
Everyone will have 5 years to get their car off the road or sell it for scrap - nradov
http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F20171105%2FINDUSTRY_REDESIGNED%2F171109944%2Fbob-lutz%3A-kiss-the-good-times-goodbye
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nobodyorother
> The end state will be the fully autonomous module with no capability for the
> driver to exercise command. You will call for it, it will arrive at your
> location, you'll get in, input your destination and go to the freeway.

Except it won't. You'll go to three Sponsored Locations that offer similar,
but not quite the same, services as the destination you selected, while the
windows are used as projection screens for advertisements related to your
destination and locations you're passing.

\- Me: "Take me to Central Park."

\- Car: "I'm sorry Tom, I can't let you do that. Going to MOMA, the New
Museum, and Battery Park."

\- Car: "We'll be passing a Wendy's restaurant momentarily. Did you want to
stop to pick up some chicken nuggets or a tasty hamburger? I can offer you a 2
for 1 deal expiring in 5... 4... 3..."

\- Me: "We were just planning on pizza, thanks."

\- Car: "A $2 non-subsidized convenience fee will be added to your total."

This is my hell.

~~~
majewsky
And Americans will absolutely hate Europeans for their walkable cities.

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mindcrime
_These transportation companies will be able to order modules of various sizes
— short ones, medium ones, long ones, even pickup modules. But the performance
will be the same for all because nobody will be passing anybody else on the
highway. That is the death knell for companies such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz and
Audi. That kind of performance is not going to count anymore._

If he's right, kill me now. I really don't want to live in that world.

~~~
bryanlarsen
"kill me now"

That's exactly what's happening now. 37,000 deaths per year just in the US.

But it won't be the deaths that will cause the change to happen: if the US
actually cared more about preventing fatalities than "freedom" it'd regulate
guns. The trigger for outlawing manual driving in cities and on freeways will
be the convenience factor: 150mph travel without slowdowns for congestion will
cut travel time to less than half.

If you want to drive manually, go to the track, just like you do today if you
want to drive over 100mph.

~~~
sandworm101
>> 150mph travel without slowdowns for congestion will cut travel time to less
than half.

Yes, just as the shift to supersonic air travel radically reduced flying
times.

>>If you want to drive manually, go to the track

"Take it to the track" has been chanted for decades. It has long been possible
to build cars physically or electronically unable to break speed limits. No
such product has ever been brought to market.

>>The trigger for outlawing manual driving in cities and on freeways will be
the convenience factor.

No. The convenience of me parking my car 20feet from my door, being able to
hop in and out of it without planning, is far more convenient than having to
call a car via an app on my phone. The knowledge that I have a car available
24/7 cannot be replaced by a promised car delivered via a cellphone.

Driving is not hard. It isn't even remotely dangerous compared to many jobs
(I'm wear camo to work). They will have to come up with something far better
than a 0.01% decrease in my risk of dying before I trust Uber to get me to
work each morning.

Counterpoint: Motorcycles are exponentially more dangerous than cars, yet they
persist. Driving is not a purely rational act.

~~~
twelve40
> Driving is not hard. It isn't even remotely dangerous compared to many jobs

Hate to point out the obvious, but 35,000 people die every year in US because
of driving. That's a lot of deaths. I would vote for avoiding those deaths -
even though I enjoy a recreational drive once a year or so (all other times
for me driving is a blood-boiling waste of life called commute).

~~~
sandworm101
2,596,993 people die every year in the US. That number cannot really be
changed. People have to die of something. 35,000 means my chance of death by
car accident, over my lifetime, is about 1.3%. That's minuscule. That I don't
drink, or drive a motorcycle (anymore) pushes my likelihood down further, far
below 1%.

Driving is not statistically dangerous. Doing it wrong (drinking) can make it
dangerous but compared to any number of other activities (light aircraft,
horse riding, scuba diving etc) it is remarkably safe.

~~~
jldugger
Nobody's saying your deathsport hobby is going to be made illegal, but you'll
be outclassed by robots on the public thoroughfares, and possibly priced out
of the artisinal motorcar market as the buyers dwindle.

