[HN Gopher] Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare
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Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare
Author : kevinchen
Score : 130 points
Date : 2024-01-12 20:18 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (kevinchen.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (kevinchen.co)
| stevage wrote:
| That was compellingly argued. I'd like to see the braking
| distances fully loaded too.
| darkwater wrote:
| But an autonomous truck can just go slower, no? It never gets
| tired, so unless there is a logistic pressure, it would be
| reasonable to trade speed for safety.
| telotortium wrote:
| No one will tolerate self-driving trucks that are limited to
| lower speed than human-driven trucks. Since human drivers
| have time limits by law, they need to be able to move
| relatively quickly. Human drivers attempting to move around
| super slow autonomous trucks is a guarantee for a lot more
| accidents, more than erasing whatever safety benefits self
| driving would get in the first place. Also, slow trucks would
| not be preferred by the logistics managers that arrange truck
| delivery in the first place. So self driving trucks would
| have to be a _lot_ cheaper to be competitive. I don 't think
| labor is 90% of the cost of a truck delivery.
| intrasight wrote:
| "This is a really, really high bar."
|
| And an arbitrary one, in my opinion. We will be racking up
| millions of driven miles by hundreds of autonomous trucks before
| that bar is reached. We will have drivers in the trucks. We will
| have connections to remote operators.
| jmspring wrote:
| The article calls out the challenge of stopping distance and
| sensing range. Drive Hwy80 over the Sierra Nevada mountains in
| winter, stopping, predictability, many other factors come up as
| well.
| linkjuice4all wrote:
| I know that "just put it on a freight train" doesn't solve
| every logistics problem but it does kind of address this one.
| Maybe their solution should be focused on improving
| transloading between truck and train and using autonomous
| trucking to solve the "last mile(s)" problem for trains.
| creer wrote:
| Trucking and railroads have been competing for a long time.
| The current balance is not random.
|
| By this I mean, significantly shifting it might be a harder
| problem than self-driving. For sure it is now a harder
| problem than human driving.
| nine_k wrote:
| The US have a well-developed and really busy network of
| freight trains. Trains already carry a lot of stuff that's
| economical to carry by train, especially bulk goods.
| jmspring wrote:
| Oh I think the major rail lines should be used for long
| haul cargo traffic Salt Lake -> Reno -> Sacramento -> Bay
| Area would be one example an keep it off mountain roads.
| alexwasserman wrote:
| Yes, some routes are dangerous, but the trucks don't need to
| take those initially. There's a lot of scope for a phased
| ramp up.
|
| A lot of I80 is really straight, same with other highways.
| I70 from Denver to St. Louis is incredibly boring all the way
| through Kansas. I90 from Wisconsin through Minnesota and
| South Dakota is the same. Just dead straight easy roads. Down
| south I10 was pretty easy too.
|
| Just because there are a few tough stretches, that doesn't
| mean the auto-pilot can't drive the other thousand miles on
| the route, with human support where necessary.
|
| Pick the MVP routes that are easiest. I95 is trivial from
| Florida, all the way up to DC. Then it remains mostly easy
| with some really annoying bits around DC, Philly, and NYC. I
| wouldn't want it trying to get through the traffic over the
| GW and through the Bronx, but after that it's mostly smooth
| all the way through Maine.
| jmspring wrote:
| For the East / West routes between California and Nevada /
| Utah / etc. I80 is that corridor. I5 would be an
| interesting one in CA, but you have the grapevine in the
| south and Siskiyous in the North (again, Siskiyous not fun
| in weather).
| johndhi wrote:
| Just spitballing but it seems a unique aspect of a human driver
| is their fear for loss of life. We're all subtly terrified we are
| about to die and that keeps us sharp and responsive and
| thoughtful while driving.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I wish.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Is this satire? That's not how humans work at all. Even a very
| rational player will make a relative trade off call of the
| probability of an action having an outcome and the size of the
| outcome. Case in point: driving with almost no sleep, driving
| while drinking, etc. and humans are quite often irrational and
| take risks just because they're seeking the adrenaline rush.
| And that's for their own life. We can easily also discount the
| life of strangers behind an abstract "I don't know them" mask.
| johndhi wrote:
| Not satire.
