

Why your self-driving car won’t have a steering wheel - jooukish
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2015/07/21/two-sentences-explaining-why-your-self-driving-car-wont-have-a-steering-wheel/

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nabla9
Maybe future cars have steering wheel stored away in the same way Spare tire
is out of way. If things go totally bonkers in the middle of nowhere, you
stop, install small steering wheel and drive manually.

~~~
astrodust
If self-driving cars become the norm, people will have no idea what a steering
wheel is or how to use it, any more than people today would know what to do
with a horse stored in the trunk for emergencies.

Worst case scenario it'd be a controller of some kind and the car would be
limited to 5mph, enough to limp back.

~~~
agumonkey
Cars used to have
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiller)
for direction control.

About forgetting how to steer, take a look at that video
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0)

discussion here [http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/riding-an-inverted-
bike/](http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/riding-an-inverted-bike/)

~~~
astrodust
That's a neat video on reversed steering.

~~~
agumonkey
Yeah, it was pretty funny to see, even though I left frustrated not having one
to try.

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mc32
That's correct for highway speeds....

What happens when I'm stuck in a ditch or sand or in a rut and need delicate
manoeuvering? Maybe I'm out in a field in the middle of nowhere. No roads,
just open field with seasonal hazards.

I still want a way to guide the vehicle manually without having to call
someone with a winch.

~~~
fixermark
The scenario described is so rare, that "calling someone with a winch" is
likely to become the de-facto scenario. Why the unnecessary redundancy of
having every car able to be controlled manually when in the very, very common
case it's not needed?

People already keep AAA memberships in their wallets instead of a spare tire,
tire wrench, jack, jumper cables, and starter one-shot battery in their trunk.

~~~
gambiting
Rare? Where? Where I live we get a very heavy snowfall in Winter, and even a
regular trip to shops ends in me trying to get moving again by rocking the car
back and forth to get out of snow. Unless automatic vehicles will drive only
on clean, dry roads in pristine condition?

~~~
jessaustin
[EDIT] OK you have snow tires. Then what's the deal? I've lived in snowbound
places, _without_ snow tires, and rarely had difficulty getting moving again
after parking half an hour to shop. Sure, if you leave your car in a bad spot
during a snowstorm you'll have problems in the morning, but most robocars will
_never_ have that problem, because they will only park in safe secure areas
and only during the 2AM-5AM "quiet" period when people don't want to go
places.

~~~
slantyyz
>> I've lived in snowbound places, without snow tires, and rarely had
difficulty getting moving again

That is a YMMV statement.

I live in Canada, and after a major snowfall, I've seen plenty people get
stuck --while-- driving on residential streets that hadn't been plowed yet.
Starting from a stop and going up hills are often a problem in that situation
too.

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alistairSH
> Research that Stanford has done shows that drivers resuming control from
> Level 3 vehicles functioning in autonomous mode take 10 seconds just to
> attain the level of ability that a drunk driver possesses. And to get back
> to full driving competence takes 60 seconds.

Wouldn't this also hold true for airline pilots? How quickly can they resume
control of a plane when something goes amiss?

~~~
splat
My understanding is that airline pilots only use autopilot when at cruising
altitude. At those heights they have several minutes to take over and fix a
problem before crashing.

~~~
andrewpi
Well, some aircraft also have Autoland
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland))

If a malfunction happens during landing, you definitely don't have several
minutes to rectify it.

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afarrell
I suspect that if manual-driving cars are outlawed, it will only be in dense
cities. Many rural states will prohibit anti-manual-operation ordinances.

~~~
Zikes
Dense cities and interstates, I hope.

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IanCal
> The problem with including a steering wheel in a self-driving car is that
> human drivers can’t be trusted to effectively take over in sticky
> situations. So the makers of driverless cars can’t responsibly include a
> steering wheel.

Excellent. The thing that scared me was the idea of sitting in a car with the
wheel moving by itself, trying to constantly guess if it was doing the right
thing. I want to just sit down and go.

> “A huge fraction of the time, nothing bad will happen because the vehicles
> really are reliable, hundreds of kilometers at a time before something
> really terrible happens,”

Hundreds of _thousands_ I hope that means, unless their cars cause a
catastrophe every few trips. Or have I completely misunderstood that?

------
rurounijones
What if I want a car I can choose to drive occasionally because I like
driving? Will I have to buy a manual and a self-drive? (Although to be fair,
these self-driving cars would probably suck to drive since they are not
designed for driver pleasure)

~~~
stephengillie
What if I want an oven I can choose to grill with because I like grilling?
Will I have to buy an outdoor grill and grill by hand? (Although to be fair,
these electric ovens would probably suck to grill with since they are not
designed for charcoal grilling enthusiasts.)

~~~
vonmoltke
I think you are engaging in a false analogy here. Comparing a grill to an oven
is like comparing a passenger car to a panel truck: they are in the same broad
class of thing but serve different purposes.

A better analogy would be that of a grill that can use gas or charcoal as the
fuel; different means to the same purpose.

