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Comment by supportlocal4h | Hacker News Reader

Isn't that like saying that motorcycles will happen eventually but not anytime soon because: weather?

Traditional cars with drivers haven't solved the weather problem 100%. But they are here now. Sometimes we ban them in some conditions, but they are a game changer the rest if the time.

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Motorcycles are only on road for maybe 5 or so months out of the year where I live. If that is the best we can ask for out of autonomous driving, it'll never be more than a luxury toy.

One thing that is going to be awkward to navigate in the transition to self-driving cars is how they handle driving in bad weather. Obviously that's a technical problem but I'm not sure it's actually solvable because it's not actually solvable for human drivers. We just kind of do it anyway. But when a self-driving car has some quantified sense that "driving in these conditions is unsafe" will we get to the point where we just say f it and let them keep going? Or, maybe more likely, we remain in the gray zone where the car is fully self-driving but the human driver has to be ready to take control at any time which I think limits some of the larger impacts.

I mean if you live anywhere with weather your motorcycle lives in the garage for 3/4 of the year. Not useless by any stretch but also not “taking over the world.”

It’s not that traditional cars have solved for weather, it’s that self driving cars haven’t solved the problem of “being as good as human drivers in weather commonly encountered.”

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