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Comment by dheera | Hacker News Reader

> projector at the ground in front of a Tesla and it crosses into oncoming traffic

I don't understand why people come up with all these ridiculous "what if" ideas against autonomous cars as if it's anything new.

It's already exceedingly easy to foul up a human driver. Stand next to a freeway and hold up a stop sign. Drop a foam mannequin from a bridge over the road. Paint some bogus lane lines. Shine a laser at their face.

Any of the above will cause accidents with humans, and you'll be arrested and charged with a felony. Deliberate attempts to compromise autonomous car systems carrying humans inside should be treated no differently.

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I'd stop in most of those situations. Except for the bogus painted lines -- I'd see that they were trying to direct me into oncoming traffic and respond accordingly.

The panel van (or drone) attack is highly targeted, and doesn't stick around like paint does.

These aren't just "ridiculous what ifs," they're a rather plausible method for freshly unemployed Luddites.

Do you see anyone going around with a massive LED array on the back of their trucks to blind (targeted) human drivers? Because that's even easier than floating around a panel with a specially crafted video feed. Yet I've never heard someone do it.

Sure, leading a self-driving car astray is more of an accomplishment than blinding a human, but comparing crimes by how entertaining they are to a bored unemployed DIY sociopath does not seem very reasonable to me.

The massive LED array is on the front of their trucks, blinding the shit out of oncoming traffic.

Perhaps because the promise of autonomy is that you will be able to let go, close your eyes, take a nap, or read a book. That is really hard to do if you have even a 0.0001% chance of hitting something and dying because your car didn't do something right.

Sure, your chances of getting into an accident while driving your own car are higher, and some dummy could throw a turkey onto your windshield and kill you ...etc, but humans don't think in probabilities (well, outside of Hacker News humans), and while driving their on car humans have an illusion of control, when the car is driving itself and you are sleeping, that control is gone.

> That is really hard to do if you have even a 0.0001% chance of hitting something and dying because your car didn't do something right.

Have you ever flown in a plane before? Some people are more nervous than others about giving up control but billions of people still do it because the benefits vastly outweigh slight anxiousness about that billion to one chance. People will not want to drive in an autonomous vehicle right up until they see they can give up their $40k car and hail a driverless taxi to go anywhere for pennies on the dollar.

I think people who are born into it will be fine with it. You probably get inside elevators without second thoughts. If you are of the age of the typical HN reader, they've been L4 autonomous since you were born, so you don't think about it.

With planes I think most people realize that the trained pilot is a better pilot than they are, so they feel more at ease giving up control to someone that is better than them. People just need to see that similarly, software drives cars better than humans.

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