
Driverless cars are stuck in a jam - sien
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/10/12/driverless-cars-are-stuck-in-a-jam
======
wongarsu
I think researching autonomous cars but continously extracting and bringing
the "easy" accomplishments to market, like automated parking, is the more
successful strategy. This is what many traditional car manufacturers and to a
lesser degree Tesla seem to be doing. Others like Waymo want to skip all
intermediary steps and go straight for the big prize. That's a high risk
strategy that may or may not pay off.

~~~
mdorazio
The problem is this is a dangerous strategy. As in dangerous to people’s
lives. We know how distracted drivers are without _any_ advanced features in
cars today. The more “it does some things on its own” options you add, the
more likely people are to over-rely on those features and assume the car is
capable of more than it actually is, which leads to accidents. Tesla is a
perfect example of this, with people assuming it’s Level 3ish capabilities are
really Level 4 and then happily taking naps or watching movies in the drivers
seat while the car plows into a stopped vehicle.

Waymo is doing the right thing for safety here by skipping 3 entirely.

~~~
Dumblydorr
Let's not pretend we care about life and safety, when we discuss a handful of
lives while we glide over the 30,000 yearly deaths on the road in the US
alone. The only truly safe thing to do with cars would be to ban them or to
vastly increase licensing requirements.

~~~
asdkhadsj
Eh, I agree, BUT... lets not pretend that is immediately viable, either.
Severely restricting license access in a country with often _(varying by
city)_ terrible public transit _seems_ to be a recipe for disaster.

Your comment quips as if state officials have their finger over the button of
restricting licenses, but choose not to merely for lack of care. It is far,
far more complicated than you give it credit for. Or so, I imagine.

As HN sometimes forgets, the world exists beyond the lines of SF. Some places
have _terrible_ public transport.

~~~
wongarsu
To elaborate with an example: Germany has much stricter driver licencing (21
hours of theoretical courses, 9 hours or practical lessons with a certified
instructor, practical and theoretical exam, and on top of that many people
take more lessons to be able to pass the exams. And that's just for normal
cars below 3.5 tons). Some small percentage of people try multiple times and
never pass the exams.

These strict requirements are certainly a factor why we can have the Autobahn
with no speed limit (on 50% of the total length) while still having
significantly fewer road deaths than the US (4.2 vs 7.3 per billion kilometers
traveled, 6.4 vs 14.2 per 100k vehicles).

But we can only do that in Germany because our public transit is at least
passable and our cities and villages are built densely. Public transit could
be much better, but in any place with at least 500 inhabitants you can live
fairly comfortably without a car if you have to.

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seibelj
Driving on roads with human drivers, bikers, pedestrians, animals, freak
weather events, maintenance and construction workers, and all manner of
situations is - in reality - a problem of unbounded complexity. Unless we
create infrastructure that radically reduces the complexity, like invisible
“tracks” and banning as many variables as possible (other humans) then nothing
short of AGI will get us close to the current below-average human driver.

Self driving cars is Silicon Valley hubris and hype at its finest. I genuinely
feel proud about the computer scientists who have wrangled millions of dollars
from investors, truly excellent work, I wish all engineers could get that kind
of money. Hopefully the billions keep flowing.

~~~
Erlich_Bachman
> a problem of unbounded complexity

A loosely used term here. Especially in terms of it's practical meaning, not
theoretical. In this sense, both Dota and Starcraft II were also problems of
unbounded complexity, and Alphastar is doing pretty good there.

> nothing short of AGI will get us close to the current below-average human
> driver

What are you basing this assumption on? Most prominent scientists in this
field don't seem to be agreeing with it. It is by no means self-evident or
backed by any substantial direct evidence.

More generally, I just can't understand this attitude you have. How does your
thinking process work here, what is that attitude good for and where is it
coming from?

Here we have world's brightest people trying to tackle a very important and
useful problem, it's hard to know when it will be tackled, but it seems it
will be eventually. Some people are disagreeing about when it will happen
(perhaps you think it will not be for a 100 years), but at least they are
doing something and are making progress. Investors similarly know that it is a
hard problem and no one knows when it will be done, but they want to give
their money for this problem. And here you are just complaining about the
whole situation? What would you have all these actors do, just do nothing?
Stop making these cars? Stop trying to solve the problem, stop bringing the
progress forward? Or what, working on it in secret and never telling anyone so
that god forbid any one person would ever happen to see their presentation and
build a faulty (a too optimistic) view on the current state of the technology?
Where is your negativity and sarcasm coming from?

