[ghaff]

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?

[anchpop]

> 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.

[ghaff]

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.

[dev_tty01]

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.

[BubRoss]

This person said navigating automatically out of a crowded parking lot in the rain. You shifted this to just driving in the rain.

[dev_tty01]

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.

[cmendel]

Because the generalization changes the question. There is a world between "can drive 90 % of the time on 90% of roads" and "can drive 100% of the time on 100% of roads." The former is still extraordinarily valuable, the latter effectively impossible. When you conflate the two there really isn't even a point in having a discussion.

In the given example "driving in a parking lot +rain" it's completely reasonable to pass the buck to the human driver. In your example "driving +rain" you can't because that situation occurs well more frequently.

[chx]

> In the given example "driving in a parking lot +rain" it's completely reasonable to pass the buck to the human driver.

People like me are only looking forward to completely autonomy -- I am forbidden to drive, you see.

And it gives me some perspective... I believe society would benefit enormously if it didn't treat "everyone can drive" as a truism. If you were to break down what the concept "drive" means in terms of simultaneous tasks a human most be capable of performing you would quickly see how utterly ridiculous it is -- with devastating results in how urban environments have transformed and how many deaths are on the roads.

[ghaff]

The former is very valuable so long as:

- The handoff of control to a person is well-defined and not too sudden

- You accept that autonomous driving is essentially a convenience and safety feature with a competent driver behind the wheels at all times. No using an autonomous car to drop little Jimmy off at soccer practice. (And no summoning a shared robo-taxi service.)

[BubRoss]

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.

[stale2002]

> 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.

[Talanes]

Where are you going to get all these truck drivers and taxi drivers to work on call when the robots can't?

[ghaff]

>IE, in arizona, I am sure that it is safe most of the time, and there would not be any issues with snow.

Parts of Arizona.

[stale2002]

> Parts of Arizona.

Sure. Thats my point. And that is still very valuable.