[worik]

This is ignoring the Elephant in the room: The AI is not good enough often enough for general purpose AVs. In restricted settings it will be great (container terminals, warehouses...) but from every thing I have seen, from the outside as I am not a insider, the last little bit of safety seems unobtainable with neural networks. I so want to be wrong, and please tell me why I am. I want my next care to have a cocktail cabinet and drive smoothly enough to balance my champagne flute on the arm rest.

[alkonaut]

Cars will reach 50% and 75% and 95% autonomy but they won’t reach 100% unless we change infra to be controlled. So long as they are driving among humans on roads made for humans they will never be 100% autonomous. 100% autonomy might sound like just a little more than 95% but it’s not. At 100 is where a car can be built to not have a driver. Its passengers can be drunk or not know how to drive. It’s a huge difference from 95% or 99%.

I think when cars are 95 or 99% autonomous they will be sold with human remote control so there will be centers where manufacturers have hundreds of remote drives ready to intervene and handle the last 5% or 1% of situations. Ther race to AV profitability will be won by the manufacturer with the smallest army of backup drivers.

[nradov]

How do you expect human remote control to work reliably enough for safety critical situations when our existing cellular data network fails so frequently? What happens when a construction crew accidentally cuts through the backhaul fiber?

[alkonaut]

The handover will be after the car stops because it’s confused. If there is no cell network or no operator available the car is simply stranded on the side of the road, just as after a mechanical failure. Operators can’t help “unknown situations” while moving.

[nradov]

In many places like bridges, hills, and congested city streets there is literally no road shoulder, no safe place to stop. When existing cars break down in those locations they end up blocking a traffic lane and frequently get hit from the rear by a drunk or distracted driver.

[alkonaut]

Yes, the autonomous car will need to make a judgement whether to “limp” out of a situation it is unsure of, or whether to stay where it is. It’s weighing two risks against each other). This happens whether it’s 95 or 99.99% autonomous - it just happens with different frequency.

It could also be possible for the occupants of the car (if it has any!) to pick up a smartphone and guide the car to safety if needed. Part of the attraction of autonomous vehicles is that if can operate without occupants, however.

[macintux]

I had to drive once on a punctured tire that was deflating. No shoulders due to construction, and in fact I had to speed through the work zone to make sure I got to an exit while I still had some air.

The real world is a very very messy place.

[yo-scot-99]

Let's just drive multi-ton vehicles instead [1]. Highway driving might be easier to visually parse but higher speeds and probably less controlled kinematics (i.e. does the software know how to adjust for the cargo) give one pause:

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/15/20805994/ups-self-driving...