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Comment by lvh | Hacker News Reader

Should we let drunk people get home in their fully autonomous Mercedes? It's an interesting problem!

I think the answer right now is no, we're still requiring the driver to be able to take over, and our thought experiment presupposes they're inebriated.

On the other hand, it's obviously better to have the computer take a shot (no pun intended) at getting home than letting the driver do it themselves, even today. At what point does that moral balance tip? It seems like we're not too far off from the answer being "obviously let the car drive, whatever the drunk person was going to do is probably riskier for both themselves and everyone else".

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It's way cheaper and safer if they just ride a bus/taxi/the car of their "designated driver friend" instead, all with tech that's already here.

I'm way more interested in self-driving (and, more broadly, driving assistance) for emergencies like someone having a heart attack while at the wheel. For example, I feel a lot better now that, should I somehow die or lose consciousness while driving (but not due to being drunk!), my car with autonomous breaking will mostly keep going in whatever direction I had it but with a much better chance of stopping before causing someone else harm.

How often does that happen to be a concerne for you? Just asking if you have numbers or so. :)

I had a heart attack a few years ago and while I kind of know the fear is not very rational, I still wanted to be able to continue driving and not feel like I could hurt or even kill someone if I get another one that kills me while at the wheel.

So, hopefully not very often :) But it's one of those things where, since I could afford to change the car, I felt I had to go ahead and make that investment in safety.

There is much more cheaper and safer solution, a system that detects if the driver is drunk,ill, not paying attention etc. But some fanboys prefer faked self drivers systems with faked stats because it looks SciFi rather then say force a drunk detector in all cars.

It's way cheaper and safer if they just ride a bus/taxi/the car of their "designated driver friend" instead, all with tech that's already here.

I think a lot of people are unfamiliar with rural America -- the nearest bar might be 10 miles away down a country road with nothing else around (which was the case in my hometown... well more of a "village" than a town), and your friend may live 10 miles on the other side of that bar, so he may not want to drive that far out of his way so you can get drunk and he can't. And taxis and buses aren't an option.

Relying on humans to make the correct and safe choice to not drive while drunk is a losing proposition, our DUI death rate shows that.

Even if a smart car can't be trusted to drive you, it should be able to notice that you're drunk and refuse to let you drive. My car notices when I'm losing focus and gives me an alert reminder, so it should be able to notice when I'm drunk.

It always strikes me as odd, when I'm driving on country highways and encounter a bar in the middle of nowhere.

How is the bar not sued out of existence? There is no plausible way to travel to and from the bar, other than a private automobile, and no taxi service within an hour's drive. There are no houses nearby with clientele that could walk to the bar. Why isn't that considered an attractive nuisance like a swimming pool?

That problem cries for a solution... Maybe some service, paid of course, that can drive those people home? Maybe combined with an app, and self-employed people providing that service, shared economy and so on... Seems to be a great opportunity!

In my town, Uber absorbed a bunch of the travel, public transport was cut in half, and now with gas and other expenses no one can afford to run Ubers up here. Maybe one car around, often a 20 minute wait. Car pool services cannot fill the gap.

Gas is too expensive to afford using Uber, so you have to use your own car instead?

I interpreted that as gas being too expensive to make it worth being an Uber driver.

I thought Uber had some fancy math that raised their rates to incentivize more drivers when their pool of drivers got too low? So why hasn't their math increased pay to offset the increase in gas prices if they don't have any drivers?

I don't live in an area that has Uber, so I'm not that familiar with it, only used it a few times when traveling :)

I don't think I know them any better than you do. I used one to get to the airport once and it cost $40. Economy parking would have been cheaper, so I use that now. That's the only time I've used one personally.

My impression of the the way drivers are compensated is that the hours, fuel, and wear on your vehicle make it kind of slim margins.

An Uber driver needs to be able to cover gas out of their pay plus make enough extra to effectively receive a decent wage. If gas prices go up but the price of an Uber fare (and subsequent payout) does not, then it becomes uneconomical for people to drive for Uber and they stop doing it.

Other than when Uber deeply discounts to drive growth, it's always been cheaper to drive yourself than to pay Uber. The reason you pay Uber is for other reasons (e.g. convenience, cost of parking, being away from your vehicle, intoxication).

The problem is that people are rational and 1) the costs of using Uber for routine trips to the bar are very high; and 2) the likelihood of getting in a crash on any particular trip are pretty low. So millions of people every year do the math and decide it's worth the risk.

I think they're wrong to do this, because the worst potential outcome of drunk driving is so devastating and catastrophic that it's personally optimal to eliminate that risk to zero. But the fact is that this isn't really how humans weigh risk.

Obviously anti-drunk-driving campaigns have been somewhat effective. People take this problem more seriously than they did 40 years ago. But I wonder if we aren't at a point of diminishing returns. Some people are going to drive drunk, no matter how many times you tell them to take an Uber.

Is someone who won't pay for a taxi really going to spend money on a tesla or Mercedes with self driving capabilities?

When I say "costs" I don't mean the $20 for the Uber (although that's not nothing). You have to think about the guy who wants to stop at the bar on his way home from work. To do that properly, he has to drive right past the bar, park at home, schedule an Uber, wait for it, then take it back to the bar.

Or he can just stop on his way home.

We both know what the right thing to do is, but one has significant costs the other doesn't.

Or imagine he does stop at the bar on his way home and tells himself he'll just have one beer, but he ends up having four and shouldn't drive. Now he has to get an Uber, take it home, get another Uber before work in the morning, and take it back to the bar to get his car. And then, finally, head to work.

Or he can just drive home.

Again, we both know what the right thing to do is, but one has significant costs the other doesn't.

It's probably a negligible portion of drunk driving incidents, but there definitely are people like that. In the past year there have been multiple drunk driving incidents with well-paid NFL players in nice cars, and these are just the ones who get caught. Whether those guys would turn on self driving mode is another question I guess, but every time it's baffling they didn't just request an Uber Black or something.

That tells you that the "cost" of taking an Uber isn't primarily monetary. It's a big hassle to leave your car at the bar, take an Uber, wake up, get another Uber, go get your car, then drive your car back home. People are weighing that hassle against the odds anything bad will happen on their trip home and deciding it's worth it.

People with expensive cars don't drunk drive? Seriously?

Even if that were true, I have a hard time imagining that the cost of self driving packages won't continue to decrease until it's included in literally every new car. Just a matter of time (assuming someone is able to make a fully working version).

Maybe an alcohol test in the car. If too drunk it wont start and call an uber

How many Uber drivers are high or a little drunk at work? I’m betting it’s more then 0%.

That works great in major cities and not at all on country roads in the rural US.

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