[non_repro_blue]

I wish people would just give up on this self-driving car business for now.

We don't even want autonomous robots in our house, pitter pattering about like toddlers, at 3 miles an hour. We don't even trust our smart TV sets.

So let's make 2 ton versions, and throw them into a frying pan with people? Yeah, great idea. I bet they'll act just like TCP packets. Good job.

Why not segregated roadways? If we're so desperate to automate trucking and shipping, how about big, thick K-rails, and dedicated roadway?

We all know that early adopters suffer the growing pains of buggy first versions. No reason for all of society to share this burden when It hasn't even been put to a vote.

Keep these things the hell away from ordinary people, and their kids for at least another 50 years.

[freehunter]

Plenty of people have robots pitter pattering in their house like toddlers. They're called Roombas, and they're the highest selling vacuum cleaner on the market right now. And the reason "we" don't trust smart TVs is because they spy on us without telling us. And the "we" in this situation is a tiny, tiny subset of the population. A lot of people don't know and don't care, they just like Netflix and how it's built into their TVs.

No one voted on if they wanted cars in the first place. I'm not sure if you're aware of how incredibly dangerous cars are, but I can tell you without looking up the numbers that if we were to vote on it today with an unbiased viewpoint, there's no way anyone would be allowed to drive a car.

I'm sorry, but I feel like you're going to be in the minority on this one. You seem really scared. I'm not trying to change your mind, but I would like for you to take a look at traffic fatality statistics and and think hard about whether or not it's worthwhile pursuit to try to bring that number down.

[crdoconnor]

>I would like for you to take a look at traffic fatality statistics and and think hard

I would like those people who take it as an article of faith that self driving cars will cause fewer fatalities to watch closely where the liability falls.

If executives go to jail when the software crashes the car and kills or maims somebody and they let it out on the roads then I'm happy.

If instead those companies get slapped with token fines, I'm pretty sure that they're going to push out faulty software before it's ready and kill a bunch of people.

Politically it's still up in the air but currently it's looking like there won't be any criminal liability.

[dingaling]

> They're called Roombas, and they're the highest selling vacuum cleaner on the market right now

A correction: they're the top-selling robotic vacuum cleaners. Traditional 'dumb' cleaners still outsell them by magnitudes.

[freehunter]

Hmm, I can't seem to find my source to back that up so I'll have to concede that point. I remember reading something on HN a few months ago that the Roomba was the single best-selling vacuum cleaner of 2016, in the same vein that the MacBook is the best selling laptop even though all PC makers combined out-sell MacBooks.

But since I can't back up that claim, I'll give it to you.

[bamboozled]

If you're worried about surveillance now, wait till every car on the road is a backdoor into your life, every conversation, you're mood, everything will be up for grabs, being constantly transmitted back to base.

Next up, is the surveillance of the public, imagine all those cameras and microphones driving around, goodbye privacy for good.

The best bit is it's being sold to us under the banner of safety. I don't like road deaths either, but mas-scale surveillance is just the same problem.

I share your sentiments exactly, welcome to 1984.

[stevenh]

This technology will eventually be used by those in power to easily kidnap or kill targets via remote commands. Fake news will dismiss the accidents as malfunction.

Driving as a whole is safe now because everyone knows the stakes. If you screw up, you die. Computers don't care if you die, nor if they themselves are destroyed.

I don't look forward to a world where one Bluetooth RCE worm can kill tens of millions of people in 24 hours.

[hamilyon2]

Autonomous robots in houses are not about to save lives and provide hours of free time to anyone. Growing pains will kill people, the only question is: under which conditions can we say that thay will be more safe than their human-driven counterparts.

[non_repro_blue]

We need time to mature this technology. Household home-ec bots are a safe start to a bold plan.

Autonomy is an ambitious project. Large heavy machinery is an unnecessarily risky entry into an immature field.

Building reliable technology in a mild environment will permit the opportunity to prove trusted patterns of operation, under the safest conditions. People will be able to gain a feel for normal dispositions of autonomous motile devices, and build good collective practices for safe operating environments.

Corporations should not be trusted as accountanle entities. Volkwagen's deceptive green emissions scandal shows how far a sub-department will go, to meet the bottom line.

Competitive business practices in a hazardous and unforgiving operating environment are not what we want birthing this sort of technology.

[mjolk]

> We all know that early adopters suffer the growing pains of buggy first versions. No reason for all of society to share this burden when It hasn't even been put to a vote.

Humans, when aware, rested, and trained, are far better input devices for cars, I agree.

Where my sympathy for self-driving cars enters is that humans can be distracted by in-car entertainment (phones, screens, other humans or animals), tired/drunk/on drugs, or inexperienced. At least in the US (and several other countries I've visited, but not lived more than a handful of months in), I don't think driving safely is treated as a serious responsibility.

Beyond that, cars are already relatively automated -- steering, braking, traction, transmissions, and acceleration is computer controlled, and my car even tracks its maintenance schedule and various subsystem status, so I think it's somewhat logical that some degree of automation occurs to assist the driver more properly (/safely) operate the machine. At some point, this means normalizing "auto-pilot" functionality.

> Why not segregated roadways? If we're so desperate to automate trucking and shipping, how about big, thick K-rails, and dedicated roadway?

Because massive structural changes would be required. Similar to why buses are the go-to for public transit in developing countries -- four wheels and a relatively flat surface and you're done. Add in the challenge of retrofitting existing routes and our tendency to build large structures along roads and this is hilariously non-trivial.

Further, how would you design the segregated roadway? Do you take an existing lane from a highway? Is this railed-lane protected by barriers to prevent vehicular debris or illegal use? How do the shipping-vehicles exit the highway without blocking/crossing lanes?

[non_repro_blue]

Believe me, I understand that dedicated roadways would become a huge, ridiculous rat's nest of red tape, and pork barrel money pits.

And probably a Robert Moses character might emerge and cause just as many problems re-engineering roadways in broad, callous strokes.

But there's a huge ugly blind spot we're going to unleash upon the world with cars that decide what happens and when, all on their own.

People don't even like when the cops know how many emails are filled with retarded emojis on their phones. People go batshit insane about full disk encryption.

You're all mad if you think this car business going to work out in your favor.

[xor1]

>Why not segregated roadways?

Yeah, I think this is the only real option, with the eventual goal of slowly phasing out non-automated driving altogether.

[freehunter]

Is it even an option? Where are we getting the space to put new roads along the existing roads? Many cities don't even have space for bike lanes without taking away traffic lanes, let alone literally doubling the number of roads they have.

But the answer is, we already have segregated roadways for self-driving vehicles. They're called rails, and trains drive on them. People still drive cars, surprisingly. Because if that segregated roadway doesn't go someplace that a normal road does, people will still drive their cars.