India will ban driverless cars in order to protect jobs | Hacker News Reader

India will ban driverless cars in order to protect jobs

engadget.com

83 pointsJumpCrisscross109 comments

Reminds me of this story

> The story goes that Milton Friedman was once taken to see a massive government project somewhere in Asia. Thousands of workers using shovels were building a canal. Friedman was puzzled. Why weren't there any excavators or any mechanized earth-moving equipment? A government official explained that using shovels created more jobs. Friedman's response: "Then why not use spoons instead of shovels?"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230407010457639...

The attribution for the quote is a bit disputed though : http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/10/spoons-shovels/

The brilliance of the Friedman anecdote is that it reveals something Higher-Life-Form types like Nitin Gadkari, who propose to save you with the wonderful power of regulation, miss. What they miss is that in their world there's no logically sound riposte to Friedman's question. It should be spoons. Teaspoons, even. Creates more jobs.

But actually what works is, perhaps, shovels. And then, if you can afford it, earth-moving equipment.

Who says shovels are best?

Prices say shovels are best. And then, later, prices say earth-moving equipment is best. You don't have to be a Randian absolutist to conclude that governments inevitably distort outcomes and impoverish people, even at the margin, when they control prices.

I think what is implicit in a move like Gadkari's is a belief that the idea of a "market-clearing price" is an economic textbook proposal that one is free to adopt or not adopt. In fact these concepts are not theories but reality-reflecting lenses. Prices are actual facts. The ban on driverless cars will create grey markets, criminals, cartelize commercial driving, artificially enhance transport costs, and, perhaps most insidiously, marginally nudge a young man or woman on the edge of deciding between (say) driving and doing a Masters degree, to drive.

An alternative is not to be so black and white (and assume a single dimension is all that matters), and say that shovels maximizes a set of goals: making work efficient AND creating jobs.

Prices don't simply say shovels are best. Economic theory says that under some ideal conditions, prices reflect what is most efficient, and that whats most efficient is best.

That is, your argument is more an assumption that ideal economic models apply than a justification. Ideal economics don't always apply, prices aren't always transparent, competition isn't always perfect, cows aren't spherical.

The thing is if the goal is to create jobs then this policy is counterproductive. It's a great way to ensure that in 20 years time India has no car industry left. When foreign companies have had decades long lead in autonomous tech there's no way Indian companies will be able to compete with them either in foreign or even domestic market when self-driving cars are allowed.

Create a few extra jobs now and destroy an entire industry in the long run. Just like India has a blanket ban on all small drones which just means that whatever innovations come from the drone industry, India will only be its importer.

The sad thing is Nitin Gadkari one of the more sensible ministers and yet this is coming from him.

With context, Gadkari appeared to say that driverless _commercial_ vehicles will not be allowed.

A lot of politicians around the world may be saying that soon.

"We won't allow any technology that takes away jobs. In a country where you have unemployment, you can't have a technology that ends up taking people's jobs"

I guess we should spin up the weaving looms when the next recession hits?

Horse and buggies too, think of the carriage and whip makers!

Serious question -- why not? What makes this a bad idea?

Historically, society ends up poorer when doing things sub-optimally, and if society does it long enough, it also becomes obsolete and non-competitive, ensuring that society stays behind for longer than simply allowing the tech changes to evolve as they can.

So if your goal is temporary employment gains for long term poverty, this is a good way to start.

Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas [1]

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

Because automated weaving makes clothes a lot cheaper.

Put another way, when workers become more efficient -- one factory worker able to control many weaving machines, or a relatively small group of programmers able to control many cars -- people's standard of living increases.

Maybe you're willing to pay more for clothes, or transportation, or any one thing. But paying more for all of the things that have gotten cheaper due to increases in efficiency since time X is tantamount to going back to the standard of living of time X.

Even more radically, you might as well just give everybody a universal basic income instead of heading back for a pre-industrialized way of life (though the Amish people seem to like it?!).

If you give people a universal basic income, you need to both increase taxes a lot and completely restrict immigration - a basic income in the US is incredibly luxurious for people who live in sub-saharan Africa. Or else the universal basic income is going to be too low in first world countries to make a difference.

