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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand the point of comments like this, and I see them all the time when it comes to autonomous vehicles.

First, as all the other respondents have pointed out, your characterization of San Francisco as "straight lines and 365 days of sun" is way, way off. But more importantly, as a consumer, I'd be thrilled to own an autonomous vehicle even if it didn't work in bad weather. There's easily enough data to have a car say "there is a storm coming in your area, can't drive autonomously" long before it would become a safety issue.

And, of course, wouldn't one expect an autonomous vehicle to start in places with better conditions vs yolo'ing it in a blizzard whiteout?

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It is not just bad weather. Here in the midwest it's common for the road lines to be worn and barely visible. There are many more potholes and other problems with the pavement.

My 2023 car with cameras and radar usually cannot activate lane centering - even in good weather - because it cannot tell where the lanes are.

Having driven in both San Francisco and throughout the midwest, I agree with the parent commenter that San Francisco is a much easier environment for self-driving cars.

I don't really disagree, but again, I don't understand the point about complaining about "Pfft, Waymo can only operate in good conditions". I mean, it wasn't that long ago when Google's autonomous vehicle tech was first announced and everyone thought it looked like magic.

More and more I believe in Louis CK's bit about "everything is amazing and nobody's happy": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdFB7q89_3U

Because there's two things going on. There's the autonomous driving technology which is god damn amazing and a huge technical achievement even if it only works in ideal conditions.

Then there's the sheisters trying to sell that technology and convince governments that "for safety" people should be required to buy their product. Poking holes in the technology is people's natural response to the very real fear that their ability to operate a vehicle that isn't literally controlled by a huge corporation will be taken away.

The technology is amazing, humans suck.

You see the same thing with EVs, rather than it being a purely positive thing that the market has more options for people with different driving patterns you have governments committing to banning the sale of new ICE cars when the deployment is literally in its infancy

> Then there's the sheisters trying to sell that technology and convince governments that "for safety" people should be required to buy their product.

That feels like a massive straw man. I'm not aware of anyone at this point, or with any plans, to require the use of autonomous vehicles.

> You see the same thing with EVs, rather than it being a purely positive thing that the market has more options for people with different driving patterns you have governments committing to banning the sale of new ICE cars when the deployment is literally in its infancy

That also doesn't make sense to me. Governments don't want to push to EVs because the tech is some nirvana or something, but continued use of ICE vehicles is a large contributor to climate change and we have very limited time to address that.

I assume this is referring to how Europe requires new vehicles be sold with automatic emergency braking.

If we do reach a point where self driving systems consistently outperfom humans in term or safety, I would absolutely expect a push to atleast require it in new vehicles if not some form of new law to push people towards using that technology. Personally, I find that idea attractive but I understand why people would fear it.

You have to recognize these as the right-wing dogwhistles that they are. The idea that autonomous driving and vehicle electrification are control strategies by an oppressive deep state are constantly pushed on far-right social media.

> autonomous driving and vehicle electrification are control strategies by an oppressive deep state

Wait.. what? That’s definitely a new one to me…

Starter pack: https://www.tiktok.com/find/real-agenda-behind-electric-cars

Why does it matter what people push that idea if there is some truth to it?

Welp, I'm as left as they come in these parts. Literally a card carrying socialist so I'm not consciously dog whistling anything.

Tech is already inundated with corporations using technology to maintain an iron grip on their products against their users interest and I'm just sad to see that autonomous driving seems to be the excuse to extend this grip further with always-on connectivity that you can't turn off "for safety" that will also conveniently used for even more tracking. I don't think it will be used for population control or anything like that but I expect it will be expand the already existing police remote shutdown.

Autonomous cars that are truly autonomous would be amazing. But what I fear we'll get is DrivingAsAService and regulatory capture.

> I'm as left as they come

I am pleased to introduce you to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory

I thought about that when I wrote that but I ended up landing on that it didn't apply because I'm not anywhere near right-wing social media and had no idea this was even a conspiracy.

I was just like the last thing in the universe I want is for a company to exercise Apple like control over my car. And despite making no logical sense companies seem to be using EVs and self-driving as an excuse to create artificial lock-in and add even more data collection. New and "different" seems to mean you're allowed to break consumer expectations for the worse.

