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Comment by meterplech | Hacker News Reader

Obviously this vision is compelling. I'm confused by the decision of their prototype car to not have manual control overrides (e.g steering wheel or something similar). Air travel has been revolutionized with autopilot, but there are clear overrides for safety in case systems crash. I don't think we need to be wed to the pedal + wheel paradigm - but having a manual override option seems critical to safety.

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a big red emergency switch telling it to pull over and shut down may be useful.

Anything more than that would mean your system is not fully autonomous, because the driver would have to pay attention all the time. What good is manual override if there's nobody paying attention? It would also mean you need a qualified driver, you couldn't use it to ferry around children, disabled people or simply people without a license.

You can read Google's initial rationale for "no steering wheel" here: http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/02/24/467...

They seem pretty clearly, however, to have changed their minds on the topic. It's enlightening to compare the information on this new site with information on the old site (https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/). You can see what language they've either removed, or toned down.

The argument is that if you aren't paying attention 99% of the time, that you wouldn't be capable of dropping whatever you are doing in order to take control. Also, these are meant to enable transportation for people incapable of driving.

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