|
| People deciding to drive while sleepy doesn't mean it isn't
| scary to do so (in fact it's horrifying). People definitely
| make illogical decisions. Being afraid while driving isn't
| even necessarily a logical decision. It's just an emotion we
| feel. But I know I feel it and a lot of others do too.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| But you get that not everyone has this fear and therefore
| extrapolating that this makes humans innately better
| drivers, right? Also fear and anxiety can make you more
| alert on what you're focusing on, but it narrows your focus
| and can destroys your situational awareness that your
| peripheral senses give you. There's no clear link that
| fearful drivers are better drivers.
|
| > People deciding to drive while sleepy doesn't mean it
| isn't scary to do so (in fact it's horrifying)
|
| You're generalizing your personal emotional response and
| opinion and assuming everyone or a substantial majority
| feels that way. That doesn't seem like a safe assumption
| given that fear driving tends to not be so common because
| that tends to be more common in people who learn as adults.
| samtho wrote:
| I'm confused as to the author's reasoning.
|
| They claim that stoping distance and non-normal driving
| conditions are an issue but these are precisely the same problems
| that AVs meant for ride share face but with a difference
| performance profile. The computer doesn't care if it's hauling 20
| tons or 2 tons, what matters is we give it the correct
| performance profile and install adequate equipment to operate the
| vehicle safely.
|
| The only real argument I see here is the limp mode case where it
| detects an error and must pull off. I can see the actual freeway
| being a problem here but then we just make sure the routes they
| initially travel have been checked prior to deployment - it's a
| finite road that can be mapped and tested against. This can be
| further mitigated by having redundant computer systems and
| redundant environment sensors than it can fall back on to be able
| to safely pull off the side of the road or even make it to its
| next stop. Computers can make faster, more-informed decisions
| about nearly every driving situation and the challenges with
| operating heavy machinery are well understood.
|
| The reason autonomous trucking has not been developed is not
| because of R&D, it all has to do with scale and what the funding
| is chasing. Running a truck is expensive, especially with a large
| load. Financing a project would have a lot of money dumped into
| the just the construction or retrofitting of a truck and it's
| operation for roughly the same computer as the smaller vehicle -
| just with a different performance profile. When the vehicle you
| are testing has a kerb weight of 1100lbs and is electric, your
| maintenance costs plummet to almost nothing with fuel being
| electricity. We don't have the same luxury with trucking.
| Additionally, Uber, Lyft, et al, are bullish on this technology
| because they would rather collect fares and pay a fixed cost for
| vehicles than having to deal with drivers that want silly things
| like compensation. The gig companies are also looking down a
| barrel of a loaded, regularly-shotgun that could drastically cut
| into their revenue. The dollars they are investing into AVs only
| care about ride share now.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| DALL-E prompt produced a road with a semi on the wrong side of a
| no-pass divider line. Love it.
|
| Anyway, the speed doesn't have to be 50mph. Do 40mph on late
| night trips. More EV range/gas efficient anyway.
|
| The deceleration would likely be helped by an EV drivetrain where
| regen and braking can contribute to stopping. Likewise the high-
| torque EV motors can accelerate a semi far more manageably.
|
| Emergency/Fault stops should likely be handled by convergent
| infrastructure, or only using routes with sufficient shoulders.
|
| How many scene understandings can be done with on-demand manual
| takeover? Highways generally have some of the best cell/data
| networks, and again, convergent evolution of infrastructure.
|
| Sensor distance can probably be improved with the concept of a
| "scout car". Likely automated trucks would drive in formation (to
| draft to get better efficiency), a lead car can scout and provide
| additional effective distance. This car doesn't even need to be a
| full size car, it could be a smaller teardrop-optimized drone.
| And if the drone crashes or faults, the following train
| automatically pulls to the side.
|
| Trucking routes can benefit from neural nets tailored to
| repetitive navigations of the route. No handling general queries,
| the tractors (or the control system utilized) isn't driving "a
| general truck". It is driving from Minneapolis to Chicago.
|
| I think I disagree with the article. It assumes too fast for the
| vehicle, too general of routes.
|
| Oh, my final disagreement may be the total size of the vehicle.
| Once automated vehicles can drive at distance ... do you need a
| massive tractor trailer, or can you instead use more capable (and
| more cheaply mass produced) vans or smaller form factors? The
| industry is what it is in current state and a trailer ~= a
| container, so I guess I see why that wouldn't be a go.
