Comment by JonSkeptic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JonSkeptic | Hacker News Reader

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My problem with self driving cars is not actually with self driving cars. I trust that our technology can reliably enable a vehicle to drive me around without my intervention. That's fine.

There are two things I do not trust: I do not trust that our technology can successfully and intelligently respond in the event of an traffic or roadway anomaly, the kind that usually causes car crashes i.e. damaged roads, debris falling off of cars, erratic drivers, etc. Although I do trust safety features, which are pretty nice lately, I would rather have not have a wreck.

Finally, I do not trust other drivers and I do not know how they will react/interact with a self driving car. It only takes one time for an idiot to flip out on the highway and cause a wreck.

When I feel that the self driving can adequately handle anomalies, wrecks, and suicidally bad drivers, then I will have no qualms with the self driving car. Till then, I'm not willing to bet my life that it works well enough.

I actually trust the tech more than erratic drivers, which is kind of the point.

Anecdote: I was driving on a 5 lane interstate when a driver to my right started to merge into my lane. I merged left and at the same time looked. There was a car in the left lane, so I stopped before I merge all the way into the lane. The driver in the left lane, being on her phone and not paying attention, panicked and way over corrected to her left. This sent her across the inside lane and into the median barrier then over corrected again and flew across all five lanes coming to a rest unscathed on the shoulder. It could have been a lot worse, and I doubt a self driving car would have done a maneuver that aggressive putting all five lanes at risk.

What we need is a Robo-Indy 500. Companies with the latest tech in driverless cars compete, and the public sees how well (or poorly) the technology can deal with rapidly changing situations. Sure, you don't need to deal with peds or other urban obstacles, but it would go a long way towards assuring the public that driverless cars are safe.

Obstacles could also be incorporated into the race.

I haven't done a lot of reading on self driving cars. No more than the occasional article on here. Do they have plans for cars that can operate in all weather conditions? I mean I never noticed if they ever said that the cars were only for mild weather areas.

This was before I started thinking about the unknown variables that cause accidents: deer, a tire exploding, other debris (nails, glass, etc), some manufacturer or software bug.

It's all too easy to imagine the software doing quite unexpected things when it gets to an unknown. Even if you could take control of the car I imagine most people wouldn't be paying attention to actually do it.

This is just my panicky train of thought though. The tech is cool.

Add to that, the ability for the government to have some sort of back door into the system that allows 'accidents' to take place for any undesirables, then you've got yourself a worrying system.

While the causes of road damage you cite are certainly more salient, they're not actually very common causes of accidents. Much more common is driver inattention or driver error. Inattention is directly addressed by self driving cars, as they are always paying attention. Error should be lower as well. As long as it can detect where another car is and it's approximate velocity, it should be able to avoid that car. Computers have far better reaction times than humans.

Let's not forget that all of the things you list are things that humans are pretty bad at. A self-driving car doesn't need to perfectly handle strange situations, it just needs to handle them better than most people, which is a much lower bar.

Not saying we'll get there anytime soon, I don't know well enough to say. But I find that people in these discussions tend to overestimate the skill of most human drivers on the road.

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