Or you just start taxing corporations and rich people again. Some stupidly huge percentage of dollars are just sitting in their coffers doing nothing.

Corporations and rich people have ways (completely legal) to get around taxes. If the tax burden becomes too onerous, they'll just move residences and/or stop doing business in your country.

You can see this in one of the founders of Facebook - he renounced his US citizenship, because of the onerous tax burdens. (https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/a-facebook-founder...)

It's foolish to just say "we should tax rich people and rich corporations more." You're incentivizing them to not play the game, and wealthy people generally have more abilities to evade taxes than people in the lower upper class or middle class, which is who the burden will inevitably fall upon.

We just have to start guillotining them again, I guess. You need a good revolution once every generation or three to keep capital scared.

Did you not see my previous comment about capital flight?

This is not the middle ages anymore, where peoples' riches are tied up in real estate and machinery. Immovable capital.

Capital is fluid these days. If you start guillotining people for absolutely nothing except being rich (which is what you're insinuating) they'll just leave and take all the capital and productive capacity with them. See Venezuela.

I am fully aware that UBI is an utopia that would require at the very least a Zeitgeist well evolved beyond our species' current, most common world views. But a similar "time-inverse" utopia is trying to stop technological progress with laws.

UBI seems unlikely now, maybe very low level like 500 dollars per month, but definitely not going to support a comfortable living, that is only fantasy.

Perhaps if the costs to maintain a comfortable living are lowered? It might be that people end up choosing between city living and the 40 hours a week of work required to support that, and living in a regional area where you can get by working 10 hours/week.

> not going to support a comfortable living

It's not supposed to.

Depends on whom you ask, and on the definition of "comfortable".

If things have gotten cheaper, why does everything in a 1917 sears catalog, adjusted for inflation, look so inexpensive? Solid metal tools used to cost less than the modern walmart plastic thing.

Not sure if this is right but maybe because wages were lower back then even with inflation?

Sounds like a possible factor. Inflation-adjusted median household income in 1900 was around $12k. Now it's around $55k.

You got me curious, so I looked... page 1082 and 1083 of the Sears catalog, from 1912 https://archive.org/details/catalogno12400sear shows that a standard hammer was $0.66, and a hand saw was around $1.50 (there are several models from $1.05 to $1.95). So $0.66 (from 1912) is $15.82 in 2016, and $1.95 is $35.96.

For things like your solid metal tools, it's because the demand for metals is higher now than it was then, compared to supply. Also, solid metal may not actually be better than plastic or other options. It's heavy, and it rusts.

What's the point of making things cheaper when it centers the wealth on just a few owners? When there are lots of workers working low income jobs versus just a few workers working high income jobs, it creates a healthier more distributed economy.

The point is that it delivers real, tangible quality-of-life factors, which typically matter more to someone's well-being than his feelings about aggregate wealth inequality.

I could stick it to the rich bastards who own energy stocks, but I'd rather be warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

An estimated 2.3 Billion people now own smartphones. That number is growing at about 10% per year. All those people have access to the sum of all human knowledge and the ability to educate themselves almost as well as (some would argue even better than) the students of the most expensive universities.

They can communicate with anyone else at almost zero marginal cost, and can sell products and services to basically anyone else on the planet. All because things keep getting cheaper.

That's the point of making things cheaper.

Sure, a consequence of that is that the founders and executives and financiers of Google, Samsung, Apple etc are wildly rich. And that means they can (and do) invest in new products and services to keep improving peoples' standard of living, as well as funding benevolent projects.

It's pretty amazing if you ask me.

> All those people have access to the sum of all human knowledge and the ability to educate themselves almost as well (some would argue even better) than students of the most expensive universities. They can communicate with anyone at almost no marginal cost, and can sell products and services to basically anyone else on the planet.

Is this even happening though?

Out of Coursera's 18 million registered learners, 1.3 million are from India with top registered learners hailing from Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad, the website said today.

Driven by the vast interest coming from Bengaluru, technology hub, nearly half of enrollments in the country are in technology courses such as computer science (25 per cent) and data science (18 per cent).

