Comment by bmitc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bmitc | Hacker News Reader

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> It's worth doing because we drive a remarkable amount. Even at human safety level, more than a million people die every year in car crashes.

I'm not sure. Why is this so? To save time? Sure, but I think the self-driving proponents that I have seen have not addressed the new problems that will be brought by self-driving cars. I don't think reducing crashes is anything but a marketing ploy because the real goal of self-driving is to make companies a lot of money. I think accidents will simply be transposed and not reduced.

One problem is the initial rollout period where there is a non-homogeneous mix of human and automated drivers. This impedance mismatch will be problematic and likely lead to more accidents and congestion.

In general, it's my belief (I don't have facts or research, just a hunch) that automated driving will actually increase congestion and traffic. We saw this with Uber and Lyft, where these things plus accidents were increased where these services were deployed. I've seen it first hand that the cars causing issues are likely to be Uber or Lyft. I will be very surprised if this is not the case with automated drivers. For example, consider the case of an automated car dropping someone off in a busy area, probably one of the most wanted use cases for automated car. This is because it could notionally drop the person off and then drive off and find parking. But that seems like an insanely hard problem because such a maneuver is actually difficult for humans and very tricky in busy areas.

I truly don't understand the actual need for self-driving cars. There is a lot of hype, for sure, but I personally see that it will generate more problems. Basically the only problem that it will solve is reduction in human time driving because I doubt it will be actually safer such that it's a major difference from now. I feel our society would gain much more benefit in concentrating on better transportation and urban design: planes, trains, automobiles, bicycles, and walking.

I'd like to offer another use case, one near and dear to my heart: grandma.

My grandmother, like many grandmothers, has no business being on the road. She is a wonderful person. She is also a horrible driver, a threat to herself and others by virtue of natural impairments (vision, reaction time, etc.)

Taking away her license would make all roads safer, but it would also obliterate her quality of life. The actual need for driverless cars, to me, is a means of retaining her freedom of movement with a far lower level of endangerment.

I think your predictions are 100% accurate, but I also think as the fleet becomes more self-driving and as streets and other public infrastructure are redesigned to accommodate the new paradigms I believe these problems around traffic, congestion, and safety will be solved eventually by automated vehicles.

That is to say I believe human-driving is at a local maxima and it will take accepting a negative dip if we want to progress on this front.

I think I agree in that as the balance tips towards more self-driving cars on the road that it will be safer for them, but I also think that although the numbers of human drivers will be lowered, the likelihood of accidents might also increase unless humans adapt toward driving with self-driving cars.

Transforming our roads towards better supporting automated vehicles through signs, markings, and other infrastructure does seem to be a natural conclusion to make it really work, but that all rests upon the assumption that these massive fleets of self-driving cars are required components of our future. We already have major issues maintaining the infrastructure on our roads. Fully transforming them will take a lot of time and money. I really think a more holistic approach is needed because self-driving cars will be solving a lot of problems, in hard ways, that are much more simply solved by (essentially automated) train, subway, trolley, and bus systems. Going all in on self-driving cars seems to be the wrong goal. We need to be thinking about how to transform our infrastructure and urban design to have the right solution in the right spot. I do think self-driving cars have a place in this, but simply slapping self-driving cars onto our existing car and road culture and design is not the right solution.

I really worry about the U.S.' nature about letting corporations dictate where society goes. We're in this mess to begin with because of car corporations destroying public transportation in cities and requiring the new city designs to be built around cars. I think we'll continue to see corporations create solutions that generate more problems.

> I don't think reducing crashes is anything but a marketing ploy

For what it's worth, I wouldn't be working at Waymo if I didn't believe self-driving cars are very likely to save lives.

> In general, it's my belief (I don't have facts or research, just a hunch)

Indeed.

Well I'd be appreciative of any data that shows that instead of just a curt response. You shouldn't call me out presenting my hunches honestly. If you have data that disagrees, show it. Otherwise, your hunch is as good as mine.

The data I've seen essentially shows the in vitro safety of self-driving cars. Yes, these cars are driving out in the real world, but they are singular in a sea of human drivers. The reports I've seen is that the cars are overly careful and just put along. The safety data of such trials will be skewed. You can't simply extrapolate that safety data out to where now you have say 25% self-driving and 75% human drivers and so on. It's a dynamic problem.

I've seen presentations by Waymo managers. Just as little as a year or two ago, the cars were basically incapable of handling snow or rain. You may be offended by the marketing comment, but until we see holistic data that supports what the marketing says, that's the reality.

The existing data on Uber and Lyft is clear. They increase accidents and congestion. How do self-driving cars approach this problem? Because there's clear precedence that the introduction of a new paradigm of driving causes problems, even ignoring the aspect of self-driving versus human driver.

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