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Comment by teej | Hacker News Reader

I made this comment about google self driving cars two years ago and I think it's still relevant now:

200k miles is nothing. Over 8 billion vehicle miles are spent per DAY in the US. One person is killed for every 75 million miles driven. 200k miles isn't enough to test every terrain, under every weather condition, in every lighting, etc. There's too many variables in the equation. The Google car won't be truly safe until it has logged 1000x miles.

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Considering the average human has only a few miles of officially observed driving before it receives a license, I think this is a bit unfair.

How would you suggest testing these vehicles to tens of millions of miles without having an actual public deployment?

Also, Google can test its algorithms in simulation to many millions of miles within hours. I believe they're lobbying for simulation to be a major part of testing:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/21/google-tes...

You make it sound like they're stopping trials. There are only going to be more vehicles from more manufacturers out there being tested and in increasingly complex situations. That mile count will continue to rise.

And this isn't true: "The Google car won't be truly safe until it has logged 1000x miles."

totally right. They should also stop logging the miles they did going around in circles in a controlled environment too.

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