- http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/educat...

Top Freelancing countries on Elance:

India $312,865,112/649,566 freelancers

United States $310,023,579/1,123,935 freelancers

Ukraine $72,429,514/29,341 freelancers

Pakistan $71,061,107/176,011 freelancers

United Kingdom $35,320,646/126,670 freelancers

Canada $31,379,228/85,639 freelancers

Romania $28,062,831/44,305 freelancers

Russia $27,416,743/21,045 freelancers

Philippines $18,261,489/178,725 freelancers

Argentina $17,796,295

China $17,518,704/28,752 freelancers

Serbia $13,600,638/18,577 freelancers

Bangladesh $11,092,326/66,970 freelancers

https://www.elance.com/trends/talent-available/geo#GeoRankin...

And when you try net income per person, you get:

   Ukraine  $2,468.54 
   Russia  $1,302.77 
   Serbia  $732.12 
   Romania  $633.40 
   China  $609.30

Thanks, I'm capable of using a calculator :D

There will naturally be a distribution of incomes among those people, with some people earning little or nothing, and some people earning a lot.

The point is that whatever the income a given person is earning, that is income that was unavailable to them before modern computing and communications devices became affordable to them.

That's money that people are using to build better lives for themselves, their families and their communities.

As I said, that is the point of making things cheaper.

If wealth was a zero-sum game, thia would make sense. Fortunately, it's possible to create new wealth so that everyone is better off, even if some get richer than others relatively.

Because you create wealth by producing goods and services. Jobs are a cost, not the end goal. Sacrificing production for jobs gets it exactly backwards and makes us, in the aggregate, poorer, even though it makes a few people richer.

And it ensures that the economy is based on time and low pay rather than valuable skills or invention. It removes the incentives to innovate in areas of life that are time consuming but have lots of workers.

Nicely put.

I'd add that your response makes a tidy argument against the abusive public employee unions that hold public fisc hostage in the U.S. Right now, U.S. teachers' unions have crafted a public education industry that is a lot like what this technocrat in India might have conceived .

But jobs are how those goods and services are distributed. A country like India is not in a state to transition to basic income yet.

Because it's busywork, and it's wasting all those peoples' time. It's strictly inferior to letting a few workers use machinery to do the job, while paying the rest of the workers to sit around idle, because when using machinery you can rapidly increase output if required and the idle workers have the option to find something more useful to do.

Where do I sign up to be one of the idle workers?

Give it 10-20 years and you won't need to sign up, you'll just receive your UBI into your bank account every week. Well, that or the country you live in will have to let 30-40% of its people starve because there's nothing they can do better than a machine.

Remember, those idle workers aren't being paid a nice pay packet. They'll be on subsistence wages only. You'll still want to work a job if you want nice things.

If I'm one of those skilled workers who can do something better than a machine it seems the rational course of action is to move to one of the places where they let people starve and keep more of the fruits of my labor.

Until those people decide they should forcefully separate your head from your neck. See France (1787), Haiti (1791), USA (1861), Turkey(1908), Russia (1917), China (1949)...

Those are only the most notable major civil wars, but it's amazing how revolts are common across the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_revolutions_and_rebell...

Strictly inferior by one metric. There are other factors to optimize for, e.g. rate of environmental destruction, median life satisfaction, social cohesiveness, breadth of knowledge vs specialization.

So you're on the teaspoon side of the debate? (Or at least, you're saying that it's nuanced and that some nuances do favour the teaspoon side.)

Yes, the latter- you can take either side ad absurdum, though the teaspoon side is easier to mischaracterize. Single-variable optimization is easy; multivariate is much harder especially when wetware is involved.

Seriously limits technological progress. Pretty much insures Indian tech companies cannot develop this IP in their homelands. Who knows what kind of tech driverless car might beget, like space navigation, etc? What kind of economy of scale it would enable? The quality and lifestyle and savings from freeing people of having to be fully present during this dull activity. People could use that time in the car to do so many things.

Cars could be available always, not just when people are up. This could lead to a stronger economy, the car delivers the customer to the product, instead of he customer having to think about it. Less friction in decision making, more freedom.

For people of developed nations that get used to that lifestyle, it would be a world of night and day when they arrive in a place that is actively against the conveniences of life afforded by technology. Life, for these people banned from this awesome experience, would appear more bleak and torturous. Even viewed by some as primitive.

Locally developed military technology suffers, with the lack of local talent they would have to accept inferior technology.

There are probably endless implications for banning things. They could have been smart and just taxed this tech very high in place of taking jobs.

It is a silent catastrophe as a governing decision.

As a consultant I recently traveled to a client office; the Wifi was spotty and failed so often I literally had a mild anxiety attack and had to head back to the home office just to clear my mind.

I can only imagine what privileges the next generation are going to upgrade to necessities.

What's the purpose?

Companies are obviously not going to do that if they have autonomy since it's inefficient production. Instead, the government will have to do so, and at that point they only do so to pump money into the economy. Why not instead spend that on NASA like space programs instead?

I've long advocated for a "techno-Keynesian" approach to economics.

Its like thinking breaking windows adds to the economy because someone gets paid to fix it. In the end the window gets restored to its original condition and money is simply transferred from one person to another but no value has been created. Stifling innovation in a way is like handing everyone a hammer and telling them to break things to stimulate the economy.

If you do this, you'd also logically have to ban imports or tax them at an extremely high rate.

By banning any sort of technology, you're indirectly increasing the costs of domestically placed goods, by increasing the costs of production.

Oh, so letting an economy go into free-fall recession is good for people?

Once self-driving cars hit, the switch will be immediate and massive. I would predict 10% to 90% penetration in probably less than 12 months--the limitation will simply be building the cars fast enough. That's a lot of people suddenly with no income.

Protecting people against that disruption for 50 years? Probably a bad idea. Protecting people for 5 years? Maybe a good idea.

An efficient market is a ruthless market. And people are its victims.

People are also it's beneficiaries

Problem is, the beneficiaries and the victims are often different people.

If they were the same people, the technology would be rather pointless.

"Once self-driving cars hit, the switch will be immediate and massive. I would predict 10% to 90% penetration in probably less than 12 months--the limitation will simply be building the cars fast enough. That's a lot of people suddenly with no income."

It will probably take 12 months just to form the exploratory committee that will form the actual committee that will even begin to consider legalizing fully driverless cars.

This change involves many levels of government bureaucracy. It will happen, but it's definitely not going to be "immediate".

This process is already under way. There are hearings in Congress regarding autonomous vehicles several times a month.

Depends on the government. Beijing could go driverless overnight if Xi Jinping thinks it's a good idea. And considering Beijing's extreme traffic woes, they just might....

The "once self-driving cars hit" point would be their legalization in your scenario, with the same rapid uptake described unless government implements some sort of quota system allowing only a small number to be added at once.

I'll buy that. My point is that it's not something that will happen all of a sudden. First, the tech needs to be ready. Then we'll have a years-long period of political wrangling. And once we finally get through that, sure, adoption could be swift. But people in tech who think this is just going to sail through aren't in touch with how the majority of people look at the world... they're sort of like the folks who thought Google Glass would be a smashing success.

> But people in tech who think this is just going to sail through aren't in touch with how the majority of people look at the world... they're sort of like the folks who thought Google Glass would be a smashing success.

Maybe, maybe not. We've seen tech outpace regulation many times - Facebook and privacy, Uber and taxis, e-mail and spam, etc.

If we had less rules, we could make it happen. More industry standard regulation, then things could evolve much more naturally and not have to be lobbied for all the time.

So it's a bad idea that we're thinking about what we're going to do before doing it?

I mean, I can understand "move fast and break things" when it comes to releasing web applications. My sympathy ends when you're literally moving fast and literally breaking things.

> It will happen, but it's definitely not going to be "immediate".

Normally, you would be correct. However, there will be so much at stake that there will be huge amounts of money greasing the skids on any required legislation.

Real Level 3 Autonomy will displace 75% of truckers almost immediately--that's 1.5 million jobs lost. You will have one or two drivers in the front truck and a half-dozen trucks running autonomously but slaved to the front truck. WalMart will almost certainly lead the charge.

