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Comment by edblarney | Hacker News Reader

Eventually - maybe in 20 years - humans won't be even allowed to drive.

I'll bet they even ban hobbyist driving - like those who 'still have old cars' and want to drive on those 'old car roads'.

Statistically too dangerous. Far more dangerous than anything else we really do - certainly more than smoking. And when it's no longer a 'necessity' ...

Do you remember those movies before the 1960's when they get in cars and they don't even have seat-belts - and we 'gasp' ... 'OMG' ...

I think our grandchildren will gasp when we tell them we drove cars. They will think we were crazy and uncivilized, we'll call them wimps.

You'll want to teach your grandson to drive, your daughter in law will be upset and call you a crazy old man :)

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"Eventually - maybe in 20 years - humans won't be even allowed to drive."

I don't see that happening for a century. Unless you subsidize the cost of purchase of a new car for everyone who has a car now, and associated costs of owning a new vehicle.

Where I'm from(Poland) the average age of a car is 16 years. Buying a new car, even if it's something very cheap like a Fiat Panda, is still a huge deal.

Why would you care about what purchasing power is like in Poland you ask? Well, because at the moment I can drive my car literally around the world, without modifying it an inch. If some countries start banning manual cars, then suddenly you can't cross certain borders anymore - that's almost idiotic. If the ban of manual cars is going to happen, it will need to happen almost worldwide at the same time, and that's absolutely, definitely, completely not happening in the next 20 years.

I actually think your example with cars without seatbelts is great, because it illustrates what will happen with manually-driven cars - instead of banning them, they will eventually become so rare there will be no need to ban them, just like you can still drive your 1950 car without seat belts or airbags.

+ There will be EU wide standards for 'self driving' just as there will be a 'North American' one.

+ They will make them cheap. The AI is software, it's a commodity, and the parts (i.e. LIDAR) will be cheap by then.

+ In 20 years you won't likely be able to drive your old car in France, and no offence - they will probably mock the Polish for still having 'real cars' :).

But you're right - 20 years is too soon.

20 years to 'almost everyone in driverless cars'. 30 years to banning humans. 45 years to banning them even from driving hobby cars.

Add 15 years for East Europe and Russia.

Add 30 years for poor places.

"45 years to banning them even from driving hobby cars."

Again, I don't think this will ever happen, just like we haven't banned horses on normal roads - there's just so few of them that it's not an issue. Likewise, if in 50 years 99% of cars are self-driving, it won't matter an inch if you want to drive yourself in your antique. If you find someone who will insure you in it, fine, go ahead, don't see why they would be banned - self driving cars will probably do a good enough job of avoiding manual cars anyway.

I am quite sure that once most of the cars will be autonomous, we will start building autonomous-only roads. With faster speed limits and so on. Manual cars will not be allowed on those, and then progressively more and more roads will become autonomous only. Hopefully the first to become as such would be all roads in cities.

Just like horses which you cannot bring to a highway.

You can't ride a horse on the motorway in the UK(speed limit 70mph) but you can happily ride one on a dual carriageway - which also has a normal speed limit of 70mph.

And cities autonomous only? So what about bicycles? Or tricycles? Or hand drawn carriages(rickshaws etc)? Would those roads have high walls around them ,stopping pedestrians from entering?

And finally - where would the money for that come from? Even very rich countries(I live in the UK) struggle to maintain their roads to a high standard, something simple like adding new pedestrian crossings can take years in planning and approvals, but somehow, we would modify all our roads to suit one specific type of vehicle?

I'm really sorry if I'm being cynical, but I really do have a feeling that this self-driving-car utopia is not going to happen.

I think bicycles and other lightweight vehicles are fine. My main problem is that myself, as a pedestrian and a cyclist I am sharing the road with several-ton metal beasts which are driven by annoyed, angry and tired people. I would feel much safer knowing that the pilot of a car next to me is concentrated on the one thing which it is supposed to do.

I think however that at least for several years (decades) the autonomous vehicles must be able to work on the roads we currently have.

As a disclaimer, I would say that I am actually pro-ban of personal vehicles in city centers today. I really do not see a point of anything that is not an ambulance, fire truck, bus, a taxi or a delivery truck on a road. Why people wake up soon in the morning only to then be stuck in an over than one hour commute when a subway ride would take 20 minutes tops is really beyond me.

