Ask HN: Why isn't there more effort to build highway-bound self-driving cars?
1. Most commuting is on highways. A highway is a controlled environment with very few edge cases--less than existing L4 areas like Arizona and Pittsburgh suburbs.
2. Highway driving captures 90% of the value of a self-driving car, certainly for commuters. Any long trip, where it is valuable to disengage, spends most of its time on the highway.
3. An autonomous highway in a single city would save its commuters an absurd quantity of time and attention.
4. Most new cars can navigate from onramp to offramp. But L4 providers haven't taken the step to let drivers disengage, despite supporting L4 driving in limited non-highway environments.
5. One might claim that it isn't as valuable for ridesharing, but it's is hard to believe that there isn't enough value for commuters, or there isn't enough funding.
6. To handle edge cases, it is always legal to slow, even stop on a highway, and there is always a shoulder to pull over.[1]
7. For rare edge cases, a remote driver can serve as a backstop, as in Waymo's L4 driving.
8. Imagine how much better highway traffic would be if one could disengage and read, work, or think.
I understand that it involves government collaboration, but companies have created significant regulatory change when necessary. For some highways, it requires no government collaboration.
[1] There are rare exceptions, but the geofence could extend only to highways with a shoulder.