Tell HN: Biggest self-driving challenge is not technology

In aviation we already have planes that can and regularly do land themselves without any pilot touching the controls. Landing being the most dangerous part of flying (don’t try to compare it to auto-parallel park) It’s called autoland. The plane’s sensors gather left-right and up-down info and then control the plane down into the runway. We do this with planes carrying as many as 350+ souls on board. You would never even know if a pilot was using autoland, and you’ve probably never heard of an autoland accident the way you have with self-driving.

The difference is, for a plane to do an auto-land (Cat III Landing) you need six things. The airport has to be certified, the crew needs to be certified, the aircraft needs to be certified, the company you are working with must be certified with its home civil aviation authority, the airport/country you are doing the cat III must certify the company as well, AND the weather should actually be low vis (meaning other types of landings like visual, VNAV and standard ILS are more difficult/impossible).

If you have just one of these items not certified, then the pilot can’t do an auto-land.

Until we have the same rigor in self-driving, I would not anticipate much success, for safety reasons.