Google’s Self-Driving Cars Are Going to Change Everything

http://vancouverdata.blogspot.com/2012/08/googles-self-driving-cars-are-going-to.html

by robdoherty2 • 14 years ago

74 136 14 years ago

vancouverdata.blogspot.com

autophil2• 14 years ago

Self driving cars is such a dumb, short-sighted idea. We don't need more cars on the road, and we don't need more roads either. It's not sustainable.

Let's think beyond cars and envision better ways of living that don't punish the Earth and the atmosphere.

The emperor is in the buck on this one.

daeken• 14 years ago

> Self driving cars is such a dumb, short-sighted idea. We don't need more cars on the road, and we don't need more roads either. It's not sustainable.

Doing heroin is a bad idea; it's harmful to the body and the community. But while fighting heroin is a good thing, it's also good to give addicts clean needles so they aren't harmed even more.

Cars aren't going anywhere, but if you can reduce the harm while promoting better alternatives, everyone wins.

autophil2• 14 years ago

Everybody wins? No, the Earth loses, and then we lose. It's happening faster than you think.

anusinha• 14 years ago

There is nothing intrinsically wrong about the idea of a car. It is what powers the car (currently gasoline) that is the problem. But the self-driving technology is applicable to electric cars, cars that run on fuel cells, what ever other modern and sustainable methods for powering a car exist.

philwelch10• 14 years ago

> There is nothing intrinsically wrong about the idea of a car.

For a single commuter, it increases their weight footprint by an order of magnitude and their space footprint by over two orders of magnitude, which increases total energy consumption and traffic congestion compared to simply transporting the commuter themselves.

Schwolop• 14 years ago

If cars are self-driving, there'll be less of them. And they can better utilise existing road space (faster reaction times means they can tail-gate with comparative safety.)

veb2• 14 years ago

I suspect after the technology becomes wide-spread, new laws will be made to minimise people buying (human-driven) vehicles. Cars will probably require some expensive licence to drive, older cars will not be allowed on the road unless an exemption is made etc. Sort of how Singapore does it.

madiator• 14 years ago

> We don't need more cars on the road, and we don't need more roads either. It's not sustainable.

If anything, autonomous cars is a great way to go to reducing the number. The car can drop you off at office and come back home by itself, so your significant other could use it in the meanwhile without really having to buy two cars.

alexqgb• 14 years ago

Speaking of dumb and short-sighted, how do you fail to see that robotic drivers can make vastly more efficient use of existing infrastructure than humans? How do you not see that reducing traffic jams lowers the amount of gasoline burnt idling, and carbon emitted to no effect? How do you not see that the same technology can be the basis for a very different transportation system? Can you not imagine a world where few people own cars (which are parked most of the the time) and, instead, rely on fleets of robotic taxis simply pick people up and drop them off where and when they're called? If crashes were a thing of the past, do you see how dramatically engineering would change? How much smaller and lighter cars could become? How much less fuel they'd use?

I mean, I'm all for envisioning better ways of living. I'm even more in favor of the guys who are not only envisioning it, they're actually building the means.

What are you building?

philwelch10• 14 years ago

autophil probably goes too far, but he isn't entirely wrong--even perfectly efficient robotic cars powered by pixie dust are inefficient and not a panacea for the problems of traffic and pollution that car-centric infrastructure has caused.

brc13• 14 years ago

What annoys me about posts like this in general is that they only see cars (and motorised transport in general) as a cost, but don't take into account any benefits.

It's a silly position to only talk about costs, completely disregard any benefits. It comes across like a petulant brainwashed teenager, and people should try and argue their point better.

the_cat_kittles3• 14 years ago

I have hoped/dreamed of this for 10 years. It will happen.

Another thing thats nice is we will be able to route efficiently. Tim Roughgarden came up with the "price of anarchy" of when we route selfishly (one of the most interesting papers I have ever read) check it out here: http://theory.stanford.edu/~tim/papers/optima.pdf

Braess's paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox

just incredible!

zoidb2• 14 years ago

Without car accidents i bet the supply of organs will decrease dramatically, I wonder (in theory) if it might be enough to push them to sell on the free market.

Another thing it will due is drastically reduce the need for state police, I assume the majority of their work is traffic and traffic accident related.

philwelch10• 14 years ago

The problem with organs is that for most of them, you need freshly-killed young people. Old people's organs are usually no good, as are the organs of those who die of natural causes (if their organs were any good they wouldn't have died), but healthy young people on motorcycles provide top-notch organs, assuming they weren't damaged in the accident itself.

coopdog• 14 years ago

Luckily it's harder to automate motorcycle driving : D

Plus there's less incentive because they usually only injure themself unless something goes terribly wrong. <darkhumour>

scoofy• 14 years ago

Never underestimate the Kronos Effect that Tim Wu talks about in The Master Switch. If what this article predicts starts to pan out, I'd expect a lot of lobbying dollars to scare people into keeping it illegal. Even if it is safer/better.

brc13• 14 years ago

Too late

http://jalopnik.com/5934213/autonomous-google-cars-will-kill...

illumin82• 14 years ago

It will eventually happen, but in order to do so, you first need a catalyst - a major metropolitan area such as Manhattan that converts to 100% robocars within a geographic area. The problem is that if you mix human and robocar drivers, any car company making a robocar is going to get sued into oblivion when they collide with a human driver, regardless of who is at fault. And, there are definitely ways that humans can cause robocars to have unavoidable accidents (swerving across the double yellow line at the last split second, etc).

I think that's a really good solution, honestly. Just deploy 100,000 robotaxis the size of smart cars in Midtown and ban all other vehicles.

On a side note, NYC pedestrians are already pretty aggressive at jaywalking and the fact that robocars stop on a dime when they sense a pedestrian in their way will create all kinds of new ways for pedestrians to harass robotaxis.

toomuchtodo4• 14 years ago

Doesn't even have to be a major metro area. Start small. Someplace without snow (Google cars still have problems with snow). Puerto Rico. The Bahamas. Hawaii. These are all small places where you can shake out the major issues before expanding.

Also, other places to start would be Nevada (as Google is doing), Texas, and other large states where there is a benefit to having something automated do the driving for 3-6 hours across large stretches of highway.

You're never going to have a major metro just ban human-driven cars overnight; you win by attrition, small bites very quickly.

illumin82• 14 years ago

Good point - better to start small. Vacation islands would be perfect as most people don't really want to drive on vacation anyway, and you don't have to worry about getting a shady taxi driver.

callmeed2• 14 years ago

I don't think tourist-heavy locations like Hawaii and the Bahamas would be good. Lots rental car business and airport traffic relative to the size.

bokonist• 14 years ago

I would assume that any robocar would keep a record of its visual interface, like the airline blackbox. It would probably become much easier to judge who is at fault.

brc13• 14 years ago

I disagree.

When cars started to take over from horse and cart, it still took 20+ years for them to become commonplace. It takes time for reliability to go up, and cost to come down. It takes time for the laws to catch up.

What seems like a blink in time to us now (1880s-1900) was 20 years for the people living it at the time. Cars were, at first, a freak sighting - then gradually, little by little, they caught on, and millions of horses were, ahem, retired.

A big step change isn't needed at all. Just gradual introduction and refinement until they are a compelling proposition.

As for the legal issue - the first generation of cars will require a human driver behind the wheel. They'll remain repsonsible for the foreseeable future. Likely the answer to long-term compensation for injured victims will be a shared insurance scheme - you pay the registration on your self-drive vehicle, and a portion of that goes into an insurance fund. If there is an accident and property/people are adversely affected, they get paid out from that fund according to a pre-determined formula ($x,000 for a limb on a 25 year old, $y,000,000 for a 45 paraplegic, etc). This isn't greatly different from schemes in place around the world today, where pinning fault on someone comes second to making sure those injured in traffic accidents are compensated + rehabilitated properly.

kkowalczyk6• 14 years ago

This a very context-free analogy.

The biggest reason why it took a long time for cars to replace horses was high price (simply stated: most people couldn't afford a car even if they wanted one) and lack of infrastructure (it takes years to build roads).

We already have the infrastructure and the price will favor self-driving cars.

The laws heavily favor safety in cars (not everyone likes seat-belts and yet we have laws requiring people to use them; we have laws banning using a cell-phone while driving, driving while drunk; cars have to build in a way that withstand crashes etc.).

As long as it can be demonstrated that self-driving cars are safer (and they are), there will not only be pressure to allow them but to require them and eventually ban human drivers altogether.

Once the self-driving cars are allowed, the lower price and greater convenience will make it a blockbuster. I don't want to own a car, I don't want to operate it, I just want to get from Mission to SOMA fast and cheaply and self-driving cars will be able to offer that.

philwelch10• 14 years ago

Maybe Singapore's a good bet--combination of a major metropolitan area and a technocratic dictatorship that might go for it.

jasonlingx5• 14 years ago

Hah. Unlikely. We still tax diesel cars several times more then petrol cars because we think they are dirtier. This is only just beginning to change. Tesla gave up here because of the frosty reception from our government. The authorities here tend to adopt a wait and see attitude rather than pushing the boundaries on things like this.

ryannielsen2• 14 years ago

any car company making a robocar is going to get sued into oblivion when they collide with a human driver, regardless of who is at fault

I'd actually be somewhat surprised if this were the case. Self-driving cars will gather an enormous amount of sensor data and I bet they'll store that and decision tree logs in a "black box" of sorts. If this isn't being done now, I guarantee it'll be done after the first few lawsuits.

With that info in hand, it should be rather clear – at least in the majority of cases – who's at fault. The human driver can claim they swerved over the double line to avoid an obstacle, but the sensor information can probably confirm whether that's actually the case.

