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Comment by Matthias247 | Hacker News Reader

> Prediction: 2020 will be the year the big players have self-driving.

I think that depends on what you mean with self-driving. My prediction is that in 2020 we will have slightly better driver assistance systems. Maybe a lane assist system which won't kill me if I don't babysit it on a road with construction ongoing and multiple lane markings or if corners get too tight. Maybe some limited self-driving, e.g. only available in dedicated areas like highway/autobahn.

Keep in mind that 2020 is 3 years, which is less than the development cycle of a car. Or in other words: If something should get released in 2020 you now would already see it driving around on the roads for first tests.

My personal prediction is that we will see reliable and advanced self-driving technology in mass production cars maybe in 2 full car generations from now - which is 2030.

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I am curious about what percentage of accidents are caused by the driver falling asleep, and if a lot of lives could be saved by a driver assistance system that self-drives with even the crudest of sensors until the driver is successfully woken up, which would probably be several seconds later.

I don't know why you're getting downvoted. I think watching highway death numbers is an excellent way to judge the success of self-driving cars.

At a minimum a self-stopping car should be the basic requirement, such that any vehicle which senses lack of input from the driver, or crazy input which is differential to the experience of its sensors, should be able to safely turn on a hazard alarm for all other surrounding vehicles and safely stop itself on the nearest shoulder.

If all sensors indicate that there is no emergency obstacle requiring sudden swerving or braking or what not, the car should be able to safely decelerate and stay in a lane etc... but this might be to complex a problem. (I was thinking if a driver may have a seizure or some other episode - but if a driver is under duress this may be a bad thing)

2020 is the year major manufacturers say they will have self-driving cars on the market.

- Volvo [1] - Chrysler [2] - Ford [3] (2021) - GM [4] (2018, first live test fleet) - Toyota [5] (although they just started with self-driving)

[1] https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/volvo-predicts-fully-autn... [2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/04/25/google-s... [3] http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/16/technology/ford-self-driving... [4] http://fortune.com/2017/02/17/gm-lyft-chevy-bolt-fleet/ [5] https://www.wsj.com/articles/toyota-aims-to-make-self-drivin...

> Maybe a lane assist system which won't kill me if I don't babysit it on a road with construction ongoing and multiple lane markings or if corners get too tight.

Or if someone else makes a mistake.

That's another scenario that can have very unpredictable and immediate consequences ranging from 'nothing' to 'two car accident with fatalities'. Even in relatively placid (when it comes to driving) NL I see this kind of situation at least once per year.

Then there are blow-outs and other instant changes of the situation. I do believe that especially in those cases it should not take long before computers are better than humans because of their superior reaction speed.

Yup, these are the reasons I'm not interested in those "hands-free but still assisted" autodriving deals. I'd love cruise control assist and lane assist in my car, but that's about all I want until I can be 100% sure cars can handle the situations by themselves.

I believe driver assist technology will get more and more advanced to the point where the car is essentially driving and you are giving suggested feedback. In other words -- the bad situations will be handled themselves. Following distance might be enforced and come with a warning, unless you really want to get dangerously close -- the car will "help".

Your viewpoint is how self-driving cars will come to be accepted into the mainstream. It will essentially sneak up on the average driver.

I would be extremely nervous to let a fully autonomous vehicle drive me given the current state of the art.

Either the human or the computer has to drive. Throwing control back to the human on an automation failure and expecting a correct response from the human takes too long. This has been well-studied. It takes at least 3 seconds for the driver to take control at all, and 15-40 seconds before human control has stabilized. I linked to some studies in an earlier post.

The aviation people hit this problem in the 1990s, as autopilots got more comprehensive. Watch "Children of the magenta", a talk by American Airlines' chief pilot on this.[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN41LvuSz10

Right. The driver would be in control in the scenario I'm describing, just like they are with lane assist, cruise control, or closest to stealth self-driving, auto braking and swerve. I guess it would be better described as the driver would always have the illusion of control.

The automated parts would kick in when necessary and they would be increasingly intrusive in their warnings and modification of driving until the human is only needed for identifying source and destination.

You set you destination for: gym

Are you sure? Your calendar says that Bobby needs to be picked up from practice.

Why don't I go ahead and set the destination for you?

>>I think that depends on what you mean with self-driving.

It means a car that doesn't have a steering wheel, brake and accelerator. That kind of a car is quite far.

That's at least 4-5 automotive cycles away, IMO (so 25-30 year away).

And that's for the high end. The low end cars are probably 50-60 years away, IMO.

Well, prototypes have already drove millions of miles like that.

(Whether they also had a steering wheel is of course irrelevant, what the parent means is that they can drive without nobody needing to use the steering wheel).

All of the systems I've heard about need human intervention every couple of miles.

The notion that the low end cars will take decades longer is very, very ridiculous.

Ummm... how many cheap cars have: adaptive cruise control or lane assist? Both technologies have been available for expensive cars for what now? 15 years?

Really cheap cars don't even have automatic gearboxes (or they are bought without them 90% of the time, outside of the US).

By "cheap car" I mean something cheaper than $20000 and "really cheap" would be below $12-15000.

Ok, with "really cheap" you're talking about a species of cars that I'm unfamiliar with.

Here in the US, the sensors and control fly by wire that Lexus used a few years ago have largely trickled down to the Corolla and the like as a standard feature. The differences between making autonomy work on low end and high end cars will be purely a software problem. That's not the kind of additional work that takes thirty years.

The difference is not purely a software problem.

It's a price problem since you need to install a bazillion sensors, motors and other thingies which are basically used only for one purpose.

And regarding really cheap, you're on HackerNews, ergo less likely to ever meet those. But it's usually cheap models from cheaper brands such as Dacia, Hyunday, Kia, Tata, several of the Chinese brands. I doubt most people you know actually own one :)

> It's a price problem since you need to install a bazillion sensors, motors and other thingies which are basically used only for one purpose.

That's an overstatement. You need to install sensors, many of which you'd install anyway for the modern lane-keeping and crash avoidance features. The sensors are not ruinously expensive and economy of scale incentivizes an automaker that makes both cheap and expensive cars to get these features out to the low end very quickly. As Animats pointed out, you really want to order this stuff by the million, not the thousand.

I guess I wasn't arguing with the crux of what you're saying - having a feature is generally going to be more expensive than not having it. The overstatement was very strong, especially in terms of timeline for reducing the costs of this functionality.

Here in the US I don't even think you can buy a "really cheap" car; my current vehicle is a used Jeep TJ and it set me back $18k (great condition though - still, I overpaid a bit, but I consider it the price for getting the options I wanted on the vehicle).

While I'm sure there are probably new (or relatively new) vehicle out there sub-$15k, they probably aren't much to write home about. Certainly nothing I want (that's just my personal wants - for instance, if it ain't 4wd and/or it can't be lifted, I don't want it).

As far as the transmission is concerned, here in the US most vehicles can't be bought without an automatic. Manual transmissions are becoming the exception; most car models don't even have them as an option. The few that do (mostly trucks and sports cars) have seen declining sales of the option (and I wouldn't be surprised if it actually costs more to get it!).

I imagine that if you waited for the right manufacturer's incentives and so on, you could get a Toyota Yaris here for $13k, new, with financing. It's a very fine car for someone who can comfortably fit in it.

I expect to see little 25MPH self-driving cars running around senior communities quite soon. At 25MPH and below, sensor range required is low, data quality is good, and most problems can be dealt with by slamming on the brakes. That seemed to be the target market for Google's little bubble car. The problem there is price, not capability.

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