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Comment by revelation | Hacker News Reader

I don't think that data is likely to be kept, raw or otherwise, on anything other than a very small rolling window, if even that. What the author of this article missed is the boot full of server racks that have the storage and processing abilities to even consider storing the raw data from a multitude of cameras, LIDAR and associated sensor systems.

For development, sure, in test fleets, sure, but production cars won't bother with that.

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In all the vehicle recording systems I've worked with (for a local municipality's police video recording) the only video data that would be stored is video data that is pertinent.

So you wouldn't record and store an officer's complete shift. When the officer turned on his lights or siren, the device would rewind 30-45 seconds and start recording. It would then record until the lights/siren were disengaged. That is the video that would be uploaded.

So I think a more likely scenario is that the autonomous cars would in fact permanently store and share all GPS data, but data from the sensors would only store what was recorded with a reasonable buffer around a fault event such as a collision.

Ubiquitous 5g could allow for constant data egress.

Storage is cheap, this data will have a value. Precedent that gets set now is very important.

Also don’t forget Google’s substantial investments in both AVs and ad-surveillance. They have a strong incentive to make cars phone home the whole time, with as much as possible. And so will their lobbyists.

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