Ask Lemmy

I’d rather have a heads up display

They will be the future. Not today, not tomorrow but some day. When they have less accidents, especially deadly ones, you have a hard time to argue why human drivers shouldn't be banned. Of course there are still a lot of things to handle and to figuring out. One of the biggest causes of accidents are humans. If nobody can drive, you eliminate a big part but there is still humans on the road, being it pedestrians or bikes. If you separate them from the road, this is a huge step. We would need to do a lot of work, making the streets good for AI cars. We also need a lot of discipline, to keep the streets safe for AI. Being it to maintain public available maps and directly update them or discipline with temporary markings. I've seen quite a few examples, where the signage was wrong and if I would have followed it, as the law said, I would have driven wrong and especially bad, other cars around me, would have had other signs. This wouldn't work with AI cars, as they can and should follow strict rules and allowing them too much rule breaking, would be bad.

I think what we would see first is a hybrid system, where certain routes can only be driven by AI, like highways, where its easier to maintain them for AI. Cities would highly benefit from it, but I think its quite a challenge to optimize it.

Next thing where AI cars would be better would be easier flow of traffic, no traffic jams and less need for an own car and parking spaces. If all cars communicate with each other, they can accelerate all at the same time, which massively boosts the throughput of a street. Also just for cars, there is no need of traffic lights. They communicate between each other and coordinate how they drive across a crossroad. As for the other thing, cars could just drive around like taxis. Without a human driver, they can drive around all day, are way cheaper and don't need a parking spot everywhere. You wouldn't need parking spots in cities at all. You would only need spaces for cars to stop, to pick up and let out guests and somewhere a charging spot, if we don't come up with a system that charges them, while driving. But this charging spot could be anywhere and they need way less space, as they don't need to open the doors.

You may say, this is in the far future, but let's remember human inventions. 1902 the Wright Glider took it's first flight. Just 67 later in 1969, we send the first man to the moon. Today we wear watches, on our wrists, that are 50,000 times more powerful, in some specs even more than that, than the Apollo 11 computer. 100 years ago we didn't had televisions. In 1935 we had the first TV station. It would be bald to assume, that it would take ages, until self driving cars would be ready to fully drive alone 24/7. I would assume that I would still see the beginning during my lifetime, where on certain routes, no human driver is allowed. Just look how far AI video gen has come. Take the "Will Smith eating spaghetti" gen Video. It's wild how far it had come in just a few years.

Of course today they aren't ready and I would be pretty scared, behind the wheel. I didn't had the "joy" to test this, but I absolutely will, when I get the chance, just to see how the tech is. the whole testing in a real environment is needed, to see the weakpoints, but I think they went too fast, especially when I see videos of cars, deadlocking themselves. This way we do get the data quicker but sometimes at a high price.

They're a distraction. We don't need self driving cars, we need trains and reliable busses.

I fucking despise them. They don't solve any problems. They're dangerous as objects on the road. They can get stuck in loops. They are ridiculously expensive to maintain. They are an integrated surveillance system. They don't even know how to truly drive; Waymo cheats by giving them maps, and the second that map no longer applies they fail miserably. They're dangerous to construction workers. They enable morons to drive and get away with it for long periods of time before disaster strikes, and when it strikes, someone else dies not the moron in the "driver's" seat.

Self driving cars are a replacement for classic public transport that is worse in every conceivable way.

Why do they not have to pass the same test as every other driver on the road? For every iteration of the software they use?

I think Uber under pays me and other drivers to this extent:

But had $10 billion to invest in driverless vehicles to replace us rather than paying decently.

So...meh. Not a huge fan.

I hate driving and like the idea of driverless cars, but I’d far more like to have better mass transit and more areas that are enjoyable to walk around in. More space for humans and nature, less for roads and parking.

I feel like with most cases of post 2008 technology, what they’re doing is interesting on the surface level. The problem is that it’s always a wildly inefficient and predatory solution for whatever problem.

Self driving cars sound like a good idea, smoother traffic, safer roads, etc. The problem is the technology isn’t really there yet and the way it’s currently implemented is dangerous and inefficient and really has no place on actual roads. So what we end up with are waymos that are error prone and susceptible to harassment from people and teslas causing accidents. That harassment waymos get is somewhat justified too because of what they represent. Instead of billions of dollars being spent on public transit which would solve the same problems more efficiently, billions of dollars are spent on a personal, luxury, novelty transit experience.

As far as the ML goes, yeah it’s interesting I guess. It needs vastly more data than it has because driving is incredibly complicated. I don’t really have any basis for it, but I kinda don’t think it’ll ever be effective enough until we reach some kind of technology breakthrough with quantum computing or something. There’s too many data bottlenecks for the amount of data processing required. Until we get that, waymo is just gonna have to keep relying on underpaid Filipino support staff to fill in the gaps.

I’ve never seen a Waymo in person but I’ve seen plenty of edge cases while driving that I wonder how any self driving car would handle it.

Just one recent example: I was at a red traffic light crossing another road that had virtually no visibility to the right due to thick vegetation. Just as the light turned green I heard the sirens of approaching fire trucks from the direction where I couldn’t see. I waited, and didn’t actually see them until they were about 20 feet from the intersection. My gut feeling is that pretty much any self driving car would have seen the green light and then driven right into the path of those approaching emergency vehicles. And what would have happened next? Would the self driving car have slammed on the brakes once it saw the fire trucks? Would it have just continued, forcing the fire trucks to stop?

Waymo uses predefined driving maps so it's a lot more reliable, or supposed to be.. this is how it probably should be done.

