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Comment by duaneb | Hacker News Reader

> I bet if you look at polls from the 1990s about the internet, you'll find a lot of people saying they're just fine without it, thank you very much, and they prefer the warm, personal experience of calling up a real human to book their plane tickets or whatever instead of punching their credit card number into some newfangled machine.

The enjoyment of driving is not about human warmth, it's about control and adrenaline. I don't think the comparison makes sense. I'd be more excited about autonomous cars if I could turn it off in the country (as some cars today allow) for recreation.

I definitely agree with what you're saying—I know I'm probably in the minority for enjoying driving at all—but I frankly can't imagine anyone enjoying reading their credit card over the phone.

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"On average, Americans drive 29.2 miles per day, making two trips with an average total duration of 46 minutes."[1]

For how many of those 46 minutes do you think they are enjoying control and adrenaline? I would guess approximately zero, and once you tell them that they can spend that time instead surfing the internet, or eating breakfast, or videochatting with their family, they will.

[1] http://newsroom.aaa.com/2015/04/new-study-reveals-much-motor...

What part of what I said are you disagreeing with? EDIT: ...or replying to?

Obviously, whenever someone responds to you, they're ALWAYS against you. Because people never agree with you. Never ever ever in the history of communication.

It's far more likely that for many people it will just mean working on your commute to work. Personally I would rather be driving.

I think there's a lot of things I'd rather be doing on a commute than drive or do work. For on thing, with a self-driving car, I could do things that many people are already doing while driving, albeit unsafely. Things like eating breakfast, talking on the phone, and fiddling with the radio. Hell, if the commute was long, I might use the time to catch up on sleep.

You can already do this on public transit; why wait for self-driving cars?

Where does your public transit system get its funding? Does it really provide you the same level of privacy?

Any transit system I've ever used was:

Over crowded.

Purposefully designed so no-one could sleep. Also, I really wouldn't want to sleep on an artificially created publicly shared surface.

Frowned upon to talk on your cell phone, or eat a meal.

I definitely couldn't get any work done, even if I tried.

Because driving takes me 15 minutes and public transit takes an hour.

In my city, you're lucky if public transit only takes an hour (I'm lucky, so I still ride). Also, the bike racks only take two bikes; if there are already two on there, you might as well just ride the rest of the way because your other option is to wait an hour for the next bus.

(hi; I live in a city run by "fiscal conservatives")

Yeah, I could get a solid four to five hours of sleep if I took public transit to work since it would take so long. And then the bus system in my area is shut down by the time I get out of work...

This is exactly what makes autonomous vehicles so great - they eliminate the public transportation problem.

I took public transit to work for three years. It had its ups and downs. Then, within the span of about a week, (a) somebody peed in their seat about 12 feet from me, and then (b) somebody threw up all over the floor about 3 feet from me. After that it was goodbye Trimet, hello Honda.

The bus is not a great place to do any of the things mentioned above.

I personally love the bus, but it can vary greatly from place to place (and even from bus line to bus line).

But this is a great illustration of self-driving cars: it's public transit for the upper-middle class. (The middle class can't afford a reliable car for the whole household; the rich have chauffeurs.)

Yeah, I've had several bus drivers go by the drive-through so I can get breakfast and let me fiddle the radio on behalf of all passengers while also being on the phone the whole time.

I'd rather be on a train.

Personally? Probably 40 minutes out of those 46. Every acceleration is a thrill, I enjoy every second of driving.

At what price?

When autonomous cars are ubiquitous, the price of insuring your thrill ride will be roughly equivalent to the hourly price of an amusement park.

That's a nice guess, and I guess it's meant to scare me from driving in the future, but it won't really.

Long before "automonous cars are ubiquitous" something else is going to happen - automatic collision detection and prevention will become ubiquitous, long before all cars are fully automatic. So even if I drive the car myself, it will be very difficult to crash, therefore the insurance will have no reason to increase.

Either way, I am sure fully automatic cars won't become ubiquitous in our lifetimes no matter what manufacturers say, so I'm not too worried.

I'm sure someone said the same thing about horses. They love the experience of riding a horse.

If someone had invented self-driving horses, we could have skipped the whole car thing.

Is Waze for horses patentable?

Prior art in camels: http://pix.avaxnews.com/avaxnews/dc/16/000016dc_medium.jpeg

The thing about a horse though, is that it knows the way home. You might think that this means you can get drunk and still have a way to "ride" home. I mean, that has to be better than driving drunk, right?

The US laws are crazy: http://duiwise.com/dui-dwi-answers/can-you-get-a-dui-dwi-on-...

There are many roads you can still ride a horse on. Will that be true with self driving cars on the road?

>...they prefer the warm, personal experience of calling up a real human to book their plane tickets or whatever instead of punching their credit card number into some newfangled machine.

That was before they turned calling up a company into an audio version of the 90's internet.

For me 100% of the enjoyment of driving is from getting somewhere that I want to be. If I could get away with never touching a steering wheel again, I would.

> I'd be more excited about autonomous cars if I could turn it off in the country (as some cars today allow) for recreation.

Why assume that you won't be able to? Even the most elaborately "uncarlike" self-driving car concepts have a steering wheel hidden somewhere, for the simple reason that there's always the chance of some extreme conditions that a self-driving car can't navigate.

This isn't the right way. An in-car steering wheel will always require a licensed driver. Several better ways:

1. For minor uncertainty, the car could ask what to do. For example, the user might confirm that an object blocking the road is harmless and can be run over or bumped out of the way. This is not real-time; the car only asks after it comes to a stop.

2. The above can be done by remote humans.

3. When the car is really confused, you should get power assistance while you stand outside and push. It should be possible to push the car up any San Francisco hill with just one person. Put your hands on the bumper, press hard, and the car responds to the pressure. Unlike traditional car pushing, the steering should respond. You should be able to parallel park, park on grass, force the car up onto the sidewalk a bit, go the wrong direction, and so on.

> Why assume that you won't be able to?

Because the attractive argument for driverless cars that makes sense (to me) is that they're safer than human drivers. Presumably at some point humans will not be allowed to drive anymore.

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