Level 4 autonomy will allow the insurance companies to jack insurance rates on normal drivers through the roof. You will get a massive insurance discount if you never touch the wheel (removes human driver error--total monitoring so always other driver's fault).

With that much money at stake, the obstacles will melt like ice in the summertime. See: Fracking in Pennsylvania for an example of how fast legislation can move with enough money behind it.

Fracking, for all its controversy, does not outright kill random people when something goes wrong. Whenever there's a problem, it's going to be front page news, and people (old people in particular) are going to call their political representatives and complain. This is going to become a massive political football. There's no way it gets introduced smoothly and quickly--that's just a futurist daydream.

No that's not how auto insurance works. It's a commodity with high competition and low profit margins. Insurance companies set prices based on expected losses. There's no reason to think that the arrival of level 4 autonomous vehicles would cause an increase in losses on human driven vehicles. If one insurer jacks up prices then the others will undercut them to gain market share.

12 months? Perhaps for taxis and private hire vehicles, but not for the population as a whole. In the first year, perhaps 10% penetration, but more likely 2-5%, as for most it will be a premium feature. I'd say 5-10 years for normal models to get full self driving capability.

Go ahead

While a braindead statement, it's a bit of a moot point. Humans will likely settle on Mars before self-driving tech can smoothly navigate India's traffic and roads.

I consider myself a fully autonomous human being, and there is no way I would ever try to navigate roads in India. If solving autonomous cars in, say, Denmark is checkers, solving it in India is Go.

If driving in Denmark is checkers, driving in India is a tavern brawl.

(Disclaimer: I haven't been to India for a couple of decades... maybe it's improved?)

You could see this as political posturing by the transport minister. As the article mentions, with the state of India's roads, it was unlikely that it was going to be getting self-driving cars in the short-term. Banning them now, and removing the ban once the technology becomes feasible for India's environment is very possible.

India has one of the highest number of road fatalities in the world (In top 5). 400 people die everyday on the road! 1000s of more accidents happen which don't get tracked. People who did nothing wrong get killed because someone was not paying attention.

Driverless cars or rather augmented driving will save lives but the minister doesn't care for those. Driverless cars will create more jobs in engineering, training and monitoring because driverless cars will not come one fine day but over a period of 10 years.

As someone who is working on self driving tech, this saddens me.

India needs more eyes on this problem because of our roads and our bad traffic sense. The fact that we don't drive on the same side of the road as the western world means their tech won't be adaptable directly. So much potential and opportunity but I guess the minister wants us to keep doing the cheap menial jobs.

I live in India. Irrespective of whether the Government bans driverless cars or not, Indian roads and traffic conditions are not suitable for driverless cars. Period.

I visited Kerala for a week for work. The roads in Thiruvananthapuram make me think the traffic conditions aren't really suitable for cars with drivers either.

I bet if we start testing self driving cars in India, we'll get there in perhaps another 10-20 years. What's needed is an extremely good path planning algorithm. Rest of the self driving tech SLAM et al is already solved.

However, the bigger problem on Indian roads is congestion. I think you need smaller autonomous vehicles that can navigate through the crevices and cracks ( gallis ). Something smaller than the Tata Nano.

definitely a driverless toy car :)

On contrary it might actually bring some order in traffic situation.

I build products in India. You do not understand how the technology works. Driverless technology is AI based i.e. it learns the same way a human does. All it requires is training, a lot of training, 10000 hours or more. I am working on self-driving tech and I can _show_ you the technology works even in hills of the Himalayas where there are no road signs or lane markings.

>>Driverless technology is AI based i.e. it learns the same way a human does.

Not as of today.

Its not generic AI. Also to an extent you need good road infrastructure for these things, which we don't have it here in India.

Why do you need generic AI to solve driving? Driving is a system of visual recognition followed by path planning. You see what is on the road and then decide acceleration, brake and steering angle. Enlighten me if there is anything more to driving. As for object detection in an image, AI is more accurate than an human today.

On the drawing board and slides, it would definitely work. No doubts about that!!! Keep me informed when you have a driverless car on the road and you are worry-free to send your kid or any other loved one in it.

