California bill would set rules for self-driving cars | Hacker News Reader

California bill would set rules for self-driving cars

detroitnews.com

18 pointsphreeza11 comments

Self driving cars are going to be a defining point of our generation. I don't think people realise how disruptive this will be. The way cars look will be great to see evolve as mobile lounges or offices once the driving position is not needed. Or even a bedroom so you can travel medium distances while you sleep and not waste time on this any more. And as systems get better we might see allowable speeds increase greatly.

And beyond personal cars this is going to be huge in the transport and delivery industries. It will make it easy to car pool by being a member of a group of cars that stay around the city and I think owning one car for one person will be much less common. It will be a boon for online businesses as the cost of delivery will be reduced with the removal of drivers. Combine this with faster warehousing systems and when we order that product online it could be delivered in the time it take to deliver a pizza today.... unless you decide to just 3D print it. I find this quite exciting.

I've realised who disruptive this will be, and have pointed it out to my wife many times.

The first that comes to mind is that driverless cars can literally end drunk driving. I've seen many bars close down due to lack of service, because no one wants to spend $40 in a night just on cabs.

I know people whose cottage is almost 12-hours away through rural roads, and go up every other weekend. It would entirely change their time if they weren't stopping in motels and getting there mid-day on a saturday. If they had a driverless vehicle, they would get there at 6 in the morning and be fully rested.

Greatly increased speed limits is what excites me the most if only because it's the next step in making our physical world that little bit smaller. When you double vehicle speeds, you're changing the world. There would be less overloading on urban centres due to the convenience of short commuting distances.

One thing though, when you increase the speed that cars go at on a road, you decrease the bandwidth of the road (due to the way halting distance increases with speed, the cars have to be further apart).

This can be offset by the reaction time of computers (assuming braking distance being equal between cars) as the gap is really for reaction time. Or driverless vehicles could take it even further where a lead car could communicate with a following vehicle so when the lead cars brakes are applied simultaneously the cars behind do also reducing the delay even further.

Throughput still increases because each car won't need to be on the road as long. And computer-controlled cars can potentially have less spacing and still be safer, because they'll have much better effective reaction times.

It's exciting to see future getting closer and closer to life!

What's more interesting, however, is the comments from the news site. Somehow I have a feeling the general public is between "this is not important" and "omg this is such a bad idea"

I think there's lots of things people don't realize what a driverless car means.

Most people claim they like driving, but sit in a car with any of them and most don't enjoy it. Beyond the people who road rage at the simplest of things. Everyone gets stressed when people drive erratically, can't merge properly (getting stuck behind someone on a centre-turn lane road because they can't get their vehicle out of the driving lane), can't turn faster than 1mph, etc. and keep that stress throughout the drive.

What I look forward to with driverless cars is: - I can go to a bar without paying $20 for a cab there and back for $1 in gas and a 30 minute wait - My wife (without a license) can use my car without me having to drive it, plus I can pick my wife up from work without having to take the 30 minutes daily (5 1/2 days a year simply picking my wife up from work) - I can make the 3 hour drive up north on a friday night after work and not have to fight to stay awake if it's been a long day. Shit I can make the 20-hour drive to the east coast to where my wife's family lives without having to spend 20-hours driving.

Whats more, the trucking industry is one of the biggest employers in NA. They're restricted to 10-hours driving a day. Not only does driverless mean more cost efficiencies, potentially less vehicles on the road, but it means goods move faster. Here in Ontario I get California strawberries and 1/2 the time they're beginning to mold. California is almost a 40 hour drive away. Meaning those strawberries are at least 4 days old. Not 2 days old. Meaning they might actually be edible.

"Whats more, the trucking industry is one of the biggest employers in NA"

I Agree with everything you say but I'm willing to bet that those who depend on their driving for their livelihoods will fiercely protest against this.

For the record, I'm all for driverless cars, but I suppose it's easy for me to say that as a programmer.

True, but it's inevitable. The car manufacturers won't give a shit, and neither will their workers cause they're still in jobs and heck there might even be more job openings.

I agree the truckers will fiercely protest this, but so did the luddites on the industrial looms, and so the swing rioters against the industrial thresher.

Technology has led to civil unrest for centuries, literally. It doesn't matter whether the truck drivers want it or not. Tell a transport company "you can fire your drivers and get your vehicles there in under 1/2 the time". Often truck drivers get a bonus if they get their shipment in "on-time" or early (which is often ridiculously close to the ideal estimation of driving time). When one transport company realises they could potentially make every bonus then if the others don't follow suit, one company will rapidly dominate the market.

Also, the truck drivers might not technically get unemployed, because a driverless truck can't change its own tire.

Can anyone explain to me why the comments on that article are so full of fear (about the economic impact and it being a waste of time for California)? While there will certainly be a large economic impact that could affect certain jobs, I can't see that as an apt reason not to progress technologically.

You can have a whole economy without operations jobs. The futures jobs will only be innovating and fixing when things have problems. The self-driving tractor will plow the fields or harvest the mine, and send it to the factory. Robots make it, and the self-driving delivers it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com