Banning all cars first and then progressively let autonomous vehicles (as part of a fleet) in would be a win situation in my opinion.

Will pedestrians ever need to cross those autonomous-only roads?

If you are talking about elevated distribution roads that people will pass under, then maybe. But I don't see it working on a city like the ones we have now. Maybe there's a major urban restructuring to happen soon...

I think they should be able to. Just like now, except the autonomous cars will not run the red lights.

>Again, I don't think this will ever happen, just like we haven't banned horses on normal roads

Funny, the local SCCA group has autocross at an airstrip near an Amish community. The roads are swarming with horses and buggies the morning of the Sunday events. Interesting juxtaposition :)

Agreed. Where I'm from (USA) the average age of a car is still 11.4 years - and growing as cars become more reliable! The average age was 8.4 years in 1995. Not quite 16 years, but we're definitely not all buying cars on 2 year leases.

There are some interesting statistics at http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub....

For 2014 (latest year with all data available) there were 260 million vehicles on the road. In this year, there were about 7.6 million new vehicles sold. Of these, about 0.5 million were hybrids, having grown from 0 in 1998 and 0.25 million in 2006. If self-driving cars follow a similar track to hybrids, it's going to be a long time before the majority of those 260 million cars are self-driving.

You can probably fit a device on your car that will make it legal to drive on "safe" roads. Something that actively looks out to prevent crashes and doesn't let you drive over the speed limit, for example, but doesn't actually steer the car. Similar to how when new laws on exhaust emissions passed, you could just upgrade the exhaust system without buying a whole new car.

I was saying for a while now, that we could probably reduce 90% of accidents by mandating that every car is fitted with a device that almost every new car has as an option - an automatic breaking system, which stops the car in case of imminent collision, based on a forward facing radar. I imagine it would reduce accidents in cities to near zero, and outside of them by an order of magnitude.

NHTSA and the US car industry are planning on making that mandatory a few years down the line.

> I'll bet they even ban hobbyist driving - like those who 'still have old cars' and want to drive on those 'old car roads'.

Absolutely not. That will never ever happen. F1, DTM, MotoGP, MonsterTrucks, NASCAR , Rallye Dakar are all well too amazing to allow for that.

I agree, your commute form SF to Palo Alto and similar boring activities will be automated away, but there are way too many enthusiasts to allow hobbyist driving to ever disappear completely. Maybe, but only maybe, have them confined to racetracks or leisure roads, but I doubt it.

Source: I love cars and bikes and would go berserk if someone would tell me I am not allowed to drive anymore and I know hundreds of people that would feel the same.

"Source: I love cars and bikes and would go berserk if someone would tell me I am not allowed to drive anymore"

I get it.

I know how you feel.

My grandparents grew up on farms - and there were always rifles around. My grandfather hunted.

They never, ever talked about 'guns' for self protection, I never saw a gun outside of it's locker (unless in the field).

My grandfather was an extremely normal and nice, down to earth person.

And yet often these people are treated as pariahs. 'City people' just think 'gun owners' are crazy red-neck killers. They would ban them in a hearbeat.

I feel you may be part of the 'NRA of the future' - ie a group that will be positioned by the press and pop-culture as 'angry old men out of touch' yada yada.

Everyone that dies in a car crash - it will make headlines like the random person who got shot in an accident or whatever - even though you car-enthusists are probably the safest and most responsible people imaginable.

Anyhow - I'm not saying I support the NRA or whatever - I'm just saying I think there will be a really weird social dynamic.

But you are right - drivers are pretty crazy and would fight pretty hard!

I kind of like your analogy, but I'll argue the other side of it.

I understand hobbies and sometimes work (professional hunter, race car driver, whatever) and am all for people getting to do whatever they want to do (to themselves), but I think it gets interesting when put in a society, where not everyone can do whatever they want, and we need to come to a consensus (where consensus means the majority gets as close to what they want as possible, but a lot of people don't get what they want).

If human drivers in public means me and my family/people I care about/random people are at risk, and a safe option - driverless cars - exists and serves the same function, then I think human drivers should be banned (again, in public), and I'd vote that way. If there's a way for human drivers to keep off main roads and still get their jollies and whatever necessity they want out of it, then great.