~~~
baybal2
> Here we have world's brightest people trying to tackle a very important and
> useful problem,

No you don't, but world's best paid people are working in it for sure =D

The "AI industry" has a problem. Every few weeks there comes a "big name AI
researcher" and call solving another "world's biggest problem," but a 5 minute
research into his claim would, yet again, reveal just a hello world on opencv.

This is from where the negativity towards the ai industry is coming from.

Saying that you have "world's brightest people" sounds like a big stretch to
an industry outsider, and plainly funny to people with some solid level of
computer literacy.

~~~
Erlich_Bachman
I haven't heard of any anecdotes in the form of a big new breakthrough being a
HelloWorld in opencv, and I think that any such cases can be more readily
blamed on the media and bloggers inflating the actual research papers or
results than actual scientists and engineers. But let's say you have
experienced such episodes.

So now what, what is your point, what is your goal, what is your vision for
this field? What would you have happened better? To just complain about it?
Should they stop working on self-driving cars? Should they stop sending press-
releases, should they stop selling cars with this functionality, what is it
that you want? Do you want them to be paid less? I actually don't understand.
What would be your best scenario for this field that would be better than what
is going on right now (that big players and many of the brightest (and yes
well-paid) data scientists are working on making a safe self-driving car a
reality, while many investors are believing in it and are voting with their
dollars)?

~~~
baybal2
I have no suggestions for you

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heyflyguy
I'm a cheap SOB so I can't read the whole article, but I am really looking
forward to a time when a city center no longer allows human operated vehicles.

A time when streets have no lights, lanes or direction of traffic.

A time when during certain times of the day a street can dynamically change
from one way to two way and back to one way traffic, all based on the
collaborative hive mind of self driving cars.

Cars constantly talking to eachother, the network and making thousand of tiny
decisions about what lane to occupy, where to turn in order to expedite their
own trip and that of their nearby neighbor.

~~~
L_Rahman
It is stunning to me that we can more easily imagine a city center with a
collaborative hive mind of self driving cars than we can one with no cars at
all.

Why do we want that future so badly?

~~~
rayiner
Because cars are great? You get where you want to go quickly, can carry a
bunch of stuff with you, and are protected from the elements. Walking, by
contrast, sucks. Here in DC, it’s pleasant outside for like 4 months out of
the year. For five months out of the year, the daily low is below freezing or
the daily high is above 80. That’s true in Amsterdam zero months out of the
year.

~~~
MereInterest
Walking sucks in a city designed for cars. Needing to walk past row after row
of parking spaces, or taking a half-mile detour to get to the nearest
crosswalk. Intersections are designed to avoid slowing cars down, which
increases the danger of every crossing.

Walking is fantastic in cities that are designed for walking. Walking by a
different shop every dozen steps, rather than every quarter mile. Crossing the
street at any location, or even having the street repurposed for walking in.

Yes, snow is annoying. You bundle up with a coat and boots, and then it
doesn't matter anymore. The fundamental difference is in how a city is
designed.

~~~
rayiner
No, walking sucks everywhere. I live in Annapolis which was designed in the
1600s and is not designed for cars:
[https://images.app.goo.gl/5zQ8QnR5EPEJggYJ6](https://images.app.goo.gl/5zQ8QnR5EPEJggYJ6).
It’s great when the weather is nice. But trudging uphill holding a kid or lots
of groceries in 90 degree weather is less pleasant than driving straight up to
an Applebee’s.

