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Comment by superfrank | Hacker News Reader

> I like Musk's proposal for mostly autonomous tunnel driving because it actually seems much more feasible than handling every edge case known to man.

Maybe I'm just not familiar with the specifics of that proposal, but I don't think tunnels solve the problem you presented either. If I need to go down a one lane street to get to my house, I'll still need to do that whether we have tunnels or not, unless for some reason the tunnel exit is right in front of my house.

Personally, I think the solution is to make only make certain large, predictable roads self driving and force a user to take over on smaller more complicated roads. As technology advances, you can slowly add more and more of the smaller roads to the self driving map.

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The idea, as far as I understand, is that the tunnels present new underground routes that can use central control of vehicles to manage congestion.

According to Elon, his investment in cheaper drilling tech will mean we will have many tunnels with relatively cheap to build entrance and exit points that are significantly smaller than subway stations.

These entry points will allow you to drive to and from your house, enter the tunnel system where some sort of conveyor belt/computer controls your car. You exit the tunnel and drive normal.

So the idea is that the tunnel exits will be _very_ near to your home. Otherwise it's dumb. I think what you are saying about large predictable roads is basically what Elon Musk is proposing but underground.

https://www.boringcompany.com/faq

Okay, that is the proposal I've seen, and IMO it has a huge number of flaws.

- There are going to be certain places where you can't dig a tunnel for geological reasons. For example, half the population of Florida lives less than 4 feet above sea level.

- Even if you increase the speed you can dig a tunnel and lower the cost, it's still cheaper to pave a road above ground.

- There are plenty of places where NIMBY folks just wont let you dig a tunnel (looking at you LA purple line extension).

Ignoring all that though, even if you can build an entry point every half mile, you still run into the issue of needing to drive the car that last stretch, which means you need to either solve the problem of self-driving on complicated roads, or force the driver to take over. The tunnel system shortens the amount of time you would spend on small roads, but it doesn't eliminate it.

The first quarter is easy, the 2nd more difficult. I don't think we'll ever get to the third.

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