Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

So now, in addition to everything, there will come a day when a person is stranded some-place as the driverless car couldnt exactly find them

Ahh, if you think this is a new problem, you're too young to remember the fun of calling a cab by pay phone to some obscure address, then alternating between going inside and calling the dispatcher and then running out to the street to try to flag down the cab.

At least with a driverless car I can pinpoint my location on a map when I call it.

Person winds up being in an unsafe environment and needs immediate assistance.

Existing car-share (and cab) drivers are also willing to drop you off in an unsafe environment if that's where you told him you want to go. While sometimes they'll stick around to make sure you make it to your door (if you're female), that's by no means guaranteed.



I'll just be happy that I don't have to make sure the driver isn't microsleeping on a late drive home (it's happened more often than I care to count). Some countries have very poor regulations on working hours for people operating vehicles.

Edit: I don't mean to sound like I'm singling out ride sharing/hailing companies, it's an across the board thing with human drivers.


im 42, so no not too young - and I appreciate your point.

I feel that people are latching onto their opinions about driverless car tech and not talking about the wider implications. That is the point, I am poorly, making, apparently....

I just think that not all the questions have been asked about what it means to be a "driverless car" and that we need to run through all the risks -- and thats the one thing I find really lacking in any of these conversations at all.


TBH, your objection seems like something that anyone would think of in ten minutes of considering pitfalls. To think that no one at Waymo (or Cruise, or Lyft, etc.) has considered it, you must have a very dim view of their competence.


Nope, not question their competence - I’m questioning where the answers are to the dialogue we should be having surrounding ai cars???? Where the fuck are the answers, what body owns them?


Presumably each company will have their own approaches to these issues. They don't prima facie seem to be issues that require legislation. In that sense, "we" are not having a dialogue about this at all, any more than "we" are having conversation about cyclist detection, because "we" are not building self-driving cars. Waymo, Cruise, etc. are building self-driving cars, and we are not privy to their internal deliberations on these issues.


Thank you for this point.

My mention of “we” though are the consumers who will be paying these companies for rides and presuming they have already thought about these safety issues, yet “we” have no privvy to an understanding about who has approached the issues nor who has the best approach and neither a standard to refer to that “we” can expect the companies to uphold.

That’s the whole point of “us” starting to ask questions.

“So, uh, you want me to fly in your plane, to what standards are these planes built to?”

Oh look, “we” have an FAA who manages all that, regardless of who made the damn plane.


I'm mostly curious what you imagine happens now in your scenarios with owner-driven cars and taxis. It's not like they now lead to better outcomes.


did you not read the terms of service when you opened the car door? they are not responsible.


I'm just imagining opening the door and getting a 10 second long 2000wpm recording of someone reading the TaC.


The silkscreened-onto-the-headliner bright yellow non-removable warnings weren't enough.


NEXT NEXT NEXT NExT OK INSTALL YES




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: