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Driving skill (and road manners) is also a serious issue, not only Internet quality (it's mostly solved nowadays with dual 5G/dual residential, Starlink is also available, np), getting a driver license is basically just paying a fixer for $200 (equivalent in PHP) and even if you attend the school genuinely and all, it's still super easy versus the west.

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You might be overestimating how hard it is to get a license in the states.

My test was literally pay private driving school operator $50, pull onto a four lane road, change lanes, change lanes back, turn right three times to get back to the road, turn left, park successfully between the lines nose in, …and here’s a piece of paper for the DMV to give you a license. Maybe ten minutes, and have never had anyone check to see if I still know the rules in the 20 years since.

I’m sure it has gotten harder in some places, but we really don’t ask for much of new drivers.

Not just the test though. In some states you need approaching 100 hours of signed off driving with an experienced driver (honor system though) and a certified course

What state? This source seems to indicate that 70 hours is the extreme upper limit, with some states allowing as few as 6.

https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/teenagers/graduated-lice...

Ah. Good fact check. I swapped the numbers on minimum community service hours to graduate high school and this. But I think my point still stands that you can't just walk in and take the test

In hindsight, getting my driver's license was uncomfortably easy in the US. We crammed the answers right before the written exam as a class, I did 8(?) hours driving with an adult, and the practical exam was 2 left turns, a k-turn, 2 right turns, and parallel parking between 2 cones.

Having taken a license in both Denmark and the states, the test in the states was laughable in comparison. In Denmark, there are like 20 mandatory lessons, wet-surface practice, a theoretical exam and a practical exam, both of which people routinely fail (because they're hard). In the US, I paid 20 bucks, drove around the block, parked and received my license.

It's 2,500-3,500 Euros to get a license in Germany. I heard someone paying 6-8k tho.

It's not for anyone else: the non-Tesla AV companies use teleops to at most place breadcrumbs that the vehicle attempts to follow while still in full control of collision avoidance and lower level navigation.

There is never an actual remote driver turning the wheel.

While working at Cruise, i built tech to measure the latency even though they just draw a path. Latency absolutely does matter, otherwise you’re drawing that path through a crowd of people. You admit yourself they still need to be responsible for collisions, which you cannot safely do if the latency exceeds the safe tolerance. It doesn’t matter whether you’re drawing a path or turning a Mario kart steering wheel if the information you’re acting upon is incorrect or outdated.

Read my comment again... the vehicle is doing collision avoidance.

If Cruise really rolled out teleops that relied on low latency reactions from remote operators to not drive into crowds (not to mention perfectly reliable uplink), I'll have to file that away under reasons they're not around anymore.

i think the bigger problem is the mechanical turk "solution" where remote drivers are suppose to suddenly be a driver in corner cases as if thats a safe fallback

This is not how it works. The vehicle autonomously stops and/or pulls over, and then a remote driver takes over. Control is not handed over to a remote driver while the vehicle is barreling down the road and "jesus take the wheel"

> Starlink is also available, np

I would NOT be using Starlink for remote vehicle teleoperation even as a fall back.

> I would NOT be using Starlink for remote vehicle teleoperation even as a fall back.

I had to use Starlink last year, and latency was way more acceptable than expected even when under load (I did try to analyze and remove bufferbloat). Considering Tesla could likely get priority bandwidth from SpaceX basically for free, that would mean good latencies (I had 90ms tops in speedtests). Anyway you tell the car where to go, but it's the car following the path you draw for it and following traffic rules and collision avoidance, you're not directly driving the car. Even 1 second latency with 2s round-trip would likely not be a problem in these conditions.

90ms is absolutely not an acceptable delay. On a 25mph road, each 90ms is .0006 mile ~= 1 meter. Latency goes both ways, so that is a possible 1 meter before operator reacts and another meter before the corrective action takes place. Like other comment mentioned, remote operations can only be used for high-level instructions (or simpler highway driving).

I don't get it, you prefer a road accident?

I would personally prefer if companies didn’t offer services that simply don’t or can’t work as advertised.

Weirdly, in 2026, this is a controversial opinion.

this is 100% because we are under full-on cultism. you say anything anti-Tesla and army of elon defenders will go after you immediately. none of them would put their kids in one of these “robo”taxi “F”SD shits but they will defend elon/tesla mercilessly

To be fair it seems worse on the other side here on HN at least, I rarely see positive comments about Elon, so both sides seems to be doing the echo-chamber and defender mode, it's getting seriously absurd to not be able to have talk on technology itself without it getting into politic, especially for non-US residents :/

> even as a fall back

Why this?

Latency

> Latency

One, a low-latency fallback beats no fallback. Two, at least for Waymo, the system is engineered to be high latency. Back-up drivers seldom directly drive the car, and when they do, it's not at the last minute. Instead, they give high-level instructions the car actuates.

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