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Comment by rogerbinns | Hacker News Reader

You mean you'd prefer humans to do the driving? Youtube is full of human examples - start here as an example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwL7S--E5oQ - and note that it ranges from minor fender benders through some very serious injuries and destruction.

There are lots of examples of not being able to stay in lane, pulling out, not seeing stopped traffic, not paying attention to surroundings. Humans can't even get the trivial simple things right in broad daylight.

(Yes I am aware that you are in the 97% of drivers who are absolutely convinced they are above average. That doesn't make it true. Yes the video mainly has clips from Russia - you can find USA based ones too. And a 9/11 happens on US roads each and every month. People are dying in large numbers because of human drivers.)

Edit: added warning about video content

View on HN

You might want to put a warning before or after that link to indicate that it contains some pretty disturbing content...

All the same, I have a large amount of trust in my own driving. I trust my driving more than my own programming. And I sure as hell trust my code more than some sketchy offshore team's. It's only a matter of time before the first car segfaults.

Plus it's a huge security risk. Cars are internet-connected these days.

Well, for one you can be pretty sure that self-driving car software isn't going to be written by hippie webdevs changing frameworks every other week. Companies and programmers that tend to work on this kind of software have pretty good track records - we don't see planes falling out of the sky or medical machines randomly killing patients all the time. Uou're going to have an app store for your car drivers.

Cars have it simpler than planes etc too. In particular they can always fail safe by stopping - something that isn't applicable to planes. Other complexities aren't present either due to the 2d nature of roads - for example car software doesn't have to worry about stalls, coffin corner or similar.

I believe that self driving cars will primarily be owned by companies with fleets of them, rather than individual ownership we have today. It doesn't make sense to have them sitting idle 23 hours a day. The owner companies will have a very strong incentive for safety since even rumours would be bad for business. They will also be in a better position to do something about it due to having multiple vehicles.

> It doesn't make sense to have them sitting idle 23 hours a day.

Well, I agree. That's why I expect that, along human drivers, the very concept of car ownership will disappear. It's much more efficient to have those cars available on call; they can serve someone else while you're not using them, and they can be parked&recharged at night with much better space-efficiency than cars are parked today.

they can always fail safe by stopping

Not if you're in a highway.

Especially on a highway. I am talking about a situation where normal operation isn't possible such as due to hardware or software failure. Of course it isn't ideal, but wouldn't be much of a problem if the other vehicles on the road are driverless. (To be clear I mean they can just stop in the middle of the road if things are bad.)

A plane can't just let go of all control surfaces. Heck it can't even leave them where they are. It must do something and always must provide some degree of control. A flying plane is moving at several hundred miles an hour and cannot stop.

Not if you are on a highway with no shoulder and significant traffic. Seems like a rare case.

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