[jqpabc123]

lidar doesn't see far forward enough

It's not possible for a simple lidar sensor to "see" very far ahead on the freeway --- too many other cars and big trucks in the way. By design, these sensors are near sighted --- they really only "see" the nearest obstacle that reflects light back.

When self driving cars can't "see", what is their typical response? Slam on the brakes? This could easily be disastrous on the freeway.

Driving at high speed on a congested freeway is a risky high wire act that demands quick, almost instinctive decision making based on more than what is directly in front.

Nothing short of AGI may be required to do it as well as a human.

[fragmede]

Driving aggressively in LA freeway traffic, maybe, but driving on a freeway in stop and go traffic limited to pre-mapped areas is a solved problem with Ford's Blue Cruise which is only level 2 self driving according to SAE J3016, and thats been available for years. Most other manufacturers also have some sort of adaptive cruise control and lane assistance technology. Freeway driving isn't that hard.

[jqpabc123]

Freeway driving isn't that hard.

Maintaining your lane and speed isn't that hard, which is about all that level 2 does. It is highly dependent on constant human oversight --- aka a "driver".

[fragmede]

After merging and before you exit, all you have to do is maintain your lane and speed on the freeway. What is the constant human oversight actually adding? Have you used Blue Cruise?

[jqpabc123]

After merging and before you exit ---

A "driverless" car doesn't get to choose only the easy parts.

Have you ever driven on the freeway?

I have and I have come really close to dying on multiple occasions and probably would have without experience, good instincts and defensive driving skills.

Imagine one car clipping another at freeway speeds and knocking it's bumper off and it comes flying over into your lane.

Imagine a car hitting a patch of ice on an overpass and spinning out of control creating a multi car pile up right in front of you.

This and more has happened to me on the freeway and I lived to tell about it. Drive long enough and you'll experience something like this too. How would Blue Cruise handle these situations?

Things like this happen on a daily basis in most large cities. You can't jam millions of people together without it happening. Incompetent drivers (or software) only make for worse results.

[fragmede]

Wow! You've driven on a freeway? So blessed to be in your presence. What's that like? that's such a rare experience, you must feel so privileged to have had that experience. How often do you do that? multiple times a year? More than once per day even? just wowwww...

...

C'mon man, freeway driving isn't that hard. Millions of people do it every day. A worse driver in the same situations you've been in would have gotten into a crash. the best drivers in the world, in formula 1, still get into crashes sometimes. crashes happen. humans don't have this magical ability that prevents them from ever happening. If a computer controlled car gets into an accident you do the same thing as when a human controlled car gets into an accident, with the bonus that there's video of the entire incident for insurance adjusters to review for who's at fault.

It's really not that hard to stay in a lane and not hit the car in front of you. BlueCruise solves for that but does currently falls back to the human driver as needed. Waymo doesn't currently put their cars on the freeway, but braking unexpectedly and changing lanes isn't beyond the abilities of the software that's currently driving on streets. I had a Waymo agressively merge into my lane in a way that I've seen human drivers be unable to do, just today.

I'm not forcing you to use a technology that isn't available to the public yet. but semi-autonomous freeway driving is already happening, fully autonomous isn't too far behind. when it does, it'll be better than the worst human drivers, and we currently let them drive. that doesn't mean it won't ever get into a crash, but if it means incompetent drivers now won't be driving because a computer will do it for them, there will be fewer crashes, which is what we're really after. Unintentional injury, which includes car crashes is the 4th leading cause of death in the US, according to the CDC. Not driving isn't an option for everyone people so the way to bring that down is to develop software so computers handle it for people that shouldn't be driving but currently do anyway.