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Comment by CamperBob2 | Hacker News Reader

Automated driving is more a political problem than a technical one. We could make it happen today (and I'm not saying that would be a good thing or a bad one), but it would require leadership we simply don't have.

See also standardization of EV battery form factors -- a problem that, had it been tackled by government several years ago, would have avoided the chicken-and-egg problem that is impeding adoption now.

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"We could make it happen today" -> As of today, human drivers make less mistakes than automated driving... and Tesla is promising it for a decade now, but has come to level 2 only (where drivers must hold the steering wheel) and Mercedes has achieved level 3 for highways only... So we are nowhere close to "level 5 on all roads with substantially less mistakes than human drivers"... and that would be just a single part of AGI...

The mistakes made by automated driving usually involve interaction with either human drivers or impaired pedestrians, if you neglect stupid shit like Teslas losing fights with fire trucks because "Cameras Are All You Need." Nonstandard or missing signs and lane markings are close to the top of the list as well.

Doing automated driving right means restructuring our entire surface transportation system to support it. I doubt it can happen without a serious commitment from government... which is in no condition to commit to anything.

But human drivers don't need such restructuring. They can also handle impaired pedestrians, nonstandard and missing signs/lane markings. And if AGI will be "better than most humans at most things" no restructuring should be needed...

For values of "They can handle it" equal to about 30,000 deaths a year in the US alone, yeah, I guess they can handle it.

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