~~~
stephengillie
Yes, I am engaging in a false analogy. My intention was to humorously showcase
specialized tools at a much further level of differentiation. And a passenger
car is as different from a panel (flatbed) truck as a hand-driven gasoline car
is from a solar-powered self-driving car.

I was attempting to highlight that these tools have nearly equivalent
purposes, but the educated consumer would have a definite preference for one
or the other, depending on plans and situations.

~~~
vonmoltke
> And a passenger car is as different from a panel (flatbed) truck as a hand-
> driven gasoline car is from a solar-powered self-driving car.

I disagree. The function of a panel truck is the transport of bulky and heavy
materials. The function of a passenger car is the transport of people with
fairly small amounts of materials. Changing the power plant or control system
does not change these fundamental functions or fundamental design decisions
that go into the system as a whole.

> I was attempting to highlight that these tools have nearly equivalent
> purposes

They _don 't_, just like a passenger car and panel truck do not have nearly
equivalent purposes. Yes, an oven and a grill both cook food. A passenger car
and a panel truck both move people and items. Each of these is specialized to
cover a certain subset of the problem space within those areas, though. Making
one better at covering its problem space does not change what it fundamentally
is, and self-driving vehicles are just an improvement in covering the existing
problem space.

~~~
stephengillie
My apologies for coming up with an imperfect analogy. In the future, I will
endeavor to find a perfect analogy before I attempt to use it humorously.

Thank you for taking the time to show me the error of my ways. What would HN
be without people like you to clear up analogical inconsistencies?

~~~
rurounijones
To be fair; as the OP I didn't find the original comment humourous but
dismissive and therefore rather insulting (Hence I never bothered to follow
up) as well as many issues with the "Analogy".

------
theseatoms
Here are the sentences:

> Research that Stanford has done shows that drivers resuming control from
> Level 3 vehicles functioning in autonomous mode take 10 seconds just to
> attain the level of ability that a drunk driver possesses. And to get back
> to full driving competence takes 60 seconds.

So they're assuming that one cannot improve at this task, taking over control
from the self-driving car, with practice? They could even test this ability.

~~~
EliRivers
How often do you practice emergency driving situations in your car? I could go
out every weekend on the skid pan, or have someone throw paint randomly over
the windscreen every so often, or get someone to hide amongst parked cars and
push some unlucky sucker out in front of me, but I don't. These are all things
that I could practice, that would make me much better able to handle a driving
emergency, that I already don't do. Why would I practice taking over from the
self-driving car?

------
vonklaus
After listening to Avi Rubin's Ted talk[0] and seeing articles like the
_Hacker 's remotely kill jeep on Highway_[1], I am less bullish on self-
driving cars. Mobile and regular OSs are vulnerable to attack, except here
your data as well as your safety is at risk. As well as making these cars
orders of magnitude safer (in terms of navigation), they will need to be
orders of magnitude harder to hack and take control of.

A few high profile hacks leading to crashes and fatalities will be enough to
turn a large swathe of the population off autopilot technology, which they are
already skeptical of.

[0][http://www.ted.com/talks/avi_rubin_all_your_devices_can_be_h...](http://www.ted.com/talks/avi_rubin_all_your_devices_can_be_hacked?language=en)
[1][http://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-
high...](http://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/)

~~~
avens19
Planes run on similar tech, why haven't they been hacked? The odds on this
seem long indeed, especially considering how dangerous driving is already

------
kylec
Well yes, it makes sense that you shouldn't be _required_ to take over
whenever the car decides, but I'd still like to be able to start up the car
and drive it in manual mode if I so desire. I get a lot of pleasure out of
driving, and I don't want to give that up even if I want to let my car pilot
itself sometimes.

~~~
Qantourisc
Not to mention getting the dam thing off the road if the car fails (not the
computer, but for example the engine).

------
xefer
There's got to be some way to transition to fully autonomous cars that could
be implemented.

I'd really like to see something that would put a hard limit of ~15mph/25kmh
on city streets for all motor vehicles. Upon entering a high-density zone, the
car would automatically be put into a state with limits on speed,
acceleration, horse power and adherence to traffic controls.

People would still be behind the wheel but they would be severely restricted
in how they operate within the high density zone. Basically this would make
horseless carriages be conducted in a manner more similar to horse carriages.

------
doodpants
The movie Total Recall has already shown us that if you yank off the torso of
the robot driver, there'll be a joystick underneath that can be used to
operate the car manually.

------
vbnmvbnmvbnm
Alternate Title: Two sentences explaining why I will never own a self driving
car.

Seriously, I'll only trust trains on rails with autonomous operation, and it's
profoundly stupid of any country to let autonomous machines operate freely on
open roads.

The political implications of autonomous machinery with nigh-unbounded
geographic reach are deeply hazardous.

~~~
vbnmvbnmvbnm
Downvote, downvote, downvote.

