
The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars - perspectivezoom
http://perspectivezoom.com/2013/11/03/the-driverless-car-revolution-should-not-begin-with-cars.html
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kposehn
> Compared to driverless cars, driverless trucking is technically way simpler.
> When going from one warehouse in a sparsely populated area to a another
> warehouse in a similarly sparsly populated area, there’s a lot less that can
> go wrong.

Not quite. Long haul trucking has far more things to go wrong than a short
jaunt from two packed urban spots to another. A lot goes wrong on these trips.
Flat tires, accidents, bad weather and - of course - other drivers.

Case in point: a long haul truck from Oakland to Chicago has to tackle Donner
Pass, the Wasatch, Sherman hill (the Wyoming continental divide) and then
finally gets a flat stretch across the Great Plains.

I would counter that the best start is short-haul intermodal: trucks that pick
up a container and haul it to an intermodal rail yard, and so on. Those trucks
have to deal with a short route and much fewer potential problems.

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danohuiginn
>the best start is short-haul intermodal

bingo. In container ports, long-distance drivers will generally dump their
trailer to be shunted and loaded internally, and pick up another one. Separate
cabs are attached to move things around within the port.

These could relatively easily become driverless. It's a highly controlled and
automated environment. Every moment a ship is in the port costs money, so
there's a big reward for improving reliability and shaving seconds off
(un)load times. It might make financial sense even in Asian ports with low
wage costs for drivers.

Same with mining or heavy industry. Where companies might now build their own
railways, in the future they could build a road and run driverless trucks
along it. Being outside of public road systems makes the legal situation
easier, and you can always have a human jump in to drive the last mile.

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MaulingMonkey
No "in the future" about it... we're already seeing automated ore haulers in
Australia's pit mines, for example. It's a perfect storm of a controlled,
sparsely populated and dangerous environment, relatively low cost (thanks to
fewer, larger vehicles, and automation costs rising slower than size), etc.

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protomyth
> Compared to driverless cars, driverless trucking is technically way simpler

This person has never driven a truck or a bus[1]. The amount of stuff that can
go wrong in a truck or bus, plus the amount of damage an error would cause is
well above a car.

I think the whole driverless car should have started with smaller-than-car
vehicles. I wish they had started with simple package delivery vehicles[2] and
learned from them.

1) I did have a bus license in my poorly spent youth

2) something like
[http://badgerlandminitrucks.com/specs.htm](http://badgerlandminitrucks.com/specs.htm)
but smaller. Vehicle drives to A, texts, accepts cargo and payment, leaves for
B, texts person at B, B verifies ID, door opens, vehicles goes to next site -
probably work OK in a city

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rickdale
The only flaw I see with beginning with semi-trucks is the perception of
driverless cars to the masses and the potential damage a driverless semi-truck
accident could incur vs a driverless Prius or something smaller. Not saying
there won't be a market for it in the trucking business, but seems smart to
start on the smaller cars just for the sake of perceived safety.

~~~
jorleif
Exactly what I thought. There is an awful lot of damage a semi-truck can do if
things go wrong. But, then I realized, that there is not necessarily a need
for the "trucks" to be big. Maybe you could go the Roomba route, and make them
much smaller than traditional trucks, maybe even smaller than conventional
cars. Since no driver is needed, you can scale out with many of them, rather
than having one very large truck. Maybe that approach does not work for
everything, but somehow I think having a large bunch of cargo ants is much
less risky than a single very large cargo elephant.

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andrewfong
If the trucks are small, they're no longer compatible with standard-sized
shipping containers, which would throw up a significant barrier to adoption.

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ams6110
Any time I read these utopian pieces about the driverless car nirvana that is
around the corner I roll my eyes. If there's anything we should learn from
history it's that nothing is as simple as it seems, especially if it's
something we want.

There will be unforeseen technical issues that are not apparent with a single
test car or even small numbers of test cars. There will be accidents, and
we'll have lawsuits against Google or other manufacturers. Those will have to
play out, so we figure out who is really liable when a driverless car crashes.
Trial lawyers will flock to these like sharks to a bleeding fish.

We may get to a point where driverless cars are safer than human-operated
cars, and are accepted by the public. I think it's at least 50 years away.

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fricken4
It's not 50 years away, it's closer to 5 years away. In 15 years they will
dominate the roads.

Google's cars have already demonstrated that they are safer than human drivers
with 99% statistical certainty, they have over 750,000 miles of accident free
testing on public roads under their belt.

Because Self Driving Cars stand to reduce traffic accidents by 90% or more, it
is likely that they will be afforded certain legal protections against the
sorts of class action lawsuits you're suggesting, much as they do for vaccine
makers, under the auspices that in spite of the risks involved for
manufacturers the net benefit to society is too great.