It still looks like magic when I see cars without drivers here in PHX. We'll have them on the freeway soon enough - potentially a game changer for our city

> potentially a game changer for our city

My bet is you'll be amazed by how little changes. Sure you won't spend any time at gas stations/car dealerships and you'll be able to watch YouTube on your commute, but that's how millions of New Yorkers live and, well, it's fine. That is to say, we could have just built subways/mass transit and gotten all of the benefits.

There is a major downside though, and it's that we'll be doubling down on cars. That means all the mining we have to do for all the components, all the road/vehicle maintenance we have to do, all the waste we have to manage, all the pollution from tires, all the space taken up by roads, garages, parking spaces, all the batteries we have to build/maintain/recycle, all the sprawl and isolation we suffer will increase.

> My bet is you'll be amazed by how little changes. Sure you won't spend any time at gas stations/car dealerships and you'll be able to watch YouTube on your commute, but that's how millions of New Yorkers live and, well, it's fine. That is to say, we could have just built subways/mass transit and gotten all of the benefits.

I'm a big fan of public transportation, and I think it's sad that so many cities have underinvested. But it doesn't help your point to pretend that commuting on a bus or subway is the same thing as commuting in an autonomous personal vehicle, and these kinds of false equivalencies only serve to discredit mass transit advocates.

Oh I'm not at all pretending there's an equivalence between a personal coach that delivers you anywhere you want to go and a coarse, generic mass transit system that's relatively indifferent to your destination. I'm saying that no one at all is saying that every American (let alone anyone in the world) will have such service. This stuff is 100% marketed to upper class people. Waymo is entirely an Uber-class service, meaning that only the top 3% of people worldwide can even conceive of ever experiencing it, let alone having it be their daily experience. And for what, not having to take a bus and walk a little after taking a train? I'm trying really hard to come up with something more bourgeoisie than that, and I'm coming up with nothing.

> I don't understand the point of comments like this,

I mean the point is pretty straight forward. A study like this is tautological. "self driving cars are safe on exactly the fraction of hand selected roads where self driving companies are willing to put them" doesn't tell us anything. It's a fluff piece.

If you want to make an actual assessment about the safety you need data from randomized, representative roads, not 0.x% of the streets in America. Which itself is a very generous country to pick. Put these things into peak traffic in Rome for an hour

No, you don’t. This study is very clearly comparing to human drivers on the same streets and time period. Thus, you definitely can say that the human drivers are worse.

Tautological puff pieces are what Tesla does with many of its cherry-picked stats, but this data is much more definitive.

>you definitely can say that the human drivers are worse

No, you can't. You can say the drivers are worse only on the segments where Waymo was willing to test it, and that is worthless. It literally is cherry picking. What does it matter to people driving in Boston, Chicago, New York, Paris or Berlin if cars can drive safely on a suburban grid in Arizona?

If you get to pick the sample you get to pick the outcome. We could literally put these cars on the worst 1% of roads and get the opposite result. In fact we could put them on the worst 90% of roads and get the opposite result. Even the average American consumer gets no meaningful info out of this.

This makes no sense. Waymo is not saying their cars outperform human drivers in all situations. They are saying they outperform human drivers in the location where they've been deployed. It's exactly an apples-to-apples comparison.

> You can say the drivers are worse only on the segments where Waymo was willing to test it, and that is worthless.

That's not worthless at all. There are tons of places in the US, maybe even a majority, that are quite similar to something between SF and Phoenix. Yes, absolutely, there are tons of places it's not. Again, so what? I just don't understand why anyone would expect that Waymo would not start with a progressive rollout.

Huh?

Waymo is doing a level 4 rollout to specific areas where they are confident they can operate them safely. This study shows they are doing a good job with that. People in these markets get access to safer transportation once they can scale. Indeed, the majority of the US population lives in areas that are roughly comparable in driving complexity to either SF for Pheonix.

The real question is if these safety rates can be maintained while reducing the operational costs to the point where this can be scaled.

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