Sometimes we trade things for safety. Often it's not worth it, but sometimes it is. In government surveillance I don't think it's worth it, even if the safety benefit would be measurable (which it's not). In both cases of gun regulation and future human driver regulation I think that trade is worth it, as long as the benefit is quantifiable (which may or may not be the case, I'm merely arguing on the premise that it is).

I feel like you could extend that argument (not that I agree with it, personally) to foods with HFCS or tobacco.

The difference I see is that I'm not personally at risk from someone chomping down on fast food. But I may well be at risk from someone driving unsafely.

A lot of countries ban smoking inside non-residential buildings e.g pubs out of concern for non smokers.

Remember though that in most states Driving is not a "right" (like free speech) and can be taken away by the government and they do so with legal standards much lower than other crimes (see: Traffic court)

We can only hope that your way of thinking, and people who think like you, will eventually die out.

If you want to drive, you should be forced to do it on a closed course. Driving on public roads is NOT for your fun and enjoyment, it is for SAFE TRANSPORTATION. Your enjoyment of the activity comes second to everyone else's safety.

It WILL be illegal for you to drive on public roads some day.

Perhaps in your country, it will be.

Fortunately, I won't have to live there :)

As for me, I have no illusions that those tyrannies exercised for the good of their victims will ever eventually die out; self-righteousness provides a powerful high, and to get their fix those addicts will need someone (or something) to scold.

This seems like an overly-rosy picture of the future and fully autonomous driving is starting to feel like HAL-like AI, which has been perpetually 20 years away since 1968.

I think the reality here is that we don't have the fuzzy logic and AI to handle snow covering up lane markers or heavy rain and other conditions humans handle with relative ease. I also think, politically, its just going to be a tough sell and any edge case crash that leads to fatalities will quickly change people's minds about the future of autonomous driving.

>they don't even have seat-belts - and we 'gasp' ... 'OMG'

Yet seatbelts were mandatory in 1959 and the usage rate in the 1980s was around 50%, which led to mandatory usage legislation in the late 80's and 90's. So the "20 year" metric of everything changing is questionable as half the population ignored the seatbelts in their cars 20+ years later. Its only via expensive ticketing and enforcement that we convinced most people to even wear them, when their safety benefits were obvious!

I think this overly-rosy view of the future gets ad impressions for the tech press and gets readers excited, but the technical issues with night, snow, rain, etc visibility aren't solved. I imagine until we get better AI, they won't be.

Driving just has way too many difficult edge cases that lead to fatal outcomes and because of that, its not going to be something quickly replaced by machines. Augmentation and assistance for human drivers is the most likely outcome here.

I wonder if this problem could be solved if governments participated by making roads friendlier to automated cars. Teaching a car to drive like a human seems to be something that will take centuries. But if governments installed transponders onto roads for self driving cars, it seems like the process would only take 20 or so years at the most.

Our roads and infrastructure evolved to accommodate cars, but that was at a time when governments were much better at encouraging and adapting to new technology. I wonder if governments will do anything to incorporate self driving technology into infrastructure.

> I think the reality here is that we don't have the fuzzy logic and AI to handle snow covering up lane markers...

True, but improved AI isn't the only way to address such problems. For instance, thermal cameras can see through light snow, so those may become standard. Also, something like RFID embedded an inch or two below the road surface could serve as marker enhancers. If all else fails, GPS and highly accurate maps can stand in for road markers in many areas. Besides, snow won't be as much of an issue if self-driving snowplows get started shortly after snowfall begins.

An intermediate step to a total ban would be to require greater testing to get a drivers license (say similar to a pilots license) and then make the penalties for driving infractions much higher.

Statistically too dangerous.

Humans do immensely dangerous things for fun all the time[1]. That isn't going to stop. People will continue to drive on private roads pretty much forever.

[1] For example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C_jPcUkVrM

Doing things that are dangerous to yourself is fine. The problem with driving is that it's dangerous to your surroundings. I'm all for a future where driving on public roads is banned and driving on closed courses and race tracks is the worlds new favorite past time.

Motorcycles are spectacularly dangerous, but remain perfectly legal.

Good point!

Isn't that the premise of a song by Rush?

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