potential gain even from non-perfect systems it's staggering.
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The moment something in reality changes, the map is wrong.
The moment there's radio interference, the GPS doesn't work.
The moment one of 10^20 things you know about but a machine wouldn't changes, you'd know that something was wrong but a machine wouldn't. Is it really that hard to see that having machine driving before machine intelligence is idiotic?
GPS aren't as acurate as they pretend to be. (Score:3)
There's a lot of filtering to hide just how inaccurate GPSes are. That doesn't matter when a human is looking at a screen and ignoring it when it's obviously wrong. But it makes a huge difference when an idiotic machine is driving.
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Totally unnecessary. (Score:2)
That's a fact about "self driving vehicles". Now what is supposed to make them worth the risk to every person in society who might be near a road sometime?
Wait, can machines even walk yet? (Score:2, Funny)
How about if we make sure that machines can do ordinary tasks before we put them in a position of endangering everyone who goes near a road?
Sure we'll have intelligent machines one day. So we're suppose to have machines driving vehicles some 80 years before they're smart? What idiot thought THAT was a good idea?
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Yes they can walk [youtube.com]
Your realise machines are routinely put in charge of vehicles that travel at 600 mph and in which mistakes can cause disintegration of the machine, killing everyone on board? Yet they're much safer than the human pilots we keep around as psychological placebos.
Self driving taxis will be a harder sell (Score:5, Interesting)
A self driving taxi with a little knockout gas (Score:2)
would make an awesome way to kidnap.
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That mean the person riding in the taxi won't be allowed to arbitrarily stop it
I really doubt a car without an "emergency stop" button will ever fly. And if by default won't let you open the doors then an override and/or an emergency hammer to break the glass, they're not going to make something where you get trapped in a fire. Maybe it won't go offroad or pull up the driveway for me, but street address to street address it should be "close enough" unless I got 30kg of luggage. Otherwise I can complain and maybe they can do a remote drive-by-wire or get half off / refund.
What happens in an emergency - roads all stop? (Score:2, Insightful)
Say there's an earthquake. Or a rockslide. Or an avalanche.
Humans can see if there's a gap in the road. They can see if the road has moved. They can judge unusual conditions.
If the roads are full of machine drivers will have to simply stop, because the machines won't have the judgement to handle the situations.
The writing is on the wall, /.ers want to see an (Score:2, Funny)
iCar asap. They can't wait to see a real car driven by a furby! It doesn't matter how dangerous it is.
As if he knows anything (Score:2)
They might as well asked the CEO of Tim Hortons about the future of undersea exploration.
Lyft CEO doesn't know shit about cars or the automotive industry, why the hell is anyone asking his opinion as if he is an expert?
Wrong. (Score:2)
The problem is idiot American drivers. I've been accident-free for over 20 years now, but having worked for a police department
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A properly taught ant would probably be better at driving than about 80% of human drivers.
Have you been out on the road? With all the idiots making cellphone calls/driving drunk/texting/facebooking/putting up makeup/whatever? Have you seen the current state of affairs on the road?
My prophecy:
Self driving cars will be better than humans in 99,99% of the situations within 3 years. Sadly it will take another 5 to wide scale adoption and yet another 10 years for human driven cars to be banned to racetracks.
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My prophecy:
Self driving cars will be better than humans in 99,99% of the situations within 3 years. Sadly it will take another 5 to wide scale adoption and yet another 10 years for human driven cars to be banned to racetracks.
Irrelevant - the moment a self-driving car has an accident that causes loss of life, there'll be a public outcry against them, and a demand that they be banned for being too unsafe, statistics-be-damned.
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I for instance would buy one as soon as they are affordable.
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Irrelevant - the moment a self-driving car has an accident that causes loss of life, there'll be a public outcry against them, and a demand that they be banned for being too unsafe, statistics-be-damned.
What is sad is that you're probably right and it shows how ignorant most humans really are...
We are not, in general, as smart as we think we are...
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My prophecy:
Self driving cars will be better than humans in 99,99% of the situations within 3 years. Sadly it will take another 5 to wide scale adoption and yet another 10 years for human driven cars to be banned to racetracks.
Your calculation implies that everyone replaces their car within a 5 year period.
That may be true in Beverly Hills, but it's certainly not true in the rest of the US.
The average age of cars on U.S. roads is 11.4 years, IHS Automotive reports. The average age of vehicles on U.S. roads has hit a plateau of about 11.4 years, according to an annual study by IHS Automotive, an auto industry research firm. Jun 9, 2014
In any case, I find your optimism unjustified.
In the Bay Area for instance, we could already make BART trains fully automated [pushback.com], and it's been studied they would become safer to boot, but attempting to change that system to get rid of the operators would be absolute political suicide.
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Your calculation implies that everyone replaces their car within a 5 year period.
That may be true in Beverly Hills, but it's certainly not true in the rest of the US.
It also implies these wonders of technology will cost the same as a regular car. A cheap aircraft cost $300k. An automated drone costs a couple of million. If those costs translate to cars then they're guaranteed to never be mainstream.
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Sorry, I am talking from a Dutch point of view. 18+ year old cars are rare here and most of them are oldtimers, only to be driven a few times a year. That argument will not stop it here.
Normal human idiocy like banning them because of one death (despite statistics) might, but I like having high hopes.
Re: (Score:2)
Well... I think what they'll probably do is continue testing - and they probably won't be widely deployed until they're as safe as human drivers (on average, they'll probably be safer in some ways and less safe in others). Soon after that, they'll be safer than humans (because they can share knowledge, are easy to upgrade, and once there's lots of them they'll be able to communicate in ways humans can't).. well, that is, if we keep going.