Will take 10 years but will happen. My kid won't need a driving license!

I hope this doesn't set any sort of precedent. This is extremely short-sighted. Jobs will be lost, but we should look for real solutions that don't slow down the improvement of quality of life or the advancement of the human race in general. Maybe basic income?

It is easy to shit on the politician's statement, but at least try to understand where they are coming from. India is facing massive crises on multiple fronts. Huge number of youth enter the job market every year and there simply aren't enough jobs to go around. Driving employs a lot of people who vote, so he can't just ignore their concerns.

In many states, unemployed youth are likely to create a law and order crisis or exacerbate one that already exists. Neither does India have a huge amount of money lying around to fund something like UBI.

However, this situation didn't just happen on its own. Indian bureaucracy stifles private businesses by all kinds of vague regulations. A lot of effort is needed to rectify this and some people in power understand this, though it would take some time for them to bring the rest of them on board.

Secondly, the automobile industry in India is extremely significant. I believe they also bring in a substantial amount of foreign exchange now. If the global market is moving towards driverless technology, then India's corporates can't afford to be left behind. And they will put a lot of pressure on the law makers.

Finally, these politicians aren't very principled people. They will definitely change their tune under the right circumstances.

I think it's already the case that there are tons of "make work" jobs in India. When I visited, in the hotel I stayed at there were like 4 doorman at the entrance. In the shared office building where I was working, there were 2 people manning the copier - if you wanted to copy something, you had to hand it to the copier attendant, who would make your copies and then bring them back to you.

I think your comment is pretty accurate. It's one thing for us to laugh at the minister, but we don't really have any other solution for the huge numbers of people who will be put out of work if driverless cars take off in India.

A long-ish read.

In Indian malls, there are so many helpers standing around that if you lift up a merchandise, you'll be jump scared by someone asking you how she can help you. People are also used to asking the prices of the items, even though just flipping around would reveal the tags that clearly earmarks the final price (all tax and details). Indian are more used to DIFM (Do it for Me) than the western DIY culture.

Personally, I usually go on weekdays and I can have about 3+ people buzzing around me trying to help me decide what I want to buy. They all are my personal Siri for that location and context.

The labor market is also so cheap that Indians can afford to get much cheaper manual solutions than the one time bigger investment in automation and technology. Most people also know that it is more economical in the long run but don't really want to wait for the far-future gain.

If I hire a wash-helper to just wash my clothes twice a week, it will cost me just about ₹1000 ($15) (or even less) a month in Bangalore. A good washing machine (no dryer) will set you back by about ₹30,000($466). At that rate, I can have the wash-helper wash my clothes without failing or consuming electricity for 2+ years.

Very similar with a Dishwasher. A dishwash-helper can equivalently go on for 3+ years without any mechanical failure, no electricity consumption and you can talk to her. No annual maintenance needed either.

In early 2005, I was speaking at my first international conference and had my first US culture experience. There was a big mall opposite the Hyatt, Dearborn (forgot the name). I went in at a store and there was nobody to help me. The unmarked labels didn't help either. I did realize that I had to scan the barcode with a scanner (attached at quite convenient locations) and shows me the price details including the state tax. Manual labor is costly stateside and automation and modernization can bring in huge ROI. In India, anything that is a DIY needs someone to show them the DIY to the people.

So, when the transport minister says what he says, it is so easy for him to look for all the easier and more comfortable routes - just get someone to do it, "drive the car". We are a country where if Ikea comes in, my advice will be to have an army that can go and assemble their furniture at the customer location.

You, me and the people who think about automation, thinking 10 years ahead etc are far and few in between, especially in India, so he will very likely win.

Hell, many other politicians and fanatics are fighting over the exclusion of the word "cow" in public exhibitions such as movies.

Clarifying a few things so that people get a perspective on your post is about.

>>In Indian malls, there are so many helpers standing around that if you lift up a merchandise, you'll be jump scared by someone asking you how she can help you.

This is because most people can't use these things properly. Its easier(and cheaper) to put a lift operator than to have people damage lift and having it repaired/replaced.

