[LightG]

Fair enough. I cannot believe those related are not in tight conversation considering the AI element of FSD (or am I mistaken there?).

Either way, in summary, I cannot trust FSD until it is 100% reliable (impossible) and the temporary situation for some time to come (regulated/supervised FSD) drains all the life out of what I enjoy, actual engaged driving! ...

The bits we don't enjoy (stop-start traffic and some motorway driving) have already been taken care off more than a decade ago.

I'd love the option of FSD but ... either FSD will never fully be realised, or will be adopted widely and there'll be some hold outs like me who actually enjoy their driving.

We'll see

[jhugo]

> The bits we don't enjoy (stop-start traffic and some motorway driving) have already been taken care off more than a decade ago.

Not really. You're referring to assistance features that require continuous driver attention. I think that highway driving, and perhaps even city driving in some parts of the world, could be completely automated to a level of safety that is far higher than humans can achieve.

I am deeply skeptical that we will ever see a system that can drive in all current road conditions though; I think it's more likely that road systems will eventually co-evolve with automated driving to a point that the automated systems simply never encounter the kind of emergent highly complex road situations that currently exist which they would be unable to handle.

I also enjoy driving, and my 40yo car doesn't even have a radio, let alone Autopilot, but I think it's likely that within our lifetimes, the kind of driving that you and I enjoy will be seen as a (probably expensive) hobby rather than something anyone does to get to work or the shops every day.

[ryantgtg]

I think the majority of people enjoy driving. Driving is fun. Sure, traffic sucks, but the actual act of driving comes with lots of pleasures. Most people don’t seem eager to give up driving, nor are many people ready to hand over control to AI.

I’m a transportation planner, and for many years my specialty was bicyclist & pedestrian planning and safety. I would follow autonomous vehicle news, but always through that lens. In addition, I have sat through lectures, webinars, and sales pitches that tout our wonderful autonomous future. And lemme tell ya, there is little to no mention of all the road users who are not in vehicles. Countless renderings and animations that do no account for our most vulnerable users. It smells like mid-20th century transportation planning mentalities that is completely engineer-driven. Very narrow-focused and regressive.

My coworkers and I enjoyed sitting around and coming up with countless difficult-to-solve scenarios (that my tech friends would look at and say “eh, sounds interesting and solvable”) for AV developers to contend with. And despite pressure from our “future forward” marketing coworkers to focus on this sector, it feels nowhere close to really being ready (20-30 years maybe?).

Anyway, I do think the focus on “allowed in some places” is interesting. I have some trouble seeing “road systems will eventually co-evolve with automated driving” coming to fruition given the glacial pace of road system evolution.

[jhugo]

I guess by "road systems will eventually co-evolve with automated driving" I would also include relatively minor interventions like increasing the proportion of controlled intersections, which are much easier for autonomous systems to deal with.

I have spent a lot of time in parts of Asia where massive evolution of transportation infrastructure has happened on a scale of a few decades (or less), so it seems less crazy to me that large-scale road evolution could happen along with autonomous vehicle development than it might seem to someone working in the West.