| silvestrov wrote:
| If he thinks driving cars in cities is the easiest problem, he
| does not have experience driving a car in a European city with
| lots of cyclists and pedestrians.
|
| Driving a car in inner Copenhagen is a stressful situation due to
| the insane number of cyclist you have to watch out for, see
| https://youtu.be/FaySp9i2zMA?t=113
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Now imagine all those cyclists and pedestrians would also drive
| a car, would also be on the road at the same time. You think
| driving would be less stressfull then?
| twoWhlsGud wrote:
| Yes, I tell my driving friends who complain about some nut
| they saw cycling - "Well, would you be happier if he did that
| in a Chevy Suburban?" :)
| tsimionescu wrote:
| In my expeirence, it is far more common for cyclists to break
| traffic rules than it is for cars to do so. Even pedestrians
| are far more likely to cross on a red light than cars, for
| example.
|
| The vast majority of humans have some respect for the fact
| that they are in charge of a ton or more of hulking metal
| when driving a car, and thus take on more responsibility.
| Drinking and driving is far less common than drinking and
| cycling too.
| steelframe wrote:
| > In my expeirence, it is far more common for cyclists to
| break traffic rules than it is for cars to do so
|
| Or perhaps it's that you're biased and you selectively
| observe.
|
| https://electrek.co/2024/01/11/cars-or-bikes-surprising-
| resu...
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2019/05/10/cyclist
| s...
|
| https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/01/03/study-cyclists-
| dont-b...
|
| https://road.cc/content/news/260509-cyclists-far-less-
| likely...
| hutzlibu wrote:
| If a car makes a misstake - that is a 2 ton fast
| projectile. If a cyclist does, it is a 150 kg and way
| slower one - that's the difference and the post I replied
| to did not say anyone was breaking any rules. Just that
| there were so many of them. But if they all would be
| driving cars instead - it would just mean traffic jam.
|
| So maybe be thankful for those people choosing to not
| contribute to more traffic jam. And noise. And pollution.
| marssaxman wrote:
| It depends on _which_ traffic rules you are watching for.
| Car drivers are vastly more likely to break speed limit
| rules than bike riders are; in fact it 's a minority of
| drivers I see who _don 't_ break speed limit rules (which
| leaves me wondering why they are still considered to be
| rules at all, in a supposedly democratic society; but
| that's another conversation) while it's a rare bike rider
| who is even capable of the athletics necessary to do so.
| twoWhlsGud wrote:
| This observation holds a lesson for cycling advocates in other
| countries, I think. My happy experiences of cycling in
| Copenhagen are only partially due to the reasonably good
| infrastructure. The care that drivers take (thus producing the
| stress S above notes) is also a big part. Good infrastructure
| together with careless drivers doesn't deliver a good cycling
| experience.
|
| Also one of the things autonomy tech could deliver is better
| driving aids to ease some of that stress (it's not a slam dunk
| because it is easy to create driving aids that present a false
| sense of security).
| kevinchen wrote:
| Thst video looks fairly sparse and well structured by SF
| standards? eg interactions starting at 9:00
| https://youtu.be/TOV0ndPr0Dk
|
| Many examples of high pedestrian density in
| https://youtu.be/P6sw4EKegp4
| creer wrote:
| Thanks! Pretty alert pedestrian handling in that 1st video.
| Including one threatening to dash in between cars, one
| actually doing so, and one (apparently) making to cross and
| then not crossing. Also traffic cones are now explicitly
| shown on the monitor.
| tinycombinator wrote:
| The point I gleamed from the article was not that city driving
| was an easy problem, but rather that freeway driving has unique
| issues when it comes to reliability and safety. Simply stopping
| the car could be an acceptable minimal risk condition for a
| crowd of cyclists and pedestrians, but that's no longer the
| case in a freeway. On top of having to deal with sensing range
| + on-board offline decision making + truck stopping distances,
| having no safe fallback like "just brake" seems like a pretty
| difficult problem.
|
| There's also the "interesting events + training" argument in
| the article, which I'd love to see points for or against.
| daveguy wrote:
| City driving is obviously more difficult than highway driving.
| I don't know how in the world he came to the conclusion highway
| driving is more difficult. _Especially_ if you consider the
| truck form factor in a city.
| lotsoweiners wrote:
| Seems like it should be more stressful for the cyclists
| especially if they aren't following the rules of the road.