This isn't to say there won't be lawsuits, or that self-driving cars will never be at fault. I just expect there will be a rash of initial lawsuits. Then, as it becomes clear that the data recorded by self-driving cars makes them a difficult target to exploit (and assuming self-driving cars are in fact less error prone than human drivers), I expect lawsuits to taper off.

hyperbovine• 14 years ago

You are exactly right -- no company with half an ounce of brains is going to make a robocar that does anything except obey every traffic law on the books. Barring a software failure it's almost inconceivable to me that said cars even could cause an accident! But the flip side is much more damning: congratulations, you're now driving the speed limit everywhere you go. You're following at five car lengths. You stop for yellows and anybody within a quarter mile of a crosswalk. Basically, you drive like a Florida octogenarian, everyone else on the road hates you and it takes longer to go places. I can see a few die-hards going for that proposition, but not many.

maratd• 14 years ago

> the fact that robocars stop on a dime when they sense a pedestrian in their way will create all kinds of new ways for pedestrians to harass robotaxis.

Meh. I can solve this with one line of code. Every programming language has a random function =)

As a native, I can tell you that this is the solution employed by most human driven taxis already.

jasonlingx5• 14 years ago

Why would robocar companies be sued if they are not at fault?

anthonycerra• 14 years ago

I've also thought about how self-driving cars will affect crime. If police don't have to enforce moving violations does that give them more time to patrol areas with higher crime OR do those departments shrink because of the lack of revenue from said moving violations?

dm82• 14 years ago

I love Google's Self Driving Cars. But do you think auto industry will allow self driving cars without any problems? For simple concept like Uber, we are already seeing so many hurdles. For any radical innovation to happen lots of naysayers and incumbents will try to kick innovators at every opportunity. Unfortunately, auto industry will use some sort of machination to lobby for evil regulations.

EDIT: To downvoters, I'm in favor of self driving cars but I'm worried about auto industry spoiling the party.

brc13• 14 years ago

Self driving cars have the ability to increase the number of passenger miles driven.

The auto industry profitability depends on passenger miles - less miles, less cars + parts, less revenue.

Google isn't going to get into the car assembly business. One or more of the innovative car firms will just licence the self drive technology into an existing platform as a first step.

Car makers themselves have been experimenting with this stuff for decades. If you google around you'll find BMWs doing high speed laps of race circuits with no drivers.

A modern S-Class Benz can literally drive itself already - it has brake assist, lane assist, steering assist, parking assist and radar guided cruise control. It knows where it is going and how long it will take to get there. The driver really is only a small part of the driving equation in a car like this.

toomuchtodo4• 14 years ago

Why would Google license the tech when they could buy Tesla (TSLA market cap is $3 BB; CHEAP for the value they deliver) and turn out Google cars themselves? They then control the entire ecosystem, similar to Android, versus having to cede control to car companies who drag ass on innovation.

dm82• 14 years ago

I agree but Auto industry is not about car manufacturers. Players like auto insurance companies (who constitute billions of dollars in market cap) will not fade easily.

senthilnayagam• 14 years ago

Also these cars would be mostly electric, which have fewer moving parts

bengl3rt4• 14 years ago

Sorry but I will always want to drive myself. I have a great car that I love and because of the way the world has changed since it was made (20 years or so) I don't think they'll ever make anything quite like this again. I intend to keep it forever.

Plus driving is way too fun. Driving != commuting... go find yourself a nice deserted mountain road, roll down the windows, and feel the breeze.

jonknee• 14 years ago

Read the part about higher insurance rates for people who want to risk driving themselves.

bengl3rt4• 14 years ago

I don't follow... are the economies of scale that allow insurance companies to operate in the current market graduated such that if they only had to insure a fraction of the current driving population, they couldn't do it at the same cost per person?

Granted they will fight the shrinking of that market tooth and nail (and probably lobby to mandate insurance for all cars regardless of who or what is driving them), but it's not as though their cost structure stays the same once most of the population stops having accidents.

philwelch10• 14 years ago

As long as your choices don't have any externalities, more power to you. People romanticize the days of riding horseback, too, but they don't romanticize the fact that a hundred years ago, every city street was covered in horse shit.

I imagine we'll still have recreational tracks and courses for driving, but "the joy of driving" doesn't justify the megadeaths caused by automobile accidents.

kkowalczyk6• 14 years ago

He addressed this point: you'll be able to drive yourself but it'll cost you much more than giving the control to the car (due to cost of the insurance) and much more than today (insurance spreads risks and in order to work, needs a lot of buyers, in this case drivers; if most people switch from current "person driver", expensive insurance to much cheaper "auto-driver" insurance, the "person driver" insurance will become more expensive because there will be no benefits of scale).

Ultimately, it doesn't matter what you will do, but what majority of people will do and his article is about those big-picture changes. Cars replaced horses as mode of transportation, with many consequences to society. Very rich people can still ride horses as a hobby, but that doesn't nullify the magnitude of changes brought by replacing horses by cars.

shardling• 14 years ago

In the long run, hopefully person driver insurance won't be too much more expensive, simply because they'll be less accidents.

pcurve2• 14 years ago

The horse analogy is brilliant.

lftl• 14 years ago

I've only been able to sympathize with what you're saying a very few times. Probably because I've always driven cars that I only view as utilitarian.

The interesting part to me is that the pervasiveness of this general sentiment in America is the reason I think self-driving cars will win out in the near-to-medium term over other options that are probably more efficient and cost effective. America is married to the car, and that's what makes the self-driving car the most likely to succeed new form of transport in my opinion.

brc13• 14 years ago

I enjoy driving as well. But not all driving is fun.

