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Comment by superkuh | Hacker News Reader

Behaving as a human would is often more important than staying strictly in line with absolute and relative positioning with a road.

The semi-permanent snow cover on many roads in 1/3 of the USA that lasts weeks if not months in duration. Humans driving on these snow covered roads form emergent lanes having little to do with absolute positioning or even relative positioning of the curb. They form lanes based on what other humans do.

Self-driving cars that depend on knowing absolutely where they are and relatively where they are simply don't and won't function. We need self-driving cars that can behave as a human will for that. And that is a long way off.

No autonomous car has shown it can handle these common situations. Until then self-driving cars should not be approved nationally and probably be restricted to the arid and warm states that do not have winter.

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I think this is a good point. The best lesson my dad ever gave me back when I was learning how to drive was to 'be predictable.' People don't get in wrecks when everyone behaves as expected. And the rules of the road are largely aimed at guiding that predictability. But in the end, regardless of the written rules, humans behave as humans and a robot driver should behave like other drivers. And it may change based on locality.

Does self-driving have to handle all weather conditions right away? A sensible implementation needs to take the current conditions into account, such as the weather and the status of the road and car. If those are bad, it would refuse to active itself, similarly to how a responsible human would choose to not drive in bad conditions.

Driving in a whiteout blizzard is one thing. But people do need to get around in northern states in the winter and they absolutely sometimes have to drive in snow (and sometimes snow happens mid-trip or you have to get home from another location). I certainly don't go out of my way to dive in substantial snow (and fortunately I don't need to commute any longer) but it sometimes happens.

If it's just the autonomous system that doesn't work that's fine but now you really can't depend on the car unless there's a competent licensed driver who can take over.

I think we're in agreement. My comment was in reference to a more advanced version of what exists currently: a car that can be driven manually and always requires a licensed driver, but can activate its automation on command.

I think we'll have versions like that for a long while before we arrive at autonomous vehicles that do not require a licensed driver at all.

No, they do not need to operate in those conditions, but we have people seriously making proclamations about the imminent end of the truck driving employment industry as we know it, because "trucks will have no need for drivers."

Those people are fantastically wrong. And that's just one example.

Definitely not all truck driving, but an autonomous truck that's able to handle highway driving in good weather is a much easier problem that would put a significant number of truck drivers out of work

Yeah, all you need is one truck to lead a 'train' of autonomous trucks.. Think of the conductor/engineer being the truck in front, all other trucks ride so close to each other they cut down wind-sheer to save gas. At specific exits one truck will detach from the group, go to a staging area where a local driver finishes the last mile while the train keeps on going.

More likely the truck-driving model would change. Instead of having one employee who goes where the truck goes, you'd have employees who reside in or near shipping destinations and meet up with the trucks for loading/unloading/fueling/maintenance/etc. On the one hand a given number of employees could service many more trucks along a single route, decreasing labor requirements, but at the same time covering large numbers of routes may take more people, or companies may focus on a narrower set of routes, offering more opportunities for smaller shipping companies. Odds are the number of people doing truck-driving related work would stay roughly the same, but the total volume of shipping would go up.

I really don't see any reason why there is need for humans on highways. That is inter-hub transports. Even more optimally we would have rail infra for this, but sadly that is not cost or space effective.

I don't see humans going away for last 10 miles, that is delivery. Possible to make automatic, but there is an other layer of robots to be involved. And the environments like stores and private business in cities are much harder to design for this than hubs themselves.

Yeah, but an autonomous truck could pull over to the side of the road and wait for better weather

The goods inside often can't wait, even stuff that doesn't spoil has often a contracted delivery date

Non-autonomous trucks probably do some of the time. I'm from a snowy place and actual big snow storms with significantly reduced visibility are infrequent, probably on the order of one day out of 100. It might be OK to compromise and say that the autonomous part of the fleet doesn't go out when that happens.

I think you've misunderstood. In places that have winter it's not just when it's snowing that the road lines and curb are obscured. It's for long periods of time: days, weeks, months, depending on the road.

This isn't a weather condition. It is a season condition. It's around an appreciable part of the year and human drivers drive in it.

Tesla just dropped a snow driving beta: https://www.teslaoracle.com/2020/12/29/fsd-beta-8-tested-for...

Yes, exactly, this is always the same example I give (in my case the 401 here in Ontario, Canada) -- blizzard in the middle of February, lane markings covered, highly unpredictable road surface, spontaneous temporary lanes, cars working at a crawl, snow plows coming through that you have to move over for, and can't pass, cars or trucks jack-knifed or half in the ditch. This kind of thing happens to varying degrees at least once a year, and I honestly don't think that these scenarios are actually properly in the imagination of the primarily-California-based engineers who work on self-driving.

For context, the greater Toronto region is 6 million people, and Great Lakes region from here over to Chicago is multiples of that. Winter is 4-6 months. This is not an insignificant edge case for a small population, and if self-driving can't handle it, no thanks from this driver.

Yeah, you will be last in line. An insignificant market with high entry costs. You won't have to decline, you won't get the chance.

You're probably behind Tahoe in the line.

Just like you don't get Google Fi or Google Fibre. And just like some countries don't get YouTube Premium or whatever.

Nice snark, but what I said applies to the bulk of the US northeast and midwest as well.

(As for Google Fibre, that's a fun one as I actually worked on that product, though of course I couldn't get it...)

It isn't snark. It's just blunt truth. Those places won't get it first either. If self driving cars come about, their full feature set may well be geo-limited. Even covering just California, Arizona, and Texas would make the technology amazing.

Not to speak of the Chinese, who will simply build their cities to include road beacons or whatever is necessary to keep AVs effective.

I'm sorry but it's troll-level behaviour to slap the "insignificant market share" label on the entire northeast and midwest which includes 6/10 of the largest "urban agglomerations in North America": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_urban_aggl...

You're just not important enough for how hard it is. Why is that so offensive to you? You don't even want it and you're upset no one cares to offer it to you? Bizarre.

Is this like not being invited to a party you didn't want to go to? Okay, then, maybe Tesla's snow driving test will give you the chance to ostentatiously decline.

Not the OP, but personally I don't want other self-driving cars on the road with me risking me and my family. We know how easily, and plentifully, software bugs get introduced every single release, I would imagine developers being the last set of people who are willing to risk their life on software.

“It is the arrogance of a giant American corporation which considers the correct spelling of the names of millions of Dutch people an edge case.”

https://medium.com/@hansdezwart/how-the-dude-was-duped-by-bi...

Unfortunately, troll behaviour or not, that's how SF companies behave in the real world. The usability of their products tend to be proportional to how close you are (physically or otherwise) to the bay area. I live in Calgary and I would be very surprised (and happy) if I see self-driving cars here before the end of the century.

At this rate, global warming might solve the snow problem faster than self-driving cars do.

Why not just drive manually during the blizzard?

Because I'm not talking about when it's snowing. I'm talking about the entire season of winter. The snow doesn't disappear when it stops snowing. Even when plows come they're not getting down to asphalt half the time. It's still obscuring the curbside and road markings for weeks or months.

Yes, freeways, highways, and major roads might have their curbs and markings restored to full visibility within a day or two. But most roads do not.

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