
Ford Promises Fleets of Driverless Cars Within Five Years - jcfrei
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/business/ford-promises-fleets-of-driverless-cars-within-five-years.html
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sctb
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12300210](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12300210)

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imh
This scares the crap out of me. I know it's an unpopular opinion, but I hope
the government regulates the hell out of self driving cars. I want really
strong robustness of autonomous systems. The difference between working in
99.9% of conditions and 99.99999% is huge. I'd hate to see corners being cut
in the race to get there first, and I fully expect that's what will happen.

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helthanatos
Ready for car hacking deaths? Get ready... Autonomous systems won't be good
enough to detect threats and maneuver as well as attentive or lucky drivers
for at least 5-10 years. I'm not sacrificing my steering for at least 12...

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mchahn
> Autonomous systems won't be good enough to detect threats

That reminds me of the worry about hacking pacemakers. If someone wants to
kill you there are much easier ways to do it. A rock to the head works well
without much technology involved.

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helthanatos
A rock to the head is easy to detect and prevent. There are witnesses.
Pacemakers require people to get closer. An increase in computers has lead to
an increase in hacks, following that logic, an increase in hackable vehicles
will lead to an increase in vehicles being hacked. When people race to make
something happen and omit security, it puts users at risk. Information: the
part of my argument you quoted has to do with user intervention, such as when
another vehicle comes out of nowhere and the system doesn't know how to
respond.

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tvural
> “That means there’s going to be no steering wheel. There’s going to be no
> gas pedal. There’s going to be no brake pedal,’’

I'm very skeptical of the claim that self-driving cars that work well enough
to be fully autonomous are within reach. How do you get them to respond well
to really uncommon but dangerous scenarios? Will they pull over safely when
they hear an ambulance? If a police officer is directing traffic at an
intersection, will they be able to read the hand signals? Will they know to
slow down when a ball rolls across the street?

I think the semi-autonomous approach is more promising. The car could
automatically take control and pull over if the driver is fishtailing, or
drive to the hospital if the driver is incapacitated.

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ghshephard
The scenarios you are describing are incredibly common, and trivial to develop
for _in comparison to real edge scenarios_ (not to say they are trivial to
develop for). More challenging are things like, "How do you respond to a
homeless guy standing on the street directing traffic into an alley", "How do
you respond to a flooding on the road resulting in 6" of standing water
obscuring all traffic lane markings", "How do you respond to a flooding on the
road resulting in 18" of standing water? 24" of standing water?" How do you
respond to a road covered in snow (12", 18", 24")? How do you respond to a
road covered in snow with tire prints that seem to go into the oncoming lane?
How do you respond to a road covered in snow with what appears to be a small
24" high snow drift in your lane?

Etc, Etc..

I think the answer to all these questions is, "Initial versions of Automated
vehicles will only perform under ideal road scenarios. During Snow, Flooding,
or other inclement weather, they will not be dispatched. Wait for future
iterations in 2030, 2040, 2050, etc...

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lettergram
I usually try to write a constructive comments... But this...

This made me laugh out loud. I'm sure they can build these cars, but as to
being road ready. Good luck. As for being accepted by society, good luck.
Finally, after the 20th or 30th death, do you really think they won't be
regulated to extinction?

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simonsarris
I'd figure there's a lot of ways that you can damage or try to disable/steal a
driverless car, or simply vandalize out of boredom or inability to sympathize
with the owner, so much so that these cars probably wouldn't want to service
many not-well-off neighborhoods.

So, serious question: Are driverless cars such as these going to represent a
new front in dividing the rich and the poor? If they are touted as benefit to
public transportation, the poorest need public transportation the most.

Driverless cars will mean cars can use both definitions of redlining.

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msoad
What a driverless car means usually varies between promises and production
products! ;)

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stormbrew
There's not a lot of weasel room in this promise, since it includes no
accessible controls. And semi-autonomous cars are not really useful for ride
hailing in any meaningful way.