You'll always be able to drive. But I would guess most 'fun' driving cars will be a hobby, like a boat or a horse. Not something you use every day.

But a change like that is 20+ years away.

Xcelerate• 14 years ago

You would continue to drive yourself despite the fact that, statistically, automated cars could save thousands of lives by reducing accidents?

sodafountan• 14 years ago

And your part of what will be known 50 years from now as an "old generation". When kids grow up with atomized cars (their parents will add the feature when their kids start driving out of fear, texting, friends, drinking, you fucking name it) they'll become accustomed to the experience and adopt it in droves.

Which leaves me with one question for you: do people still drive the Ford Model T on the road? My point should be obvious. Time changes things drastically. Either adopt the future or become obsolete. I can't stand people who can't stand change.

How does it feel to be considered old?

bengl3rt4• 14 years ago

"Do people still drive the Ford Model T"

The ones that love it do. They even restore them and have meets where hundreds of them get together in the same place.

My car has a strong enthusiast community around it now and I hope that will continue long into the future.

cargo8• 14 years ago

Interesting thoughts, but you're ignoring the demographic that enjoys driving for driving.

Driving a car is a fun experience for a lot of people, when you're not just commuting and putzing along to work.

randomdata• 14 years ago

People still ride horses and enjoy doing it, but I don't see anyone advocating using horses for their daily driver (the Amish excluded). Driving for pleasure doesn't have to go away.

orangecat2• 14 years ago

Exactly. And I can see a new sport/hobby of semi-automated driving where you can perform maneuvers that are difficult or impossible for the best humans today. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY93kr8PaC4 is a simple example; imagine what you could do with a high-performance vehicle.

callmeed2• 14 years ago

The other day I was driving 2 of my kids (6 and 7) to one of their Summer rec programs. I told them that they would be driven by robotic/self-driving cars someday soon. The questions never stopped after that:

"How will the car know where to take us?"

"How will the car know to stop at stop signs?"

"What if there's a cat in the road?"

"Will the car take us to get frozen yogurt?"

shasta• 14 years ago

At first the robot cars will take you to get frozen yogurt. Then they will begin to refuse, citing your weight and the three laws.

veb2• 14 years ago

How will this technology work in say, New Zealand? There's a lot of backroads, gravel roads and roads that don't appear in Google Maps.

I guess it would be interesting to see a Google Car, flying around on some back gravel road in New Zealand at 100km/hr without crashing. :) (Google rally driving anyone?)

plywoodtrees3• 14 years ago

They can recognise road edges visually. Best-guess routing to off-map destinations. Cars can feed back trip data to improve the map database.

seanx• 14 years ago

Driving to ski fields will be fun:)

salman894• 14 years ago

Author is missing a few important points that are highly relavent:

1) No insurance implies no liability. When people "buy" these mostly autonomous vehicles, who is assuming liability? Google?

2) "Death of car companies" - is Google going to start making cars? Are they going to compete against years of engineering? Just because they are building the brain doesn't mean they will be building the entire body.

3) The auto industry is heavily regulated, and moves very slow. 5-10 years is a very optimistic estimate.

4) Cars are moving mechanical parts. They require maintenance and repair. How often do you go to the car shop because of an accident? How often do you go for general repairs?

5) Sure, parking revenue might go down for the city. Traffic at those same spots where people did not go because it was hard to find parking will go up. How often have you considered going somewhere else because of parking?

6) Not sure what percentage of the legal system is bogged down by "driving" related crimes. Same for health industry, vehicle related health service.

The author is making the mistake of equating Google moving into this space as Google being able to do all. Google will not be able to manufacture cars for the near future. They will not be able to eliminate liability. They will also have to change driving culture and habits. Having discussed this with friends, a fair number of people just want their own car that they drive.

poblano2• 14 years ago

Re: 3, he didn't say mechanics would go away, just auto body/collision shops.

kkowalczyk6• 14 years ago

My theory is that we'll see the rise of what the author calls robo-taxi companies e.g. Uber or Google can provide car-as-a-service, for a monthly fee or

1. robo-taxi companies will self-insure. Insurance is just spreading the risk. If you have a fleet of 10.000 cars, self-insurance will be cheaper

2. by "death" he means "significant decline", not "disappearance". A company that buys 10.000 cars has a purchasing power that a single customer doesn't. They can dictate the specs to a car company and they can pit several companies against each other to get the best deal. They can even co-design the cars for their own metrics (e.g. fuel efficiency, reliability, maintainability is super important for someone who has a large fleet).

Car companies will have no choice but to play ball, some of them will go bankrupt and the remaining will service a much smaller market.

3. You assume that self-driving cars need a lot of new regulations. They don't - they just need to be allowed on the road. The rules have already changed in Nevada in California. When the technology is proven, the states will have a hard time justifying not allowing technology that is proven to save a significant number of lives.

4. robo-taxi companies will bring repairs in-house or outsource to existing companies. Again, they'll have upper hand in negotiations due to providing a lot of business and the overall market for repairs will shrink dramatically. Google could bring all their statistics knowledge to predicting what and when will fail and use the past data to improve the parts that fail the most.

5. not sure what you're driving at

6. agreed, probably overstatement on the author's part

Google (or some other robo-taxi company) doesn't have to make their own cars, they'll have enough pricing power to pit multiple car manufacturers against each others to get the best deal, drive down the margins etc., just as Apple does with iPhone parts manufactuers (where Apple gets most of the profit from the phone).

They can self-insure - the liability never goes away but will be manageable from revenues.

As to people who insist on owning a car - most of them will change their mind because of price. If you leave college with $50k in student debt, are you going to spend $10k on a new car + monthly insurance + gas + cost of garage ($100/month in San Francisco if your apartment doesn't already come with it) + hassle of owning a car or will you pay $100/month for much more convenient car-as-a-service deal?

salman894• 14 years ago

OK, I'll bite on the robo-taxi fleets. The average cab driver makes $10.79 an hour: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/ta...

Give a 50% overhead and make the cab driver's cost $15 an hour. I used to pay about $50 for a half hour cab ride from LAX to Westwood, tip and surcharge subtracted, call it $40. I would still find a "no driver" taxi ride for $30 expensive.

The point I am trying to get at is that the economies of traditional taxi companies and future "robo-taxi" companies will not be all that different. Taxi companies will not be repairing cars. They already buy large fleets of cars. Also keep in mind that the taxi industry itself is regulated. Recall Udemey's issues in DC with the taxi lobby.

I do think Google will can be successful in the automotive industry, I just don't buy that they will be doing so by attempting to take down other existing industries. Google is entering a space that is much different than the web or electronic hardware. They have so much trouble breaking into the living room, not sure why you think they will make it to the driveway so quickly.

On (5), I meant a decrease in parking revenue is not necessarily a bad thing for a city. Easier parking also means less barriers to a purchase.

philwelch10• 14 years ago

> robo-taxi companies will self-insure. Insurance is just spreading the risk. If you have a fleet of 10.000 cars, self-insurance will be cheaper

I can attest that Zipcar, in fact, already seems to do this. Insurance and gas are included with the hourly rental fee. In fact, just get rid of having to drive the damn thing and Zipcar already has the whole business model down....

jasonlingx5• 14 years ago

1) There will still be insurance but it will get negligibly cheap if these cars are as safe as we think.

Fizzer2• 14 years ago

Having discussed this with friends, a fair number of people just want their own car that they drive.

I've encountered the same reaction, and I believe it is widespread. But here's the thing: even the people who insist on owning and driving their own cars, and refuse to let it drive them, can still benefit greatly from owning a self-driving car.

Imagine never having to park - you just get out of your car in front of your destination and it goes and finds a parking spot.

Imagine never having to get someone to drop you off at the airport. Your car can just go home afterwards.

Imagine getting your oil changed or other maintenance. The car can do this on its own when you don't need it.

I believe that we'll see a lot of marketing geared towards the people who would never let a car drive them around. This will be a great stepping-stone to help convince these people that it's safe. They'll get it for the convenience, but then eventually one day they'll use it when they're drunk or tired. Eventually, they'll learn to trust it.

salman894• 14 years ago

I totally agree. My point is that Google has the potential to become part of the value chain - not replace it.

tesseractive• 14 years ago

I think it's an underrated step between self-driving cars and cars that drive unoccupied, as in your example of cars that go park themselves. Adverse weather conditions, mechanical failure, a simple flat tire -- if something goes wrong with a car, we expect the owner to be there to deal with the problem.

That's not to say that the problem can't be solved, but my guess is that it will take time and culture changes to adapt to these cars before people have the kind of comfort level to allow empty cars to roam around.

joering25• 14 years ago

Well, not everyone will see it this way. My example:

> Imagine never having to park

I like knowing where I parked. Further, we have something called valley parking, in most places that I would want to get off for a while.

But besides, in crowded cities, how do you actually imagine that? Most car owners in the NYC take subway to go downtown, because it would either take 2 hours to find a parking spot, or it would be very far from initial destination. With AC, I can imagine people just getting off at their destination (right in front of the door) and won't give a damn what their car will do in the meanwhile until they are back in 45 minute. So you will have jam packed streets with empty cars driving around waiting for their masters to come back -- total horror on the streets! Otherwise - what? Have the car to drive back home empty and come back in 45 minutes?? That putting even more traffic on the street and more pollution.

> Imagine never having to get someone to drop you off at the airport. Your car can just go home afterwards. Sure, or I can take a cab which will be the same result - I will get to the airport after all. The only difference, I can have one or two to relax at home with wife, before the flight.

> Imagine getting your oil changed or other maintenance. The car can do this on its own when you don't need it.

Yes, so I am even more disconnected from the real world. Instead of making a Saturday trip to change an oil and chat with mechanics about good old days, about whether, girls, beer, or whatever it is, I am sure better staying home to chat on Facebook, while my car gets oil change on its own...

> I believe that we'll see a lot of marketing geared towards the people who would never let a car drive them around.

Probably not. I would guess all makers will jump ship quickly. There will be money to spend on advertising new technology, not the old one.

> This will be a great stepping-stone to help convince these people that it's safe.

