Comment by icehawk219 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by icehawk219 | Hacker News Reader

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> I think when the kids of 2150 sit down in history class to study the 20th century, they'll laugh at the idea that every family invested significant money into 1-2 expensive hunks of steel for transportation. We fling these big dirty hunks of steel around at 100mph for perhaps 5% of the day. It can get quite dangerous! Then we waste huge amounts of land by storing them for the other 95% of the day. How bizarre is that?

Considering folks in rural areas will still need personal transportation in 2150 I don't think it would appear bizarre at all. Do you consider it bizarre that people used to keep horses around (which means stables, workers to care for them, feeding them, etc.) just for the occasions where they'd want to go into town? And even with self driving cars does that suddenly mean I'm prohibited from owning my own so I can travel where I want when I want? I really don't understand this love affair people have with the idea that we should let some corporate computer network decide when and if we're allowed to leave our homes.

I think you miss the point and are being overly semantic.

All I'm trying to convey is my feeling (shared by many) that autonomous vehicles represent a technological step change that will change the way we live. Similar to how the internal combustion engine, radio, antibiotics, transistors, telephones and the internet have changed the way we live.

Do you think a child today would consider it bizarre and surprising that in 1850, if you got the flu, you'd probably die and it might take 3-4 days of travelling to arrive at a medical centre?

>I really don't understand this love affair people have with the idea that we should let some corporate computer network decide when and if we're allowed to leave our homes.

I should have read this first, you're just being silly. No one is suggesting this is the case.

s/semantic/pedantic/

I know, that's like the worst correction ever. I couldn't resist. b^)

> And even with self driving cars does that suddenly mean I'm prohibited from owning my own so I can travel where I want when I want?

On a private road sure, knock yourself out. But by driving on a public road you're risking the lives of yourself and other participants (and it's not a "everything is unsafe" rhetoric, cars kill a lot of humans every year), and the whole point of introducing self-driving cars is to get rid of human drivers on public roads because they kill people.

> I really don't understand this love affair people have with the idea that we should let some corporate computer network decide when and if we're allowed to leave our homes.

This "love affair" comes from embracing the fact that a centralized algorithm can route you much faster, safer and more efficiently that you could ever do it yourself, therefore it is best to trust the machine. Because the machine is really better at this than humans.

Machines are much, much better at flying airplanes too; yet all commercial planes use pilots. I wonder which one will change first, planes or automobiles, which has the most resistance to change. Airplanes - decades of resistance now. And flying is a trivial problem compared to driving.

I'm not an aviator, but I was under the impression that commercial flights fly on auto-pilot for 99% of the trip, with an exception for take-off and landing. I don't know the reasons why humans handle lift-off and touchdown though.

Still, commercial airplanes are much, much safer than cars, therefore I'd expect a push for self-driving cars to be stronger than for self-flying planes.

And where are all the flying accidents? Takeoff and landing, and mostly landing. A case of human cussedness overruling logic. The autopilots can land a plane in all conditions and respond to sudden changes with lightning reflexes.

Some of it probably boils down to people still not trusting machines. I guess this will change within a generation or two, as the kids growing up in increasingly automated world mature.

Perhaps, but there's a big difference between not trusting machines and not trusting them to be perfect. If people don't trust machines, it's because they're surrounded by machines that break and malfunction constantly, systems that don't work, networks that fail - and autonomous cars implies a level of faith in all of that working flawlessly most of the time in spite of demonstrable reality.

While I object to autonomous cars mostly because they remove human autonomy and implicitly limit freedom (as a tradeoff for safety and greater efficiency), I think it would be a bad idea in any case to come to the point where having a steering wheel isn't even an option.

> If people don't trust machines, it's because they're surrounded by machines that break and malfunction constantly, systems that don't work, networks that fail - and autonomous cars implies a level of faith in all of that working flawlessly most of the time in spite of demonstrable reality.

People are falling to a very common bias. They see machines that break and malfunction constantly because those are the only ones noticable. They don't see many more machines working flawlessly, even though their very lives depend on them. Auto-pilots on planes, HVAC automation, gas delivery automation, lifts, food processing machines, electric grid, the Internet - all of this works almost perfectly, but we notice only occasional hickups and failures. The demonstrable reality is that most of the time things really do work flawlessly.

Still, it doesn't matter. People need to understand that it doesn't matter if the machine isn't perfect. What matters is if it is better than human. And for self-driving cars, outperforming human drivers isn't a distant goal.

> While I object to autonomous cars mostly because they remove human autonomy and implicitly limit freedom (as a tradeoff for safety and greater efficiency), I think it would be a bad idea in any case to come to the point where having a steering wheel isn't even an option.

Well, but that's the exact point of having self-driving cars. Because humans should not have the "freedom" of driving around on public roads and killing each other all the time. Or, in other words, as a proponent of self-driving cars I want to be able to exercise my freedom of not getting killed by myself or another driver, because human reflexes and cognitive skills are not up to par with the requirements of driving a motor vehicle.

Public roads are infrastructure, its goal is to let people move from point A to point B. The requirement that people do the moving themselves is only there because we didn't have self-driving cars then, and cars are more flexible than trains. Sure, let's drive all we want on private property. Have our freedom. But the infrastructure works better when humans don't mess with it.

You make a good point, but I wonder if autonomous car proponents aren't falling for the same bias in regard to human drivers.

It may be the case that self-driving cars are safe. However most of the time, most human drivers don't kill each other all the time, and the majority of driving events are uneventful. It is a risky activity but it's certainly not the bloodsport some make it out to be.

You're right. Of course majority of driving is uneventful and the activity is not a bloodbath. Your average driver isn't a speed maniac or someone who loses control of the vehicle three times a day (though an average driver I meet has a bit, let's say, relaxed approach wrt. speed limits and safe driving distance).

But because driving is something that a great many people have to do, often many times a day, it still sums up to a significant death toll worldwide. It's a statistical thing, not emotional one (no one is honestly impressed by traffic accident these days; bomb on a plane on the other hand...). By introducing self-driving cars we can significantly reduce if not outright eliminate those millions of unneccessary deaths while also improving energy usage and efficiency of transportation as a whole. In other words, no traffic jams, you get quicker everywhere and the world as a whole uses less energy to move people around.

I think you're misunderstanding, icehawk219 was talking about individuals owning their own self-driving cars. That's a separate question from allowing human drivers on the road.

You're right, I misunderstood him. To answer that point then; I don't think people will be prohibited from owning a self-driving car, not initially; I believe they'll relinquish this privilege because of practical reasons - not having to store, maintain and protect a car is better than having to do it. You can see this happening in big cities - people decide not to own a car because it's too big of a mess without real benefits to them; it's more economical to hop into a bus or even get a cab. With fully networking self-driving cars we should expect to see many improvements in efficiency of shared transportation, further reducing the need for individuals to own a car.

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