Hacker News Reader

Comment by bitsoda | Hacker News Reader

Do you live in a place with weather? I think we'll get there eventually, but my timeline is closer to 20 years. I just don't see AVs nailing that last 1% for true peace of mind in places like the Eastern USA with torrential downpours in South Florida or snow and icy conditions in New England.

I hope I'm wrong though, I would prefer it if my kids and other road users didn't have to drive.

View on HN

Apart from weather, a big issue outside the USA is also car infrastructure. The US is extremely car centric with large, straight, easy-to-maneuver roads everywhere. Here in Germany, it's different. We have rather narrow, chaotic roads, unclear signage, "right car has right of way" traffic rules which sometimes get resolved via hand signs, no jaywalking laws, etc.

I am still hoping for fewer cars on the road overall. The car itself is inefficient and hopefully on its way out.

NE cities are more similar to european cities than most of the USA. I have no doubt cars can handle european cities if they can handle NE cities.

I think about all the times during winter when my car's traction control straight up gives up as I try to accelerate through an intersection or when I need to start slowing down an extra two blocks away because the ABS goes on every time I try to stop. I have no idea how AVs will nail that stuff, it's so much harder than keeping the car between the lanes and sussing out road signs.

I think about all of the lanes in my city where line paint disappears intermittently, or where old lines/construction-era lines mess with my ability to comprehend where the lanes are, let alone an autonomous vehicle's.

And then I think about all the potholes that I dodge when I drive around town. And how 4-ton electric vehicles are going to make road wear worse, not better.

The control aspects of self driving are much easier to solve.

Here’s an autonomous drifting Delorean https://youtu.be/3x3SqeSdrAE

The physics and control of cars are quite well understood, even in extreme conditions. Further, sensors allow a car to detect changing road conditions much more quickly and adeptly than a typical human.

The hard part of self driving seems to be understanding and predicting the humans in its environment.

That example is still a car on a known good road conditions. Do you have an example where half the parking lot is covered in ice, or trying to break on a road with unpredictable traction so that they don't end up halfway through the intersection?

> Do you have an example where half the parking lot is covered in ice, or trying to break on a road with unpredictable traction so that they don't end up halfway through the intersection?

If the car is "smart," maybe it will simply refuse to travel (because the calculated risk of traveling over an icy parking lot is above some maximum threshold risk).

Humans have no trouble in these conditions (after a brief training period).

What happens the first time a steering wheel free car strands a family in a blizzard due to a few feet of icy pavement, ultimately freezing them to death?

I don't think cars will ever remove steering wheels. That was just Elon's fantasy for a limited use (driving through Boring tunnels). Similarly how you don't have a steering wheel in a driverless metro. Or perhaps it will be retractable when not in use, like a tow hook.

That would make commuting in northern areas very interesting.

Isn't that like saying that motorcycles will happen eventually but not anytime soon because: weather?

Traditional cars with drivers haven't solved the weather problem 100%. But they are here now. Sometimes we ban them in some conditions, but they are a game changer the rest if the time.

One thing that is going to be awkward to navigate in the transition to self-driving cars is how they handle driving in bad weather. Obviously that's a technical problem but I'm not sure it's actually solvable because it's not actually solvable for human drivers. We just kind of do it anyway. But when a self-driving car has some quantified sense that "driving in these conditions is unsafe" will we get to the point where we just say f it and let them keep going? Or, maybe more likely, we remain in the gray zone where the car is fully self-driving but the human driver has to be ready to take control at any time which I think limits some of the larger impacts.

I mean if you live anywhere with weather your motorcycle lives in the garage for 3/4 of the year. Not useless by any stretch but also not “taking over the world.”

It’s not that traditional cars have solved for weather, it’s that self driving cars haven’t solved the problem of “being as good as human drivers in weather commonly encountered.”

Motorcycles are only on road for maybe 5 or so months out of the year where I live. If that is the best we can ask for out of autonomous driving, it'll never be more than a luxury toy.

I live in NY

You're wrong. It will happen way before 20 years.

And computers are better at reacting to unexpected things like icy road. And cameras are better at seeing through rain and fog. What's barely perceptible to you, computer sees clearly.

>>You're wrong. It will happen way before 20 years

Other than random people saying this on the internet, I have seen zero indication that this will be the case. You cannot will something into existence just by strongly believing in it.

Are you just saying things that you think are true? Have you ever tried to do even rudimentary image processing in foggy / rainy / nighttime conditions? Cameras are absolutely not better at seeing through rain and fog.

Humans aren't that good at seeing in rain and fog either (which is why many people avoid driving or drive much more slowly in extreme rain and fog conditions), so saying robotic vehicles aren't good at driving in inclement weather conditions isn't very interesting. In addition to cameras, Waymo and Cruise vehicles have multiple lidar and radar units. These are all affected differently by inclement weather but in principle combining sensor data for perception gives the vehicle a lot more data to work off of than a human relying solely on vision.

Driving in truly bad weather is still an open research problem, but it's also one that most of these companies haven't dedicated a lot of resources to, since they all have initial rollout plans in places that don't experience much extreme weather. But assuming these vehicles can drive well in good weather, I don't think it's a stretch to assume that progress will be made on driving in more extreme conditions once more resources are dedicated to it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com