~~~
protomyth
> Google's cars have already demonstrated that they are safer than human
> drivers with 99% statistical certainty, they have over 750,000 miles of
> accident free testing on public roads under their belt.

Has Google driven their car in snow storm[1] or with snow/ice on the ground?

1) I'm talking basic heavy snow, not a blizzard

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fricken4
They have not done serious work yet with driving in snow and other inclement
weather conditions, this is the phase they're entering into as we speak.
They've suggested their cars will be ready for the public in 2017, I guess
we'll see if they meet this deadline or not.

~~~
protomyth
So they haven't driven in road conditions that cause quite a bit of accidents
but you state they "demonstrated that they are safer than human drivers with
99% statistical certainty, they have over 750,000 miles of accident free
testing on public roads under their belt."

Is the success you quoted adjusted for lack of adverse weather conditions and
is it published?

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ape4
Rio Tinto Deploys Driverless Trucks [http://www.driverlesscarhq.com/rio-tinto-
deploys-driverless-...](http://www.driverlesscarhq.com/rio-tinto-deploys-
driverless-trucks/)

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simonebrunozzi
Rio Tinto, you mean.

~~~
ape4
yeah, oops.

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zck
I think what will come first is driverless _subway_ cars. They've already had
this in some places
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_driverless_trains](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_driverless_trains)),
but they're just replacing a regularly-scheduled human-driven train with one
without a driver.

But think about what can happen if you have a system designed to not require a
driver at each subway car. You can have smaller cars, called on demand. You
don't need to wait for the next car to come. This is especially a benefit
during late night hours, when you might have a subway come only every 20 or 30
minutes. This is made worse if you need to transfer.

Once you get cars running along existing lines with small cars, you can
_eliminate subway lines entirely_. Just hop in a subway car, tell it where to
go, and it gets you there. No transfers, no thinking of the best lines to
take, just get in a car and it'll drop you off at your end location. It would
eliminate taxis for many people, which would be one of the reasons this plan
would create controversy. Also controversial is elimination of conducting
jobs.

I see a few reasons replacing subways will work better than trying to replace
cars:

* One organization already owns all the infrastructure for a subway: they can just choose to replace it, and get the laws written for themselves.

* Rails mean you don't have to worry as much about steering, or cars next to you turning into you.

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furyg3
There are already many driverless subways in existence (especially at
airports). Many driven subways (BART in SF) are actually driverless, with a
driver there just to close the doors and in case of emergencies.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_driverless_trains#Unatt...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_driverless_trains#Unattended_Train_Operation_.28UTO_-
_completely_driverless.29_systems_and_lines_.28Grade_of_Automation_4.29)

Good luck implementing totally driverless subways on currently driven subways,
though. Unions will totally block the necessary incremental steps, so it would
have to be an all-or-nothing back room skunkworks project from a public
transit authority.

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fvrghl
I totally agree that driverless trucks are the future, but I don't think it
will come easy. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is one of the
largest unions in North America, and one of the most politically powerful. I
think that they will fight this with everything they have to keep humans
getting paychecks.

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dlsx
Except the power of going on strike has been completely disintegrated with an
automated fleet of trucks sitting back ready to be deployed.

Disruption will come, and they won't be able to stop it.

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alexeisadeski3
He's not referring to a strike, but to politics.

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cinquemb
Because strikes have never been used as political tools by organized labor
groups…