Upper echelon on YouTube has a really great video on accident and reliability numbers from both waymo and Tesla. Tesla is shockingly bad in safety. I highly recommend the watch, it shows a serious level of fraud.

Self driving is great and all, but it's kind of fixing a problem that should be fixed by better city planning and public transport

I think they are wasted time, money and energy. They are a solution to problems that have been solved long ago in much better ways: better urban planning and public transportation.

A lot of people don't understand how technology works and they just always have like some form of amnesia after we hear horrific reports from real journalists about horrible things happening with this technology. So the last time I checked, we live in a fascist state, duhhhh USA, and they are going after Palestinian protesters and people that don't like ice. So if you don't have the option to have a non-self-driving car, then you just got a cell phone connected trojan horse to drive you around wherever you go and so if the state wants to kill you, they can. Plausible deniability and a fine of the cost of doing business. Does anybody remember Ford's technology where they can shut your car off? And have it drive back to the dealership? It's a patent! So instead of, you know, getting all hot and horny about the features and benefits because you're too lazy to pay attention and drive and operate, maybe you should think about the implications and connect the dots because we live in a fascist state. I want my autonomy and I want my freedom of speech and I don't want the government to have that reach. Fuck gipity and the dum dum self driving car. I want the raw dog baby… or like walkable cities and fucking trains. These companies are scamming the public. Fiddling with the numbers and milking the suckers. I got trains on the brainz

A waymo pulled out in front of me when i had no stop and was going 40 mph. Next time I’m gonna smash and sue instead of hitting the breaks

Can we have more trains, trams, busses coverage instead? Why do we need selfdriving cars? If you are not in a condition to drive, than don't drive.

I wouldn't want one myself as I like driving but it seems inevitable that they'll more or less replace human drivers at some point as they're probably already more competent at driving than even a good human driver is.

I would love the technology to advance enough so I could retrieve that time for myself. I don't particularly enjoy driving.

And personally think that once most cars are self driving accidents are likely to go down, making the roads safer.

Unless and until we as a society address the trolley problems raised by self-driving cars—who and what determines who lives in a situation where a choice must be made—I can only look on with dismay.

This is a real issue, and we've not yet addressed it. If your car has a choice between saving you or saving a child, or another person, or any number of unusual circumstances made inevitable by the sheer number er of miles collectively driven, what does it do? What do we want it to do? How do we balance the scale between saving your life or sacrificing it to save others?

Outlandish situations may be rare but they will happen, and we need to decide how our machines will weight the lives they are asked to save or sacrifice.

1. In order for these vehicles to operate, they must all be surveillance platforms. They are covered in cameras, microphones, radar, sonar, lidar, and other types of sensors. The more of these vehicles are on the roads around you, the more real-time surveillance data is being collected. And you better believe those cameras are doing license plate recognition of every other vehicle they pass, in case there's any incident that would involve an insurance claim. Basically they are mobile Flock on steroids.

2. Training machine learning models requires data. The edge cases have the least data for training, because they involve unusual weather or road conditions, specific lighting situations, weird/poorly designed intersections, or other uncommon circumstances. Edge cases will never be trained out because there will never be enough data for each specific case to have a meaningful effect on the self-driving model. Edge cases present the highest likelihood of injury to humans, whether as passengers, other drivers, or bystanders.

I don't trust them.

I'd rather have trains and walkable cities

Historically I would say I’m not a fan of turning over so much control to the car. However, since 2022 we’ve typically driven up to see my wife’s parents twice a year, a journey of roughly 1,200 miles/2,000 kilometers each way, because even flying normally wouldn’t get us to their rural Quebec town much faster and would cost a lot more. We got a newer Hyundai a couple years ago and it has some self-driving features taking advantage of the adaptive cruise control and lane-keeping systems. It can even change lanes itself when you activate the turn signals, although you still have to keep your hands on the steering wheel and that doesn’t work well half the time. I have found it works well enough in rural freeways with little traffic, and if I use it in those areas I’m able to handle more of the driving share on the trip and seem to be more alert and fresh in the heavier traffic areas around major cities. I test drove one or two GM vehicles that had a completely hands-off system, which I found freaky, but would probably appreciate even more in those rural stretches.

I think that advocates are right in that, once the kinks are worked out, they will be far safer than human drivers.

At the same time, I think the implications lead to a lot of dystopian implications for cities. Like, a properly tuned self driving car will never hit a pedestrian. So pedestrians in cities will learn they can safely step out into the street even in oncoming traffic. But this will cause the car to swerve and slam to a halt, which us a bad UX for the passenger. Enter: automatically reported jaywalking offenses powered by car cameras and facial recognition technology.

I don't like it. I don't want to self-drive a car, and I don't want other people to do it either in most cases. I want someone else to drive the car, but with bigger cars that hold more people at once, such that it's more efficient. Bonus points if the car drives on straight, flat, low-resistant paths.

I though all Waymo driving decisions were performed using mechanical Turk?

They're awesome. Totally awesome. Until they go wrong.

But then you can call another one to come get you.

I've used the Waymos a bunch in travels. The only real irritating thing is that they will often take a VERY long way around. Not shortest route but one they have mapped betteri guess. Otherwise I love it. No driver talking to me, no tip, pick my music, flip off the cameras,it's great.

All the other gimcrack bullshit aside, the Tesla full self drive is pretty amazing. And fast charging. If they made a Toyota that did those two things only, it would sell like hotcakes at a Waffle House in a hurricane.

it seems so possible and innevitable in the late aughts. 20 years later and it seems to just be advanced cruise control.

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