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neonate
[https://outline.com/y8F3b8](https://outline.com/y8F3b8)

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wongarsu
The Key quotes:

> Mr Urmson now talks of self-driving cars appearing gradually over the next
> 30 to 50 years. Firms are increasingly switching to a more incremental
> approach, building on technologies such as lane-keeping or automatic
> parking. A string of fatalities involving self-driving cars have scotched
> the idea that a zero-crash world is anywhere close. Markets are starting to
> catch on.

> The most general point is that, like most technologies, what is currently
> called “AI” is both powerful and limited. Recent progress in machine
> learning has been transformative. At the same time, the eventual goal—the
> creation in a machine of a fluid, general, human-like intelligence—remains
> distant. People need to separate the justified excitement from the
> opportunistic hyperbole. Few doubt that a completely autonomous car is
> possible in principle. But the consensus is, increasingly, that it is not
> imminent. Anyone counting on AI for business or pleasure could do worse than
> remember that cautionary tale.

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CuriousSkeptic
Is there any work being done on remote controlled cars?

I was thinking the other day that I would pay for a service delivering a car
for me on-demand, for me to drive, (don’t need a self-driving car when I can
drive) and then just leave wherever I am when I’m done. It seems it should be
more or less practical to deliver such a service using remote controlled cars.

~~~
mdorazio
Why do you need a remote controlled car for that? There are many car sharing
services in major cities already. Between zipcar, turo, enterprise carshare,
getaround, etc. there are plenty of micro rentals available. And I think most
people would prefer Uber or Lyft to driving themselves inside a city these
days.

But to directly answer your question, I’m only aware of this for trucks with
Starsky Robotics.

~~~
CuriousSkeptic
I want it delivered to my door on demand. To schedule a slot in car pool or
book a rental I need to pick-up somewhere is out of the question. (Also the
whole “pool” things sounds way to social, just want to pay someone and get
going)

I don’t live in a city, so would need to take the train or bus to the city to
pickup a cheap rental as it is.

Don’t think we have Uber or Lyft here but my assumption was that they are
mostly useful as a taxi replacement to get around within a city.

My use case are more focused on removing the need to have a car in the garage
but keep the freedom drive on short notice to run errands and take trips.
Perhaps drive to work but take the train home after a beer in the evening.

Having remote controlled cars was simply a way to optimize costs. Should be
cheaper to have drivers located offshore somewhere than tied to a particular
car.

~~~
mdorazio
Ok, I see. You've basically described a business model that is completely non-
viable. The overhead of owning the car, getting it to you, then getting it
back to a central hub would force the price past a point people in your
situation are willing to pay. Remote control is not much cheaper than having
an actual driver in terms of operating cost (they need to be close enough that
latency is not an issue), and much more expensive in terms of hardware,
software, and liability insurance.

You'd have to price the service high enough to cover at least an additional
$50k in hardware, software, and data per vehicle, lowest minimum wage within
500 miles for the time required to get it to and from you, vehicle operating
costs for the distance to get it to and from you, and added insurance because
few companies are going to say remote control driving is safe. There's also
the regulatory component since I don't think most places allow remote driving.

~~~
CuriousSkeptic
For me it’s competing with leasing a car. If it can be cheaper than that I’d
consider it.

But yeah, perhaps I’m overestimating the cost of real drivers

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acollins1331
As a counter-point I think large parts of driving have already been automated.
We aren't far from long lines of semi trucks following each other through
Kansas and then a human hops into them at the next depot to park and unload
it.

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mellosouls
Paywalled

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loons2
Paywall bypassed by CTRL-ALT-R (reader mode in FF) and then CTRL-R (reload).

~~~
mellosouls
I'm on a tablet. Anyway somebody else has kindly provided an outline link.

I wish paywalled articles were flagged in the title with an indication as to
whether the OP had provided an alternative.

I think this was discussed recently, can't remember the conclusion as to why
it isn't.