| wongarsu wrote:
| In my (European) experience the rules cyclist break most
| often involve using pedestrian infrastructure because they
| don't feel safe on car infrastructure (or because provided
| bicycle infrastructure is poorly thought out). Which is
| understandable, but makes being a pedestrian somewhat more
| stressful.
|
| They also occasionally run red lights, but less that
| pedestrians crossing on red.
| minwcnt5 wrote:
| You're describing driving from a human perspective. The delta
| from no cyclists or pedestrians to 100 cyclists or pedestrians
| is a lot easier for a computer than a human because it can pay
| attention to all of them simultaneously and plan a trajectory
| accordingly. Waymo handles this kind of complexity in SF all
| the time.
| michaelgiba wrote:
| I think there are some good points here but IMHO this is overly
| focused on flawless 100% of the time L5 autonomy. Many autonomous
| trucking companies can become economically viable without
| perfection because 1. They aren't dealing with consumers directly
| 2. Can control or focus on specific well understood shipping
| lanes 3. Can provide more human in the loop assistance for tricky
| situations. In this way trucking is easier than ride sharing
| because there is a longer on ramp (no pun intended) for companies
| to improve tech while being viable businesses
| sleepybrett wrote:
| you are describing trains. you've just reinvented the freight
| train.
| kortilla wrote:
| Without the tracks and restrictions tracks impose
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| "Now let's compare these distances with the capabilities of
| various sensors:"
|
| Many cars monitor rotational speed of the tires in order to
| determine whether a wheel is slipping. A Model 3 can detect
| whether a tire is new or old based on tread depth, something I
| learned the hard way.
|
| If trucks were outfitted with rotational encoders on all tires,
| 'slipperiness' could be monitored periodically by, for example,
| tapping brakes and checking whether all wheels continue to rotate
| at the same speed. In emergency braking or maneuvering, the
| rotational speed of all tires can be input to the recovery
| algorithm to perform braking. If the brakes are independently
| controlled, this can be performed per wheel.
|
| More generally, trucks run in fleets and on routes. Similar to
| aircraft reporting turbulence so the next craft can adjust,
| trucks can report road conditions so that approaching trucks can
| adjust their speed or pull over completely if conditions are so
| bad.
| ta8903 wrote:
| >trucks run in fleets and on routes
|
| Makes me wonder if it would be more efficient to run trucks as
| "convoys", maybe consisting of competing companies along
| predetermined routes. And you could have an ultralight canary
| car go an appropriate distance along the front to ensure that
| in the worse case, it is the one that crashes.
| nine_k wrote:
| You can even operate a small winged drone that would watch
| the conditions ahead of a convoy from a reasonable height,
| easily a few km ahead if needed.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Trucks operating in fleet on the same route are called "the
| railway". That's what that your driverless fixed route trucks
| will have to compete with.
| nine_k wrote:
| Unlike a railway train, trucks operating in fleets assemble
| and disassemble easily, without stopping, when their routes
| converge or diverge. They also can operate with a number of
| other vehicles between them.
|
| Rails are a more efficient interface to wheels, but also more
| demanding, and less flexible. 10-lane freeways are
| widespread, but most railways have two pairs of rails at
| best, and one pair in many places. You can't effectively use
| them without strict scheduling.
| prof-dr-ir wrote:
| This article is certainly interesting, but none of these
| arguments are new so it could have been written five years ago.
|
| It would be interesting to hear what a company like Aurora and
| their backers were thinking back in 2020. It seems unlikely that
| they did not come up with these arguments themselves, so what
| were the counterarguments?
| bradley13 wrote:
| Another issue will be piracy.
|
| Stop the truck using a couple of vehicles, cut open the lock on
| the rear doors, and loot. Pick an isolated stretch of toad, and
| the pirates will be gone before anyone can respond.
| photonbeam wrote:
| You can already do that, the driver wont defend the payload
| sleepybrett wrote:
| but the driver is a witness and a potential chaos agent so
| must be at least monitored and possibly killed. Robbing a
| driverless truck would convey less risk or potential death to
| the robber and less risk of catching a murder charge to go
| with your grand theft.
| bluescrn wrote:
| If there's no driver, there's no need to be armed, so instead
| of an armed robbery charge, the risk is just a theft charge.