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alexeisadeski3
All cats are mammals but not all mammals are cats.

~~~
cinquemb
Nothing like a persuasive comment to save the increasing obsolescence of human
labor applied in the aforementioned way from the automated chopping block…

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graylights
Driverless trucks is a real opportunity that could save a lot of money in
shipping.

But it could be exploited. If a person walks out in front of a truck, the
automated truck better stop. Which an unguarded truck would become easy to rob
with little risk. A flat tire would mean the truck calls in for help and is
stranded defenseless on the side of the road. That said a fair amount of loss
could probably be absorbed with the savings.

I expect long haul truck drivers instead to turn into truck captains. They're
present but not for the driving. The truck can drive through the night while
they sleep. The captain will handle weigh-ins, emergencies and other road
tasks.

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sigstoat
by the time you're crazy enough to step out in front of any sort of semi in
hopes it will stop, so you can rob it, i don't think you're doing risk
calculations in a rational way.

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msandford
Okay so put a mannequin with enough of a heater inside of it to pass for human
on IR and strap it atop a roomba and then have THAT "step out" in front of a
truck. It's a $1000 dummy and as long as you rob every 5th truck successfully
(20%, but really you'll probably get 90% of them) you can make back all the
money on busted dummies and more.

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simonebrunozzi
Since 2010, I keep saying that Singapore (nation state, in this case) will be
the first "city" (with at least one million people) to adopt driverless cars
in a short span of time. I would even accept bets :)

Municipalities with a lot of freedom will follow suit. I don't know if
american cities will have an easy time fighting with unions, conservatives,
taxi drivers, real estate owners.

Why real estate owners? Because once transportation gets optimized, "hot"
areas of the city will cool down in prices, compared to other parts of the
city.

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panic
Why does it have to be a driverless car revolution? It seems more likely we'll
get there incrementally, adding pieces of the experience one by one as safety
features. Eventually, with all the safety features enabled, the car will be
able to drive itself.

~~~
andrewfong
There was a post about this a couple weeks ago about why incremental change
might actually be less safe than a "revolution". Basically, if a car can
handle 90% of the scenarios it faces, the human driver would zone out and have
difficulty responding to the remaining 10%, especially if there's little to no
warning of when that 10% will happen.

~~~
tempestn
Yes. Also, when a company knows it needs to design a 100% driverless car,
safety will necessarily be the primary concern when designing the firmware.
While that's theoretically the case regardless, recent Toyota fallout[1] shows
that car companies perhaps aren't paying enough attention to this given that
they have a human driver ultimately making the decisions.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6636811](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6636811)

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gojomo
A problem with trucks as the leading-edge is that they're already a bit alien
to the public and policymakers: resented in traffic, feared out of proportion
to actual risks, underappreciated as some narrow corporate/union interest. If
they're the test case, enthusiasm will be lower, regulation more
costly/cautious, and the public vaguely suspicious, primed to assume the worst
when anything goes wrong.

~~~
protomyth
Plus, people drive like idiots around them. It is amazing what normally sane
people will do in the presence of a truck.

~~~
gojomo
Yep. People who know they're around a self-driving car may act weird, too:
gawking at or challenging the software. (The young and reckless might even
play chicken with autocars for thrills.)

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dpe82
> There are significantly fewer one way streets, fewer bicyclists, fewer
> pedestrians. The directions will be simpler on average.

While that may indeed be true on average, the real challenge in developing
production-level driverless tech is properly handling the edge cases. Just
because a vehicle may not often have to deal with bicyclists doesn't mean it
never has to deal with them.

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tlb
The major benefit of self-driving isn't saving the costs of a driver's salary,
it's reducing accidents. Commercial truck drivers are skilled and alert, so
it's hard to be safer than them. Average commuters are distracted and
accident-prone, so you can reduce accidents with near-future technology.

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nawitus
Do you have a source which shows that commercial truck drivers are less
accident-prone, and by how much?

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protomyth
Not the OP, but [http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/facts-
research/LTCO2010/2010LargeTr...](http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/facts-
research/LTCO2010/2010LargeTruckCrashOverview.aspx) \- Figure 2 and 3

~~~
nawitus
Thanks!

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mindslight
Alternatively, instead of trying for heavier vehicles with longer hauls, what
about something like citywide pizza/package delivery? You've no need for
passenger safety, so the size and weight of the vehicle can be brought way
down. Speed could also remain relatively low, mitigated by the fact that
deliveries could be dispatched immediately rather than aggregating trips. Not
that a person getting hit by a 400lb vehicle at 20mph is a laughing
experience, but accident damages would be mitigated and an emergency stop-
everything would actually be feasible.

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joshuaellinger
I was in the bay area recently and got stuck on 101 driving from Google to
GoodData in downtown SF....

It made me think that the place to start is the car pool lanes on 101.

Just close them off to humans. Instead, make them available to driverless cars
with one addition -- a driverless on-top tow truck.

You drive your existing car on it. Type a destination in on your phone and
press GO. It dumps you an one of several exit points.

Ideally, you'd do this with rail instead of roads but that changes it from a
tech problem (mostly) for an infrastructure problem (mostly).

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busterarm
As much as I'd like to read more of this article, the choice of font makes it
pretty unreadable.

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exit
has anyone looked into what effect the driveless car revolution will have on
the labor market?

i'm not a luddite. i'm just curious how many people will be affected
professionally.

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MIT_Hacker
I giggled a little bit too much on this pun

[4] "Who will drive adoption?"

