In a parking lot the car would be starting from a position it can stay in, so requiring a person to intervene is one option. Also busy parking lots frequently don't stay busy forever and heavy rain doesn't last forever either.
A look at the local weather could see where a storm is and give an estimate of when it will be able to automate leaving and require a person otherwise. I think there are pragmatic answers to extreme situations.
As soon as you require human intervention, you require a sober, licensed human to be in the vehicle at all times. You no longer have a robo-taxi. It can also be hard to predict weather in much of the US. And as soon as you place too many restrictions, you no longer have a reliable transportation option.
Imagine your public transit system only ran in good weather. How useful would it be?
> As soon as you require human intervention, you require a sober, licensed human to be in the vehicle at all times. You no longer have a robo-taxi.
You have a robo-taxi that works when it's not raining, which is still pretty good (assuming it can safely disengage/pull over if it thinks the weather is getting bad).
> Imagine your public transit system only ran in good weather. How useful would it be?
I and many other Americans live in places that don't have any public transit, so a few robocars that only worked during the day would be a huge improvement.
Wait. So you're now going to just dump me at the side of the road if it starts raining?
I appreciate the general point that autonomous driving that only works under some conditions would be useful. But I think it's more along the lines of handling highway driving under most circumstances which already pre-supposes a licensed sober driver that can take over control with a minute or two notice.
I already have an option for local driving. It's called taxis/Uber/Lyft and robo versions won't be all that much cheaper.
Hmm. If I'm a city administrator, I'm not going to license fair weather robo-taxis to operate in the city. They would drive out many other taxis and then people can't get home when the weather turns bad. Anything else is just bad resource management.
I'm confused. Are you asserting that driving in actual traffic in the rain is easier than navigating a parking lot in the rain? Yes, several of us generalized the issue. I don't see why that is troubling.
If it was a robo taxi and not your own car, you could go take a different robo taxi.
Also, predicting the weather a week out isn't the same as giving an ETA when you can see a map of the storm happening live. That is a completely separate scenario.
> And as soon as you place too many restrictions, you no longer have a reliable transportation option.
yes you do. There is a whole lot of driving that happens in perfect conditions.
Think "Truck driving, on long highways".
Replacing half of all truck drivers is still a trillion dollar industry.
And for your robo taxi situation, you can simply only allow the robotaxis to run half of the time.
Human drivers, can simply get in their cars, and be paid to drive, when it is likely to be unsafe driving conditions. IE, surge driving/pricing.
But there absolutely would be days/times/places where the robo taxi would be perfectly safe. And these days/times/places could be predicted easily, ahead of time.
IE, in arizona, I am sure that it is safe most of the time, and there would not be any issues with snow.
A look at the local weather could see where a storm is and give an estimate of when it will be able to automate leaving and require a person otherwise. I think there are pragmatic answers to extreme situations.