| In a world where people defend shoplifting.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Why isn't this an issue today? It's not like the driver is
| going to challenge you if you show up with firearms
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| There's a pretty big jump in perceived criminality between
| violent crime and property crime; humans are social
| creatures, after all. Far more people are willing to steal a
| car that's parked on the street than to hijack one, far more
| people are willing to commit burglary than home invasion,
| etc.
|
| Even for the people willing to use violence, having a human
| involved opens up unpredictablity and risk. You can't know
| what's going on in the head of a random trucker, whether
| they're armed, whether they fancy themselves a cowboy,
| whatever. It's a high-risk, moderate reward scenario.
|
| In contrast, if you have a system for consistently hitting
| autonomous trucks, it's a (relatively) low risk, moderate
| reward crime.
| zbrozek wrote:
| Sensors and their ranges aren't the right thing to point to. Off-
| the-shelf options are typically geared towards the ranges useful
| for passenger vehicles because that's where the volume is, but
| with money and time one can design something different. It's
| possible to achieve a sensible link budget for lidar or radar at
| much-longer ranges. The sensors will be bigger, they'll consume
| more power, and they'll cost more. But it's totally achievable.
|
| There are a lot of differences between passenger vehicles and
| trucks. The physical dynamics of articulated vehicles, the
| mission profile, and social dynamics come to mind. How does a
| robotruck place cones or flares while it awaits rescue?
|
| Personally, I expect autonomous trucking to be a force-multiplier
| for humans who were formerly drivers. Such trucks will have
| sleeper cabs and the human will be there to maintain the vehicle
| and handle the long tail of tasks (filling tires, cleaning,
| refueling, repairs, rigging, whatever). You'll get 24-hour
| operation out of a single human employee because they'll be able
| to sleep and do other things most of the time. Maybe they'll work
| a second job as a remote call-center operator.
| creer wrote:
| This is strange.
|
| - Sensing distance is a good one for sure. At the same time, it's
| for now a technical issue. So that a viable temporary progress-
| making solution might be to have an additional vehicle in the
| autonomous system: a sensing car is in front, and one or more
| semi-trucks follow. Then the autonomous system far out-senses a
| human driver. And we get progress even if the cost-proposition
| becomes a little harder.
|
| But otherwise:
|
| - Nominal stopping distance as shown include 2.5 seconds of
| reaction time - fair for a human driver perhaps but hopefully the
| machine gains a lot of space there.
|
| - "Stopping in lane" is as insane in the city as it is on a
| freeway. We can't seriously consider that a long term solution in
| the city? Less risk temporarily okay but not a serious solution.
| (But fair point on this one: if all else fails it is, for now, an
| option in the city).
|
| - Even for humans, driving on the freeway is not a question of
| perfect judgement. It is about quickly but calmly picking a
| reasonable solution. Including, in doubt, moving to a safer lane
| and slowing down while measuring the risk of rear-ending. Nobody
| asks a human to completely eliminate the risk of rear-ending.
| That sounds within the range of what software can do?
|
| - Jack-knifing and other complex behaviors are probably far
| better suited to computing solutions - which can sense far more
| measurements than the humans, independently actuate more control
| points, and compute actually more or less complete solutions when
| the human is seat-of-the-pants -ing in real time (with dubious
| real life record too - see brutal and fatal). Simple no, but all
| that hard to beat the human sounds absurd (anyone with more input
| on this?) See for example the drift-parallel-parking stunts
| achieved with cars. We may not yet be at drift-parallel-parking
| semi-trucks but anyone here doubts that this is achievable?
|
| - Ease and quantity of samples might be a better point. Waymo
| really got on it and accumulated a lot of driving data. But then
| also, most of that data by now is city driving.
|
| - Will trucks happen before cars? Well, cars are already there
| so... already answered.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| > Will trucks happen before cars? Well, cars are already there
| so... already answered.
|
| Cars are not 'there'.
| mxwsn wrote:
| Whoa hold on, table 1 of stopping distances is calculated for 2.5
| second reaction time which is 10x longer than conventional human
| reaction time. Then the stopping distances are compared to
| radar/lidar/camera to argue that AVs can struggle to stop within
| detection range. It's possible a computer might need 2.5s to make
| a decision to stop. But the current analysis isn't based on that.
|
| This analysis seems really suspect to me. Any clarification would
| be appreciated.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| A human decision to stop is not binary 1/0. If I am approaching
| a hazard, first thing to do is raise alertness. Also, lift foot
| off accelerator pedal. Then, put foot on brake. Then, apply
| some pressure to brake. All this stuff happens on a gradient
| depending how quickly I need to react and stop.
