Hacker News Reader

Comment by krapp | Hacker News Reader

>It seems to me that self-driving cars can't be just as safe as the status quo, but have to be far far better. It's an unreasonable need, but human nature.

What would be the point of self-driving cars which were no safer than the status quo? That's just removing freedom from drivers and adding more complexity to infrastructure for no added benefit.

It's also exactly the narrative that proponents of self-driving cars have been driving (pun intended), self-driving cars would eliminate all, if not nearly all, accidents and fatalities.

View on HN

What they're talking about I think is the usual statement that self driving cars only need to be slightly better than the status quo (in deaths per mile driven) to make sense because then anyone moving from driving to using a self driving car decreases the number of deaths. From a raw statistics POV this makes sense, if a self driving car is even just a little bit better than the average driver on average anyone switching to an autocar will decrease the number of injuries.

What they're saying (and I agree) is that human nature means people won't be willing to get into a car that's 'just a little better than average.' There's a couple reasons I think that will be true: 1) people generally think they're better than they are at driving 2) moving from people to autopilot moves the responsibility from generic 'bad drivers' causing accidents to a single system. Going from a diffuse responsibility to a more concentrated liability on the part of the manufacturer will probably mean they'll be blamed much more for the failures of their cars.

I think insurance companies can affect this behavior. If self driving cars are safer, then the insurance companies could lower rates for those cars, creating some economic incentive to override the irrational human brain.

The main attraction is that automation will make car ownership non-sensible. Even right now, taking a cab every single time is economically at break-even or better for many urban dwellers. If you take out the driver, then cabs can be much cheaper.

Second, what you call "freedom", is called a "chore" by a good chunk of the population. I can't wait to not touch another steering wheel ever.

To each his own, but I don't want to have to get permission from Google, Tesla or anyone else before driving somewhere, then be escorted under surveillance like a prisoner in the back of a cop car with every possible metric being mined and correlated for the benefit of corporations, insurance companies and the state, leaving my safety to the whim of algorithms and systems likely built to the cheapest standard possible.

I'll gladly deal with the "chore" of being able to turn my own key and drive my own car as an alternative.

Yeah, as someone from a rural background, it always strikes me as far-fetched that people are going to give up ownership of vehicles because of driverless tech. People routinely spend 10x what they need to on a car, living well outside their means for essentially status (buying a new BMW instead of a used Honda for example). Moreover, there is more to owning your own car than privacy. It’s really damned convenient to have your car loaded up with your stuff. Your snow gear, your bike gear, your tools, your emergency electronic tools and first aid. I like to keep a folding chair in my car, it’s surprisingly convenient. I don’t have a ton of experience living in cold climates but I did spur-of-the-moment cross country road trip in February a few years ago. We left from the Bay Area headed to Indiana, and when we stopped outside of Chicago for gas and I realized how naive our plans were. I had to get back in the car while gas was pumping it was so cold. If we had car problems or an accident dying of exposure could have been a real thing. We didn’t have cold-weather gear with us, I was wearing jeans and a hoodie, and I really felt like an idiot for it. Such fears can be easily solved by having blankets and food and chemical heat sources in the car, which I’m pretty sure is normal for people in those climates. You can’t really have gear with you like that if the driverless car goes and gets another fare once you reach your destination.

I wonder at what point they'll just solve the safety issue by removing the windshield and adding shit loads of impact absorption and a few steel plates that isn't possible on vehicles where the driver needs to be able to see outside.

The limiting factor right now is mostly that nobody wants to wear 4/5/6pt harnesses or have a properly fitting bucket seat (these things are a big pain in the butt for a daily driver) so we have to keep shoving explosively deployed cushions into places so humans don't bounce off of harder things.

The fact that we can't replace the windshield with something else will likely never be a practical limitation for the foreseeable future.

> What would be the point of self-driving cars which were no safer than the status quo? That's just removing freedom from drivers and adding more complexity to infrastructure for no added benefit.

What?? Safety is a great side dish, not the main course. The point is to free up hundreds of millions of man-hours spent daily focusing on roads.

Then simply a better public transit system would be more efficient and effective.

No added benefits? People don't have to own cars commuting drivers regain hours of their life.

Why are you assuming no one would own self-driving cars? It's likely they'll simply be sold the way any other kind of car is nowadays, and be far more expensive than typical cars.

Also, commuters will still have the same commutes whether they or their car is doing the driving. The deployment of self-driving cars is not going to magically transform a multi-hour commute into ten minutes.

Why would I want to own a "far more expensive" self driving car? I would love to get rid of my car and rely on fully autonomous Uber/Lyft. Even factoring in car rental for travel or moving or whatever I think it would be far cheaper that way. My car is a never ending money pit with insurance, gas, maintenance, registration, tires, it never stops.

You're going to pay for all those things even if it's indirectly through someone else who owns the vehicle. Most vehicle costs are related to mileage, not time--especially outside of areas where rust is a major factor.

I'm sure there will be a difference at the margins in cities where many people don't need a car on a daily basis. I assume that's already the case with Uber/Lyft today. And self-driving when it eventually arrives in those areas presumably will decrease costs some. But for someone who lives outside of dense city centers it seems likely they'll continue to want to own a car that is a model they like, equipped to their specifications, and storing all the various things they keep in a car.

>Why would I want to own a "far more expensive" self driving car?

It doesn't matter what you want, it matters what car companies do. They're not going to spend millions of dollars on R&D and marketing hype for self-driving cars only to make far less money on them than they do now on conventional cars.

>My car is a never ending money pit with insurance, gas, maintenance, registration, tires, it never stops.

Yes. That's the entire point, cars are micro-economies supporting multiple businesses and profit centers. And self driving cars will be the same, for the same reasons.

I'm not sure exactly what you're saying. Are you talking about some kind of monopoly or trust that prevents Uber/Lyft et al from getting access to self driving cars? That seems unlikely to me. As far as the various industries centered around car ownership I don't see why they'd go anywhere. Self driving cars will still need maintenance, oil, tires, etc. The only thing changing here is who owns the car. I don't want that to be me. As soon as it is economical for me to pay for transportation as a service and get rid of my money pit that is parked outside my apartment 24/7 I will do so.

I think you're reversing supply and demand...

This completely overlooks that in 90% and over of the cases a bus is all you would need

You're right I didn't mention it, but that fact is actually crucial to my point. I'm lucky enough to live in a place where walking, taking the bus, riding a bike (the one I own or a bike share), or taking a Lyft get me almost everything I want at a very reasonable cost. And as new transportation services emerge I need my car less and less. So I'm hoping that in the near future there is some service that can take over the few things I do need a car for. Something like Car2Go or ZipCar is actually almost there.

It's in all likelihood already safer than that status quo by an order of magnitude. Not that they are that good but the status quo is really that bad.

But it's the devil we know, It's fine that we average 3,287 fatalities a day[0].

We also have more empty homes than homeless, more food than starving people, crippling homelessness and 1:4 malnourished children in the US alone. I expect nothing from humanity yet I am still disappointed.

[0]https://www.asirt.org/safe-travel/road-safety-facts/

They're a lot better already safety-wise (and likely in other ways too) than drunk drivers I'd assume.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com