>>People are also used to asking the prices of the items, even though just flipping around would reveal the tags that clearly earmarks the final price (all tax and details).

Very few do this. Those people who ask generally do it because we are price conscious, absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Look at the wester society, bulk of the personal finance problems there arise because people spend money they don't have.

>>Personally, I usually go on weekdays and I can have about 3+ people buzzing around me trying to help me decide what I want to buy.

Again easier to help you shop quickly this way, than having tens of people pile up in the store.

>>If I hire a wash-helper to just wash my clothes twice a week, it will cost me just about ₹1000 ($15) (or even less) a month in Bangalore.

Most people would and do buy a Washing machine for something like this. You must be rich.

-----

Let's be frank this no-driverless cars is just political talk. When those cars arrive, these people will be the first ones trying to convince public about it.

LOL. Very true about the lifts. People, even many educated ones still ask which way the lift is going. I sometimes questioned, "Which button did you press?" They believe they should be "calling the lift" and not "pointing/pressing" which way need to go.

Being rich, is kinda subjective. No, I'm not rich.

Given India's infrastructure and assuming it will be not a 100% driverless cars , this is not an issue indian legislators need to worry about. At least until India can achieve a 100% literacy rate and assure driving licenses given out are genuine.

What a shame. The mortality rate for car accidents in India is staggering.

I'm honestly surprised it's not a bigger deal, particularly since it's easy to draw vehicular safety along class lines - rich people have big safe cars and drivers and poor people don't. I'd think India's class-conscious politicians would make some noise.

Ah, another ban. Welcome to the new age governance in India. Some government official in Karnataka wanted to ban ride sharing as well. I hear the government's sentiment about creating jobs, but hey have these guys ever sat in that shitty truck and driven all night ? Fucking armchair politicians.

Anyways, I used to think why hasn't any company invested in self driving tech in India - and now the answer becomes pretty clear. One can possibly take the government head on and challenge the ban in the Supreme court.

Forget the part about protecting jobs, how confident will the driverless cars companies be even otherwise, sending their cars out into the chaotic traffic in India, where you routinely share the road with bicycles, motorcycles, scooters, rickshaws, handcarts, buses, lorries (trucks), cows and the occasional sheep and donkeys?

Related video => [2006] India Driving https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjrEQaG5jPM

Now traffic has increased at least 6 times

I remember reading about an Indian startup making autonomous vehicles. I believe they were bought out by TATA or funded by some big company. This was couple years back.

Edit: https://www.google.com/amp/s/thenextweb.com/cars/2017/06/12/...

India's exports have to compete against those of other countries. If India places itself at a competitive disadvantage as this Transportation official proposes they will lose sales and thus jobs.

Sure they can manipulate the currency but that places a tax on what everyone buys from overseas and lowers standards of living.

I find this discussion pointless as driverless cars that can drive on Indian roads are a long way from becoming a reality.

A complete joke, India can't even supply 24/7 electricity and water to the majority of their population, they may as well be discussing the outlawing of thermodynamics. It is as if a child showed up to a dissertation discuss astrophysics, what a bunch of clowns.

human costs are so cheap there.. the ROI threshold is much more challenging to achieve

In a darker aspect, it seems the gov’t values the lives of their citizens so little that they can’t be afforded modern technological gains. The rich of India will sure experience it, as they travel abroad.

These ideas seem to come up a lot. I see people advocating these ideas everywhere, even on HN.

How can anyone think that job creation is better than job elimination?

What a complete idiot in soooo many ways...now you can understand the situation of India's development when such utter morons are "leaders" of India! India actually needs driverless cars more desperately than any country in the world given it's world-leading 200,000 fatalities every year.

China had 260k: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

If you sort that by per 100k people or vehicles, India isn't doing too badly. They just have a lot of people.

And it's not even the main reason they need it, which is to optimize the usage of much more limited road infrastructure. Even china has been building roads like crazy, there is only so much space to put them when population density is so high....

Sorry yes China's the biggest by that data, but India has more fatalities per mile driven than China and at about 10x the rate of the U.S. which itself isn't doing that great.

Given the infrastructure in India, this is probably a wise decision.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com