If its going to be safe, noone will need to be convinced. I am sure, even reading this thread, you will find enough initial adopters for them to pass the word to the masses how safe AC really are.

pcurve2• 14 years ago

1) You would still need some form of insurance. It's still possible for a human operator/owner to negligently cause accidents. (e.g. poor maintenance, chair strapped to the roof falling off at 65mph).

However, if premiums become low enough, car insurance policy might even be offered as an add-on to homeowner's or renter's insurance.

4) I think cars will evolve (or devolve) to require less maintenance, and more self-diagnosing.

5) If there are a lot of autonomous cars, owners can simply walk away from their cars, and the cars will coordinate amongst themselves to part in designated spots.

6) You know what bogs down city courts? People fighting traffic and parking tickets.

salman894• 14 years ago

4) This has nothing to do with Google and more to do with auto manufacturers. I don't think the problem is that people can't drive their cars to the auto shop.

5) Agreed. Also better traffic flow if you can get the cars to work together.

6) You're probably right about city courts. I'd also love to see cops focusing on actual police work rather than waiting for people to run a stop sign. But we have traffic courts that handle these sort of things - we have assigned separate agencies to take care of it. It's hard to argue though that we have somehow failed to prosecute actual crime due to traffic and parking tickets - there are probably problems more severe that have caused that.

molmalo• 14 years ago

The author also is very naive when he says "no more bus drivers, taxi drivers, limo drivers". It may happen eventually, but not before a few decades. There are a lot of power struggles and political interests that will make this happen in a very very long time frame. Most probably, it will happen as it happens today with lots of aircraft's. While they can do lots of things autonomously, there must be a human to takes certain decisions and as a backup.

What I can see instead, is lots of truck drivers watching TV or just sleeping at the steering wheel, while their trucks do the job.

mc32• 14 years ago

Bus drivers and those represented by unions and assciations will take a while to be eliminated from being necessary.

It hasn't been necessary to have train operartors/conductors for a few decades but they persist, despite trains being by their nature of prescribed, unchanging, predictable routes with preditable stops, prime candidates for automation. Monorails, for some reason are an exception.

the_cat_kittles3• 14 years ago

Does anyone have a good summary of the actual monetary costs associated with human drivers? That would be really compelling.

ForrestN• 14 years ago

I think this is missing one major thing: private car ownership will drastically decrease. It will be a luxury to own a car, almost everyone will be driven in available commodity cars. I personally hope this becomes public transit: available public cars just like some cities have available public bikes. Request it via your handheld (a la Uber), take it anywhere, hop out and it will either remain where it is or head to where it's needed. But it could just as easily by all private robotaxis.

Human drivers will be regulated and confined to certain areas. No amount of "but I like the feeling of driving!" can justify unnecessary death and destruction for too long, and anyway people will grow up not driving. It's more or less like paper books.

Eventually the infrastructure and car design will change, too. Our system is built for human drivers and cars. Obviously we won't abandon existing roads, at least not for a long time, but a lot can be changed cheaply that will have major effects once robocars are ubiquitous.

GFKjunior• 14 years ago

How would a young programmer get into this field?

Are PhD's a prerequisite?

the_cat_kittles3• 14 years ago

machine learning (particularly computer vision) and AI would be valuable skills I think.

shriphani• 14 years ago

DSP, Decision Theory, Machine Learning.

joshsegall• 14 years ago

I understand the googly eyed take on "the way of the future" of cars, but self-driving cars are going to be too impractical to become ubiquitous for much longer than 5-10.

Maybe this all works great in metro areas with mild weather, but it's not going to work well in severe weather, poorly/wrongly marked roads, "offroad" areas, and construction zones, which is still a lot of the country at this point (and most of 3rd world). I've driven in some backwards places where there are no maps or GPS, and I've driven in near-whiteout conditions, and I'm sorry but no robotic system today can deal with all those variables.

It's also not going to handle human trade-offs well--e.g. sometimes it's better to crash your out-of-control car than to ram into a schoolbus full of kindergarteners.

You can argue these are all low probability situations or that eventually AI will solve them all and you're probably right, but I'd argue these situations are going to prevent full adoption for much longer than 5-10 years. It's going to take near-human intelligence to overcome all of them. Until then, humans will still drive cars, and probably a lot more often that you can imagine, even if everyone wanted the utopian vision to be true.

spdy• 14 years ago

This is the next big thing and it will happen. Just imagine a city full of robotic cars were you dont have to own a car anymore because you can always call one. Less traffic jams because they can drive at peak efficiency and can plan ahead because they all know where everyone wants to go and all of them will be electronic cars.

This has so many ups on society and our environment if i could buy/use one tomorrow i would do so.

One of the biggest downside of this a lot of people like cab/truck driver will lose their jobs due to this "revolution"

orangecat2• 14 years ago

One of the biggest downside of this a lot of people like cab/truck driver will lose their jobs due to this "revolution"

In the medium to long term, that's a benefit.

philsnow• 14 years ago

Come on, let's not get swept away in the hyperbole and be reasonable for a minute: MADD will never go away.

plywoodtrees3• 14 years ago

I doubt that car insurance is dominated by fixed costs - istr payout rates are over 70%. Even if the number of policy holders falls by half (which is unlikely to happen in a decade) premiums shouldn't skyrocket.

More robot cars on the road likely make it safer for the remaining humans, which will tend to lower premiums.

The only problem is if the most dangerous humans prefer to drive themselves. I can see factors in both directions.

joering25• 14 years ago

To me, there are still so many questions left unanswered...

First and foremost, the majority that believes AC will resolve heavy traffic in the cities is wrong. At the end, its about people, not cars. Think how you behave nowadays in the city crowded with cars -- you are perfectly aware not to f*ck with the driver, because if you step in his way you may get killed. We are humans, we make mistakes. Now, I would imagine those super cars must see everything around -- otherwise noone in the GOV in their sound mind would have approved AC to drive around humans. Therefore, I can imagine hoards of people taking advantage of this and just simply walking in front of a riding AC just because they know its not a human steering the wheel and that the car has no other choice than stop in front of the pedestrian, regardless if he stepped in and force the right of way or not. Heck, most likely the car will not even hunk or course at the pedestrian. Awesome! In the crowded cities, people will establish this behavior: before walking into the street, check the car - oh its AC, fine I am stepping in, no worries! And whos gonna enforce those violators? 100 more cameras at each corner??

Second, I still have no idea how on Earth would AC riding on a highway know that it is a black cat, not a black bag laying on the street. We humans see the difference faster than a blink of an eye. Are you telling me that Google invented perfect image recognition system that will be always right? What if someone paints a black cat on a bag that flies low on the highway?? -- will the car stop or not? I can see the news: google AC ran over Missis Jennings's cat -- noone is liable; noone will be responsible.

The bottom line: sooner or later AC will make a mistake. Hope it won't be in front of you.

Last, who is liable when the system makes a mistake? When you crash into other vehicle and there are victims. Are you liable? Can you go to jail? Will google go to jail? or car manufacturer? Are you telling me there are NO chances whatsoever that this will happen again?? [1] [2]

[1] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35589163/ns/business-autos/t/toy... [2] http://articles.nydailynews.com/2010-02-22/news/27057005_1_s...

edit: not to mention all the suiciders -- now its not only trains, but I can throw myself under riding AC.

jasonlingx5• 14 years ago

Huh? So are you saying the cars are too safe or not safe enough?

joering25• 14 years ago

I was trying to say (pardon my English) that in the cities where the AC suppose to help, lots of people will be taking advantage of the "overprotective" system. When normally every time you are crossing the street you don't know what kind of driver is passing you, whether it is a good decent driver or a lunatic on acid, with AC all cars will drive and behave the same way. So people, knowing this will be likely to cross in front of the AC knowing it is smart enough to pull over safely enough not to hit the pedestrian. They will take advantage of knowing the computer's behavior.

qxcv2• 14 years ago

> 100 more cameras at each corner??

There are cameras on the autonomous cars, I'm sure they'd do the trick just fine.

> Second, I still have no idea how on Earth would AC riding on a highway know that it is a black cat, not a black bag laying on the street.

LIDAR. A black bag laying on the street is virtually invisible to it.

> The bottom line: sooner or later AC will make a mistake.

True, but they'll have to make a lot of mistakes to be worse than humans.

> Last, who is liable when the system makes a mistake?

That's a good question, and not one that can be answered categorically for all classes of motor vehicle accident. I'd imagine that the driver of an autonomous car would be liable for their actions in the same sense that a pilot is when they place their plane on autopilot (or a skipper when the use an autotiller to steer their ship). If it can be proven to be poor engineering on the manufacturer's part, then likely the manufacturer will be held responsible. Otherwise it will probably be the driver getting sent to jail. Or maybe a mixture of both if both parties can be proven to have acted negligently.

> ...but I can throw myself under riding AC.

Yet you're incapable of throwing yourself under a normal car? Doesn't this contradict your previous point about sabotage?

Though admittedly sabotage is a very common concern with automatic cars - what if somebody papers over a street sign or throws rocks at the car whilst it is on a sharp corner? In reality, malicious third parties are of concern, but not any more than if the vehicle was not autonomous. Human drivers can still be distracted by noisy passengers, intoxicated by alcohol and blinded by lasers; all you're doing by putting a robot in control is swapping the weaknesses of one system for the weaknesses of another. Ideally, there would be a mechanical backup system which could be controlled by the driver in the case of an emergency, which would effectively make autonomous cars more reliable than normal ones.

joering25• 14 years ago

> LIDAR. A black bag laying on the street is virtually invisible to it.

so when the cats lays in front of it -- it will just run over it, not being able to see it?

> If it can be proven to be poor engineering

Usually after 10 years of deep investigation, given the parties have enough monetary resources to keep the momentum on the law wheel. Read the case I sent about the guy wrongly jailed. Had they not discovered, eventually that it was a car malfunction, he would have still been in jail.

> Yet you're incapable of throwing yourself under a normal car? Doesn't this contradict your previous point about sabotage?

I guess what I was trying to say is that I think getting killed by a car driven by machine feels easier on your conscious than being killed by a car who is driven by a human. I cant explain why.

bicknergseng• 14 years ago

Unanswered or unaddressed by you? All of these questions have most certainly been answered or at least very seriously addressed with room for more conversation.

badragon• 14 years ago

The laser guidance system costs $70K by itself. http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/consumer&i...

It makes sense on long haul trucking but it is going to have to get a LOT cheaper before it goes on passenger cars. 10+ yrs is my guess before you see it on luxury cars. Same as Tesla.

People who can afford a driver will replace them with Google Bots who won't sell their story to People.

mynegation• 14 years ago

Very good points. Almost all of them. This, however...

> Think how devastating that would be to the car industry. People use their cars less than 10% of the time. Imagine if everyone in your city used a RoboTaxi instead, at say 60% utilization. That's 84% fewer cars required.

Somehow that does not ring true. 84% number assumes that no matter the utilization, car lifetime will be the same. As a driver, I know this is definitely not the case, especially in colder regions.

poblano2• 14 years ago

FYI, the article suggests self-driving cars have been approved in Nevada and California, which is true -- but in both states, a human passager (presumably with a driver's license) has to be in the vehicle. In Nevada, you actually have to have two passengers, which in some cases makes it more inconvenient than regular driving.

So ideas like sending your car home instead of parking it, or sending tractor trailers across the country without a driver, aren't going to be legal for the time being.

DividesByZero3• 14 years ago

The changes the author proposes will not occur for the vast majority of the population of the earth - not in China, or in India, or anywhere in Africa and not in many places in south east Asia or south/central America. He has the first world, US-centric view of most futurists. In places where people don't have reliable access to electricity, or even safe drinking water, absolutely no one would be interested in self-driving cars.

He also raises a disturbing point, but masks it as an advantage - "People said it would take years to get these things on the road. It took Google a few months of lobbying Nevada for it to happen. The US states and cities are broke, and Google has $43 billion in cash." In other words, he implies that this will happen quickly because corporations are able to strongarm broke government institutions into policies favouring them, a trend that is dangerous for the average citizen.

He also misses that self-driving cars becoming a norm leads to more car-centered infrastructure over public transportation, leading to a continuation of the vicious circle of over-reliance on cars.

achal• 14 years ago

> self-driving cars becoming a norm leads to more car-centered infrastructure over public transportation

Out of curiosity, why would this be? I can see that commuters who despise driving may switch to cars from public transport, but at least from personal experience, I don't see this as a major reason for people using public transport in the first place.

Is there another reason I'm missing? I'd imagine it would be more likely that self driving vehicles end up improving public transport (both in quality of service and popular usage).

DividesByZero3• 14 years ago

I think there would be a feedback loop in place where self-driving cars demand better infrastructure to support them, and as this infrastructure improves, self-driving cars become more convenient to use, leading more people to want to use them, leading to more such infrastructure. Since this infrastructure gets funded, it's not much of a stretch to think that most transport money would go there.

Some of the technology might make public transport more efficient (self driving buses seem like a good idea), but cars would probably dominate.

philwelch10• 14 years ago

But the developing world is developing fast. Some developing countries never bothered laying down landline telephone networks because it was cheaper and easier to just put up cell towers--in other words, they leapfrog old technologies. Why is it hard to suppose that developing countries might leapfrog regular cars and adopt autocars straightaway?

DividesByZero3• 14 years ago

Because unlike wireless communication, autocars don't fundamentally change anything about the way cars use roads - they certainly don't make it cheaper or easier to implement the infrastructure.

maxxpower• 14 years ago

I am a firm believer that if the car was never invented until 2012, we would not be in control of them, they would be computerized and autonomous.

I welcome the day when unnecessary deaths due to car accidents is a reality.

hrktb• 14 years ago

Cars won't change 'Everything', self driving or not.

Thinking and building the infrastructures to handle smoothly different types of transportations for different purposes, managing the energy consumption and pollution problems, making efficient public transportation work in high population density areas, have smarter roads in the more rural areas and keep in mind communities' safety and well being while designing it all.

All these are large problem that cost a lot, require cooperation from big players from everywhere, and need to be done gradually and consistently over decades.

There was a very very interesting talk by Horace Dediu on this topic on his podcast [0]

Solving the low level infra problem changes everything, having self driving cars is the icing on the cake at best.

[0] http://5by5.tv/criticalpath/40

andyjsong• 14 years ago

>Long-haul truck driving will cease to exist. Think how much money trucking companies will save if they don't have to pay drivers or collision and liability insurance. That's about 3 million jobs in the States. Shipping of goods will be much cheaper.

Does this mean there won't be anyone inside the truck guarding valuable goods inside?

1. Find a truck carrying mobile devices

2. Stand in front of it since it's programmed to stop for pedestrians

3. Partner uses blow torch to get the goods

4. $$$$

I think there will always be someone at the wheel even with self-driving technology. Just think of other forms of commercial forms of transport aka trains. Why aren't their unmanned trains, couldn't we deploy the same tech and incorporate it with a flying drone that has sensors to see what's ahead on the track or even satellite imagery?

Google’s Self-Driving Cars Are Going to Change Everything

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