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Comment by agildehaus | Hacker News Reader

Because yours is a ludicrous proposal. It'd be well more expensive to modify infrastructure than to build a computerized driver. Not only is the modification expensive, you have to convince the local authority to foot the bill, do it right, maintain it, etc. Never going to happen.

Your proposal also lacks reliability. What if one of these "transponders" fails? We can build redundancy into a self-driving car quite easily (a second computer, never relying on just one sensor). Providing redundancy to road infrastructure planet-wide is ... a much larger problem.

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You could easily convert HOV lanes into Automated Driving lanes. And if we have the ability to fund HOV lanes, we could also fund Automated Driving lanes.

Self driving cars are already dependent on standard infrastructure markings such as lane lines, and whenever those markings are confusing or faded it has lead to fatal crashes, such as the fatal Tesla crash on 401.

I predict self driving will not fully succeed until we build infrastructure to support it into the roads.

> Self driving cars are already dependent on standard infrastructure markings such as lane lines, and whenever those markings are confusing or faded it has lead to fatal crashes, such as the fatal Tesla crash on 401.

A Tesla is not a self-driving car and they won't become one with that approach.

Waymo vehicles have virtual maps that include the lines (along with a LOT of other data) so they are not affected by fading lines as they always know where the lines are supposed to be.

Basically Waymo is building the infrastructure you all want, but in a virtual sense instead of the extremely expensive and impossible physical one.

> Waymo vehicles have virtual maps ...

You only need one reality <-> virtual desync to cause a crash.

Well no, it's not like the map is the only thing used.

How well does the Waymo approach hold up to a GPS failure?

GPS failure is the entire reason the LIDAR map exists. The map is used to give centimeter accurate location without any GPS availability.

The problem isn't difficulty, the problem is cost.

We could've had self-highway-driving cars in the 60's if we wanted to tear up the roads and install guide cables under every lane. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_self-driving_cars#1...

”Providing redundancy to road infrastructure planet-wide is ”

IgorPartola doesn’t talk about “planet-wide.

”Not only is the modification expensive, you have to convince the local authority to foot the bill, do it right, maintain it, etc. Never going to happen.”

Not in the USA, where government solutions are “socialism”, and voters rather pay for individualized solutions (example: not allocating money to maintain roads, but letting individuals bear the cost of repairs caused by potholes (https://www.wired.com/2015/07/heres-much-citys-crappy-roads-...)

Other countries may act differently.

”What if one of these "transponders" fails?”

You use passive transponders that rarely fail, and put them at every x meter, where cars work fine if they’re at every 2x or 5x meters, and maintain your roads.

I don’t see why that would have to be more expensive than the existing practice of adding, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%27s_eye_(road) and various lane markers to roads (cat’s eyes probably could be sufficient for relatively good lane keeping)

Even if it is, it may still be a net win if it means lanes can be made less wide, or distances between cars can go down, or even if it ‘just’ means fewer people getting killed and maimed in road accidents.

Roads are modified and maintained all the freaking time, new lanes, new lights, new cameras, new surfaces, etc. This is in the end the cheapest and most realistic way to automated transport.

Roads are modified and maintained, but only in a completely ad-hoc manner. So some localities have good roads and maintenance, and others have terrible roads and maintenance and even road design. You can't expect any kind of consistency, because roads are mostly handled at the local level in the US, and many localities are completely incompetent, or refuse to spend any money on it. What you're describing would require consistency, and that's a completely impossible expectation in America.

Roads are extremely expensive, adding sensors to new roads should actually be a rounding error.

what about the old roads?

And what about when you repave those roads? It's introduced an infrastructure burden that's there forever.

The interstate itself is an infrastructure burden that's there forever. Somehow we find a way to pay for it, no? Painting lane markers costs $X/mile, right? This would take the cost to $(X + x)/mile where x is the cost of the transponders. Nobody said self-driving cars would be cheaper, just safer.

No, we don't find a way to pay for it. https://www.ced.org/reports/fixing-americas-roads-bridges

at this point I have to ask why are self driving cars needed when we're talking about the tax payer eating up the cost and are we sure we don't have other things in which the money would be better invested.

sure, self-driving cars would be nice and we could even rationalize how this could make sense, but at the end of the day I would rather see everyone get 1) high-speed internet 2) clean water 3) reduce the dependency on fossil fuel 4) ensure access to quality food 5) move towards environmental friendly materials.

Why does taxpayers paying for it make it an issue for you? I don't really get why that factors into it, especially given that taxpayers already pay for the roads.

All the other things you mention are good, and could probably be a priority, I am not saying they shouldn't be. But if we are talking about a technical solution to the problem, here's the thing:

a. You can either have cheap self-driving cars and an upfront infrastructure cost + additional ongoing cost, or expensive self-driving cars capable of driving on shitty roads. My conjecture is that the latter won't 100% solve the problem anyways, so why bother? Let's not let perfect be the enemy of good.

b. Why do roads get lower priority for you than high-speed internet? And why do you prioritize high speed internet above reducing reliance on fossil fuels?

c. Maintaining roads is already a thing we do, it is already done via public funding, and again that makes your existing cars cheaper. You'd need a damn tank to roll through unpaved streets at 40 mph, let alone at 80 mph like everyone currently drives in their little Civics with 15 inch wheels.

Again, I don't know which thing should be a priority, not a problem I set out to discuss here. I am saying that IMO the cheapest and best way to get to self-driving cars is as I described. Let's upgrade the roads so we can all have nice things. This also lets us upgrade the rest of the roads to make them self-driving capable later. Or we could try to make a computer that's as good at driving in Montana blizzards as a human, and not see a single consumer self-driving car for the next 50 years.

not saying roads/infrastructure is not important. I’m saying that I would not want to pay extra for something that maybe is going to guide the cars. we already have something that does that: it’s called a railroad.

my bigger point is that we’ve fallen in love with the idea of having self driving cars. do we need self driving cars? who should shoulder the cost?

the things I gave as examples are not ordered. truly high-speed internet everywhere would be great as i believe can actually enable telecommuting and eliminate traffic. it can also enable access to education and drive us, as a society forward.

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