Hacker News Reader

Comment by forgetfreeman | Hacker News Reader

Excuse you? How is demanding self-driving cars demonstrably improve on the performance of their human counterparts shifting goalposts? What, we're all supposed to just sit with our hands in our lap and accept sharing the road with a mediocre implementation of what humans can already do?

View on HN

> in every form of adverse driving conditions known to man

I don't need, for example, a self driving car to be able to handle snow particularly well, because it does not snow where I live. I don't need it to be able to drive well off-road because there are roads everywhere I go. I don't need it to be able to tow a trailer or a caravan, or drive a heavy vehicle. Self driving technology does not need to surpass humans in every single driving condition in order to be useful to a large number of people.

It sounds like you need buses, subways, and trains.

And if self driving cards are cordoned off to special areas, they are just another extension of buses, subways, trains, but with less manual operation needed. The criteria that self driving vehicles perform very well everywhere is extreme when we already have so many modes of transportation designed for specific contexts.

Then call them and market them as something other than "car". Because if you call it a car and market it as such folks will treat it like one, which means exposure to every type of road and weather condition known to man with potentially lethal consequences if the software can't keep up.

Vehicles get sold to people that live in places with snow. Snow exists in the world ergo self driving tech is dangerously incomplete if it can't cope.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com