> Driving is not statistically dangerous

Humanity is notoriously bad at making decisions regarding small probabilities,
and tradeoffs between risk and money. We know that people give wildly
different answers to the questions "how much would you pay to reduce your
annual risk of death by X%" vs "how much would you charge to take on an
additional annual risk of death of X%?" despite those being more or less
mathematically identical. People have the freedom to make stupid, inconsistent
choices of course, but that doesn't make them smart or consistent. Just freely
chosen.

> 2,596,993 people die every year in the US. That number cannot really be
> changed. People have to die of something.

That's really, really not the case. Yes, all who live must die, eventually.
But there's no conservation of annual human death that means that eradicating
smallpox means an equivalent number of people die of choking on pretzels
annually. I figure the proper number to track is not percentages, or
minimorts, but average longevity.

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georgeecollins
This headline is officially the "Peak of Inflated Expectations". Prepare for
the "Trough of Disillusionment".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle)

------
snuxoll
Self-driving cars are inevitable, but I still feel like everybody is focusing
too much on the vision of them being the primary mode of transportation well
into our future.

Cars as transportation should be dead in the next 50 years, outside of fairly
niche (relatively speaking) use cases like construction/maintenance/etc.
workers who need to carry large loads or people who live or need to travel
well outside of city limits. Research into self-driving vehicles is an
important part of improving road safety, but I think we need to focus more on
public/mass transit rather than "everybody gets a self-driving pod to go from
Point A to Point B".

As someone who loves to go outdoors, and regularly visits family a couple
hundred miles away I can't see my families need for a personal vehicle
completely going away. But 99% of our road time could just as easily be served
with a couple trains and busses instead, freeing up valuable land that is
needed by our massive road network as well as the horrendous city designs that
have spawned from the assumption that everybody has their own personal
vehicle.

~~~
cameldrv
Why? Mass transit is an industrial age solution to the congestion problem,
when we couldn't plan for demand in real-time. Mass transit means that there
need to be a lot of people who want to go from the same place, to the same
place, at the same time. This is never true, so you have to relax the
assumptions: they aren't coming from the same place, so force them all to walk
to a stop. They aren't going to the same place, so force them to walk from a
stop. They don't want to go at the same time, so force them to wait for the
next bus/train. If you're in a very dense city at a busy time of day, this
isn't too bad, you don't have to walk too far, and you don't have to wait too
long. Otherwise, it's not possible to get enough people that want to make the
same trip at the same time without making people walk long distances or wait a
long time. On demand Lyft Line style routing, automatically driven, with
variable sized vehicles depending on demand in the area, is going to
completely replace mass transit in twenty years. The cost will be the same,
and the travel time will be half or less.

~~~
alooPotato
> The cost will be the same, and the travel time will be half or less.

Is this a guess or is there data/papers on this somewhere? Genuinely curios if
there are any sources.

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filesystem
This will happen within 15-20 years? I don't think so. Maybe the self-driving
tech will be there, but the infrastructure overhaul required to support these
"high speed trains" would be massive and produce traffic delays in the
existing system. Not to mention the cost of testing this at production-scale.

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MisterBastahrd
Okay, Mr. auto nerd alarmist guy. We still have freaking firearms everywhere
even though they're proven to be dangerous, since putting holes in people and
things are their purpose. There will be absolutely no political will to limit
people from driving their own vehicles.

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grizzlylabs
I read this same article in 1965.

I'll believe it when I see it.

~~~
EpicEng
I'm still waiting for my flying car. Damn you Jetsons.

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rm_-rf_slash
Ridiculous predictions. Human drivers legislated away in 20 years max? Please,
as if the police or public services would trust their transportation to an
algorithm, publicly.

More likely the insurance companies will aggressively raise premiums on
drivers who insist on retaining their option to drive themselves. Markets will
price people out of the driver’s seat and into the passenger’s.

And the idea that people wouldn’t buy their own cars or that luxury cars would
fall by the wayside is ridiculous. The FIRST major self driving cars are going
to be in the luxury market, and the companies doing so are already there
(Tesla, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz). Having a self-driving car will become the
ultimate status symbol among the upper middle class. And you can bet that
Hollywood and Madison Avenue will inundate the populace with scenes and ads of
attractive young people stepping out of luxurious autonomous cars as soon as
they’re on the market.

And of course no discussion whatsoever on rural areas or even people that
don’t want self-driving cars. Personally I hate driving but most people I know
do enjoy it and wouldn’t fully trust a self driving car not to get hacked and
fling them off the nearest cliff.

Something the article absolutely misses is that cars are not simply a means of
transportation. They are also a moving storage shed: Umbrellas, rain boots, an
extra jacket, diapers, child car seats...

For an article chock-full of futurism, it was surprisingly low on genuine
imagination...or even robust analysis.

~~~
bryanlarsen
"More likely the insurance companies will aggressively raise premiums on
drivers who insist on retaining their option to drive themselves. Markets will
price people out of the driver’s seat and into the passenger’s."

The dedicated self-driving lane with its 150mph speed limit beside the manual
drive lane with a 60mph speed limit will also convince a lot of people to
buy/rent a self-driving car.

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jaredcwhite
"you'll get in, input your destination"

That right there is a problem I have with this glorious vision of an
"autonomous module" transportation future. What if I don't know what my
destination? What if I, GASP, just want to go out for a drive?

Some people (myself included) actually like getting in cars and driving. The
destination is somewhat irrelevant. The feeling of control and freedom you get
when you're at the wheel is not to be underestimated. The notion that human-
driven cars will be outlawed at some point in the future scares me. Folks
always think it's a good idea to outlaw stuff that's "bad" for people's health
or whatever, but guess what? People still smoke, people still drink heavily,
and people get high.

Maybe another way to look at it is there could be designated "autonomous
module only" zones. Dense urban environments are of course a logical choice.
If you want to drive around in the country or suburbs, that's one thing, but
once you get towards the city center, human-driven automobiles are not
allowed. That seems a more reasonable compromise.

~~~
alooPotato
Yes you are free to do things you want like smoke, drink, or drive a car
manually. But you should also have to pay for the externalities you create.
Hence why it makes sense that cigarettes are taxed so heavily.

If you want the "freedom" to drive yourself, you should pay for the extra cost
you cause society (i.e. roads that wouldn't otherwise have to exist, hefty
insurance premiums for accidents you may cause, etc.).

------
cabaalis
There will not be an on-demand service for everything. How would one load up
trash in the back of a pickup truck to take to the landfill? How would you
take a fishing trip off road to the edge of the lake? A lot of what I read
would work fine for urban environments. It would not cover all the use cases
we currently have for our vehicles.

~~~
bryanlarsen
"How would one load up trash in the back of a pickup truck to take to the
landfill?"

The same way I do it now, rent or buy a truck or a trailer.

"How would you take a fishing trip off road to the edge of the lake?"

You rent or buy a manual drive car. It'd be illegal to use in manual drive
mode on the freeway or in the city but off road or on the track or on your own
property you can use it however you want.

~~~
petraeus
haha no

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petraeus
I think people are relying too much on legislation to usher in this new utopia
of self-driving

There will be no legislation outlawing the use of our current manually
operated vehicles. Ever. To think that the whole of government would endorse
such idiocy demonstrates how little one knows about bureaucracy.

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esaym
I will love to see how these "smart" vehicles handle kids on top of overpasses
dropping rocks and nails on them (which already happens way too frequently
around here)

~~~
majewsky
What's to "handle" about these? These vehicles should absolutely be able to
detect and gracefully handle the failure of critical systems (sensors,
drivetrain etc.) regardless of the existence of malicious children. And
besides that, there will be an Emergency button (like in elevators) with which
passengers can report things like rock-shaped dents in the car's body.

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ankushnarula
It's more likely that non-autonomous vehicles will be uninsured rather than
legislated off the roads. Expect this to happen with new cars in less than 10
years.

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hprotagonist
dupe of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15638694](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15638694)

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kiriakasis
what about the countryside?

~~~
octothorp3
Yeah, reading this article I get the feeling the author was raised in, and has
only resided in, a major metropolitan era.

Sounds like they're just starting to work on inclement weather on pavement
while I'm wondering how they're going to handle the farmer who wants to drive
through that ditch with tall grass that will obscure the camera and 3d point
mapping. Not to mention straddling that rock they know is there so it doesn't
hit the pumpkin under the truck. Then backing up to the trailer of firewood
which needs to be maneuvered slowly with one wheel going over a rock to
narrowly avoid that tree on the other side.

Anyone who thinks manual driving is completely going away in the next 15 to 20
years either has poor grasp on the technical issues or is just failing to
think of all the edge cases.