I say "if", because the more likely problem is Luddites who will want
Re: (Score:3)
One problem is who will bear the responsibility for the accident. As it is now, if I hit another car or a person, I am responsible for it and am punished for it. This is fair. Now, if a self-driving car hits someone and the car was maintained properly (no problems with brakes etc), then the accident was really caused by the software. Will the manufacturer pay for the damage caused? Because now I am not responsible for something I had no control over.
Another problem is that when a self-driving car causes an
Re:Death traps. (Score:5, Insightful)
One problem is who will bear the responsibility for the accident.
We already know that. The insurance company is responsible.
Three states (California, Nevada, and Florida) already allow SDCs on their roads. The liability issue is already resolved.
Another problem is that when a self-driving car causes an accident, it will be something that would have been obvious to a human driver, resulting in the general opinion that self driving cars are stupid.
When a human causes an accident, it is almost always something that would have been obvious to another human driver, resulting in the general opinion that humans are stupid. Most people are intelligent enough to realize that SDCs will not be perfect, but they will prevent a lot more accidents that they will cause, and the tradeoff is worth it. Seat-belts and airbags also occasionally kill people, but they save ten lives for every one they take, and people accept the tradeoff.
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And who pays for the insurance? Why should I pay for it if the accident will not be caused by me, but by some programmer who forgot to take some variable into account when writing the software for my car?
I understand that I am responsible for the accident if:
1) I was actually driving the car (like it is now)
2) I neglected to maintain the car, therefore some part of it failed and resulted in the accident.
However, if the software causes the accident all by itself, why should I pay for it? Especially if I had
Re: (Score:2)
We already know that. The insurance company is responsible.
Also, in many cases 'true accident' or 'Act of God'* is an actual category. IE 'Nobody did anything definably negligent, so the accident isn't really anybody's fault'.
A tiny piece of road debris was hit at just the wrong spot, causing a tire to blow, which the self-driving car wasn't able to adjust for fast enough, causing an accident. A sudden wind gust(in a wind storm, most likely), pushed the car too far over, etc...
When self-driving cars are developed enough to be usable by the average person, for som
what about criminal liability for auto drive cars? (Score:2)
There things that can happen with auto drive cars that fall under criminal liability and criminal courts.
Re: (Score:2)
When a human causes an accident, it is almost always something that would have been obvious to another human driver, resulting in the general opinion that humans are stupid. Most people are intelligent enough to realize that SDCs will not be perfect, but they will prevent a lot more accidents that they will cause, and the tradeoff is worth it. Seat-belts and airbags also occasionally kill people, but they save ten lives for every one they take, and people accept the tradeoff.
Your logic is not quite right there. Firstly a seat belt or airbag is not a decision making piece of machinery. A self-drvie car actually has to make decisions. Is that a plastic bag, or a cat? Each decision is a risk of a crash. You're also assuming that if human crash rate is x, then as long as automaton crash rate is less than x then everything is fine. But it doesn't work like that.
People believe it is only other stupid people that crash, and as long as they're in control they have a say in whether th
Re: (Score:2)
Just great. Some corporation will figure that having a driverless car will save them some $8 an hour (or say $8 a day in a 3rd world hellhole) and bribe officials into accepting some Windows Vista death traps veering around your city! And there won't be a damn thing you can do about it.
Because $8!
Re: (Score:2)
Some corporation figures out that they can save a lot of money and have far safer cars. Oh noes! So terrible! 30,000 people die in the US in traffic accidents alone. Self-driving cars can easily be better than human drivers, due to their massively-superior sensor packages, integration with the car's own systems, inter-car communication, and fantastic reaction times.
Seriously - were you abused by a self-driving car? It sounds like it, as you keep offering your own made-up nonsensical issues as evidence
Re: (Score:2)
Disagree.
If a driverless car was in a similar price band to a normal car I would buy one (assuming safe ofcourse). I wouldn't be willing to wait for a car to arrive if I wanted to pop to the shops. The loss of convenience would be too high. So that means I would want to maintain my own transport, given that means I'm going to own a car why wouldn't I own one that could drive itself?
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If a driverless car was in a similar price band to a normal car I would buy one (assuming safe ofcourse).
I once figured out that a self-driving feature would be worth about $5k/year for me.
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Odd, i was thinking the opposite way. Have some selfdriving cars be modified a bit extra by the police (with some proper calibration of everything, and some extra sensors), and you've got near permanent police presence on every big road. And it's no longer just people driving to fast past a speed trap that get caught, but all other antisocial behaviors too. It'll make the roads hell for human drivers who are used to being jerks on the road :).
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I doubt it. Because that would be poor software design. The software would be looking to avoid accidents in an order of severity. Your pushing off the road at an exist may work but your pushing to increase speed wouldn't.
In most vehicle brakes far exceed the power of the engine. Even in cases where it doesn't the brakes have twice as much contact patch with the road than the engine (unless you are in a 4wd with dual diff locks / limited slip diff). The most sensible and safest tactic is to not accelera
Re: (Score:2)
Keep in mind that the occupant of said self driving car will have both hands free to operate whatever firearms he might possess.
You never know, it might be me in that self-driving car, and I might take exception to your engine block in that case. If I'm feeling nice. If I'm not feeling so nice, I might go after the steering actuator.
Re: (Score:2)
What's wrong with hiring drivers?
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Drivers are expensive. Self-driving could be less than 1/4 the cost of a minimum wage employee for a year.
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Naw, they're just Apple reality-distortion-field brainwashed to salivate whenever they hear about a new toy.