Fully driverless cars could be months away (opens in new tab)

(arstechnica.com)

32 pointstnash8y ago13 comments

13 comments

I've always been a big proponent of self-driving cars, but only because I imagined them as fully autonomous. A fleet of self-driving cars that rely on being backed by, essentially, a call center, sounds like a nightmare.

"When Waymo tested in Phoenix earlier this year, drivers sometimes had to take over the wheel to prevent the cars from holding up traffic because it took too long for humans in the command center to answer the cars’ requests for help."

Spivak8y ago

I guess the ability for a single person able to essentially 'drive' an entire fleet of cars is an improvement but it's not exactly the utopia I imagined.

vannevar8y ago

Fully driverless cars are here today, for that matter. But if you want want tamperproof driverless cars that perform well under adverse conditions and are thoroughly tested, then you're going to have to wait a lot longer than "months".

I think this snippet is pretty telling: "Waymo chose the Phoenix area for its favorable weather, its wide, well-maintained streets, and the relative lack of pedestrians." (Emphasis mine.) Probably wise, but I'm sure they've already carefully calculated the risk/return vs pedestrian fatalities and are coming out ahead.

shallot_router8y ago

How could a driverless car ever truly be tamperproof, though? At some point we'll just have to accept it as a potential risk.

vannevar8y ago

Good question. Tamperproof to me means they can't physically be spooked into doing things, as well as being secure from hacking. In theory, they just have to be as safe as human drivers, who manage to kill thousands of people each year. But as a practical matter, people will probably demand that they be much safer than humans. And it will take awhile to prove that out.

Someone8y ago

…if ‘fully’ means ‘remotely operated, when the going gets tough’, such as, I guess, in bad weather (rare in Phoenix), or when there is a lot of traffic in one place, times when demand for taxis is highest.

ocdtrekkie8y ago

This is something you should never hear about a product which is life critical that it works correctly:

"Efrati reports that Waymo CEO John Krafcik faces pressure from his boss, Google co-founder and Alphabet CEO Larry Page, to transform Waymo's impressive self-driving technology into a shipping product."

Combined with releasing that product in the area with the least consumer and safety protections:

"Another important factor was the legal climate. Arizona has some of the nation's most permissive laws regarding self-driving vehicles."

So the TL;DR is that someone has been pressured to rush a product to release in an area with few safety regulations that could cause a lot of harm if it malfunctions.

nieksand8y ago

On the flip side, the status quo is killing 40000 people per year in the US alone:

http://www.nsc.org/NewsDocuments/2017/12-month-estimates.pdf

nealabq8y ago

Which invites the question: how long before human-driven cars are no longer allowed on the public roads?

I'm guessing year 2035.

na858y ago

So we should push out half-baked solutions?

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

13 comments

Zanni8y ago

Spivak8y ago

I guess the ability for a single person able to essentially 'drive' an entire fleet of cars is an improvement but it's not exactly the utopia I imagined.

vannevar8y ago

shallot_router8y ago

How could a driverless car ever truly be tamperproof, though? At some point we'll just have to accept it as a potential risk.

vannevar8y ago

Someone8y ago

ocdtrekkie8y ago

This is something you should never hear about a product which is life critical that it works correctly:

Combined with releasing that product in the area with the least consumer and safety protections:

"Another important factor was the legal climate. Arizona has some of the nation's most permissive laws regarding self-driving vehicles."

So the TL;DR is that someone has been pressured to rush a product to release in an area with few safety regulations that could cause a lot of harm if it malfunctions.

nieksand8y ago

On the flip side, the status quo is killing 40000 people per year in the US alone:

http://www.nsc.org/NewsDocuments/2017/12-month-estimates.pdf

nealabq8y ago

Which invites the question: how long before human-driven cars are no longer allowed on the public roads?

I'm guessing year 2035.

na858y ago

So we should push out half-baked solutions?

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse