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Comment by acconrad | Hacker News Reader

I completely disagree that self-driving cars are un-American. In fact I would go so far as to say that self-driving cars are the future to the American suburb. If America was founded on freedom and the pursuit of happiness, what could be more American than having a robot car chauffeur you to and from work while you work in your car? The ability to be free from an oppressive commute may lead to a resurgence in the American suburbs. It's a far-fetched notion but I wouldn't be surprised by it either.

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>> what could be more American than having a robot car chauffeur you to and from work while you work in your car?

Really? The American myth of self-reliance and independent determination doesn't mesh with being driven around by a robot. The person who buys an diesel f150 or a Shelby Mustang isn't the sort of person who likes being driven around by other people, let alone by a cellphone app. The American myth is the lone cowboy on the horse, not the rich man in the stage coach.

Cars are not rational decisions. If they were, we would all drive gray electric minivans. Cars are a means of expression. They are class identifiers. They are thrill machines. They are weapons. They are Freudian. I'll be convinced about autodrives in the US when I see ONE autodrive car take ONE spectator to a nascar event. It won't happen in my lifetime.

The horse was the original self driving car... control it when you want to, otherwise it pretty much goes on down the track.

Autodrive advocates should avoid comparisons to the horse. They are dangerous beasts. They have per-hour serious accident rates 10x or 20x greater than motorcycles. And there is little that can be done to mitigate the problem. If the horse wants you off, you are going off. Horses are just used so little that the stats seem insignificant. They aren't. Boys break their necks in traffic accidents. Girls get thrown from horses.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8339097.stm

"In his paper Hazards of Horse-riding as a Popular Sport, Dr Silver cited a study from 1985 that suggested motorcyclists suffered a serious accident once every 7,000 hours but a horse rider could expect a serious incident once in every 350 hours. [...] The majority of people admitted to hospital in such circumstances are women. "

And if you thought that putting gasoline in a diesel engine was bad, just wait until you accidentally fill up your horse with the wrong fuel.

Why do you have to bring facts to hazy sepia-toned romantic mis-remembering of history?

Also, girls engage in equestrian sports, I'm sure that non-sports horse activities are probably safer.

For some reason, I thought of Jay Leno when you said that. Jay is a fairly high-profile car collector. But I bet if you retain Jay to speak remotely, he expects a driver. These days, having wine with dinner, then driving, might end up badly.

You also bring up the F150 and Shelby - I drive a Nissan Frontier ( D40, Navara ) mainly because I get truck-function and it sits lower and doesn't corner-dive like an F150. You can't confuse it with a Shelby but it's plenty of ... "hoss". The only way I'd have either instead of the compromise is that I had a rolling stock fetish (and was appropriately resourced to feed it ) and was collecting them.

I've seen what the F150 is really used for. It's a work truck in its bones.

Also also - Larry McMurtry tied the cowboy myth back to, of all things, some variation on Le Morte d'Arthur. That's not particularly American :)

>The person who buys an diesel f150 or a Shelby Mustang isn't the sort of person who likes being driven around by other people

Indeed, it feels hard like a hard message to convey on these boards: some people (me) enjoy the act of driving a car. And almost every reasonably wealthy culture seems to like watching other people do it competitively.

I work in IT and it's incredibly hard to find like-minded petrol heads. Seriously, I have people who tell me on almost daily basis that they can't wait until they don't have to drive any more and when all manual cars are banned. It's nonsense. I love driving my car to work and for leisure, I spend at least few hours every week cleaning, polishing, waxing it, it's really my pride and joy. But for a lot of people it's this expensive box that is a constant source of problems and they can't wait to get rid of it.

This isn't all that difficult of an analogy to computers for most people. Most of us here like computers enough to program them or mess around with them for our careers, but most people can hardly wait for the day they don't need to use a computer as they currently use it - it's an appliance to them mentally.

Many people enjoy riding horses, and wealthy cultures seem to like watching people do it competitively.

Many people enjoy going to places, and wealthy cultures seem to like watching people do it competitively.

Wouldn't you use a teleporter?

Also, food for thought: http://existentialcomics.com/comic/1

We have in text "the pursuit of happiness" only because "the pursuit of property" sounded... venal.

The only way to win the "brutal commute" game is not to play.

I've been wondering for a while now about how SD cars will impact housing/land markets. I'd love to hear some of HN's thoughts.

In theory, it could help reduce housing costs, by making cheaper land still usable for commuting.

In practice, many of the cities with the highest housing costs are now strongly anti-infrastructure and anti-transport anytime it involves cars. (What good is a self-driving car if it's getting stuck in the same-or-larger traffic jam everyday?). Cities like this problem because it adds to the inflation of their own property values, and they get to pretend they are being "greener" or "safer" (even though self-driving EV cars eliminate the majority of those issues).

So I suspect that in practice, self-driving cars won't lower housing costs much in most major markets. It could help smaller cities, but they already struggle less with housing costs in the first place.

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The biggest changes will probably be felt elsewhere. Such as by professional drivers (school/city bus drivers, truck drivers, taxi/uber, etc). I also suspect some spill over against flights. It might soon be cheaper for a family of four to rent a self-driving Chevy Bolt to drive from ORD to MSP or ORD to ATL, than to fly there. Especially since, once you land in MSP/ATL, you'll need a car to get around anyway.

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Wealthy people will continue to be mostly unaffected, as they can already afford to live where they work, and can already choose to have no meaningful commute, anytime they desire to.

> In practice, many of the cities with the highest housing costs are strongly anti-infrastructure and anti-transport. (What good is a self-driving car if it's getting stuck in the same-or-larger traffic jam everyday?).

These cities would still be better off with SAE Level 4/5 and inter-communicating cars, which should reduce the frequency of traffic jams significantly. Traffic jams are almost ALWAYS caused by human error at some point in the chain.

> Traffic jams are almost ALWAYS caused by human error at some point in the chain.

Sometimes, sure. But there are a lot of key areas where urban roads / freeways are simply past usable capacity (even with smarter self-driving cars communicating together).

Most major cities have experienced significant population growth in the last 10 years, and have also built little-to-no new freeways or additional car capacity in the last 10 years. If I had to guess at the future, I would predict both of those trends to continue.

If I could work in my car, I could also work at home, and more effectively. I think it more likely that I would rest or entertain myself in my car, and work when I get to work.

As cool as it may sound to be able to work in your car during your commute, it's even cooler to work from home and have no commute at all. If my corporate overlords won't countenance the latter, they almost certainly won't allow the former.

I think there is a big difference between working completely remote vs working an hour or two a day remote. Some companies provide flexibility to work remotely when a person is sick or has to be home to get a package or be there for a repair, but still want people in the office most of the time to be available for in-person collaboration.

Well, it depends if they have to pay you more...

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