|
| So between which endpoints shall you measure "reaction time"?
| I'm already priming my reaction by actions which lead up to it.
| Obviously, an automated driving system doesn't need some of
| these steps, but it's still running through the same scenario
| and "thought processes" to reach a decision and course of
| action.
|
| Once at lunchtime, I had two coworkers in my car. I was driving
| a manual-transmission Acura Integra in light rain, heavy
| traffic in downtown Palo Alto. I had a left turn signal and I
| proceeded through the intersection, when an oncoming car was
| coming straight at us and couldn't stop. I punched the
| accelerator and sped through the turn without incident. My
| coworkers both congratulated me on making the correct decision:
| to hesitate, or to hit the brakes, would've surely crashed us.
| But what was my reaction time? My foot already on the gas, I
| simply made a snap decision in the moment to follow through.
| kevinchen wrote:
| Author here. the shorter reaction times you mentioned are
| collected under ideal conditions, like the person knows they
| are being tested and only needs to push a button or whatever.
| In driving, the reaction time is end to end, including
| perception, decision-making, and actuation (moving your foot,
| pressing pedal all the way, shifting, etc.)
|
| Also recommend checking out the citation. It is an accepted
| value used in American highway design.
| WhatsTheBigIdea wrote:
| tldr; Why not slow down when sensor range is shorter than
| stopping distance?
|
| It seems the basic argument is that sensor range is not always
| long enough to fully encompass stopping distance, but the data
| presented in the article shows that this is only the case at
| 70mph.
|
| At 50mph, it seems that sensor tech is well within requirements
| in all published conditions.
|
| Perhaps an autonomous truck could simply slow down when grade or
| surface conditions reduce its stopping distance?
|
| While it is nice to do 70mph all the time, slowing down when you
| can't see or stop well is exactly what is expected of human
| drivers.
| creer wrote:
| In many places in the US, the road system is already
| insufficient. Certainly completely insufficient in California.
| There is no space for self-truck traffic to move significantly
| slower than driven-truck traffic. Either self-trucks can safely
| reach speed parity or there is much less space for them.
|
| Another response mentions there are easy routes that could be
| self-trucked first. That would work.
| Edman274 wrote:
| I often see logic along the lines of "if autonomous vehicles are
| safer than people, then let's deploy them" and that logic
| straight-up does not fly in the real world. In the real world,
| among the techno-pessimists, that is an outrageously low bar.
| Most accidents and deaths that happen because of human drivers
| occur because the driver was doing something illegal, which means
| the bar that we have for even _humans_ is higher than "safer
| than human drivers" -- like, we wouldn't allow someone to be an
| Uber or Lyft or truck driver if they were candid and said "I'm
| going to text on my phone, and be drunk driving and sleepy and
| distracted as often as the average motorist".
|
| Also, I feel like there's a lot of talking past one another in
| these conversations because one person will say "Let's see an
| autonomous truck shipping hazmat to Pittsburgh in February with
| freeway lanes shut down" and another person might say "that's a
| rare instance" but I really don't feel like society will accept
| anything other than trucks / vehicles that are able to operate
| under all conditions, with greater safety than the safest human
| driver. We tolerate human failures but to use them as the
| benchmark for autonomous systems would be perceived as unethical,
| because autonomous systems are deliberately designed and any
| failures by them would be seen as an intentional oversights and
| errors, and no one at Waymo or Tesla or where ever is ever going
| to be charged with vehicular manslaughter for an autonomous
| vehicle error. We'd demand a way higher standard _because_ these
| companies don 't really have any skin in the game, except for
| financial penalties which we now understand is not a deterrent
| for anything. My observations are only moderately related but I'm
| anticipating the same well-trod talking points coming up and want
| to address them.
| creer wrote:
| Truck or cars are not strictly required to operate in all
| conditions in the current system: roads, entire freeways close
| when the conditions demand. Or demand that vehicles stop and
| put on chains. There is precedent.
| Edman274 wrote:
| I think that if you were reading my comment charitably you
| could infer that I meant "under all conditions where a car is
| legally allowed to operate." I don't think you actually
| believed that I was saying that a truck should have the
| capability to drive on the road when a roadway is not legal
| to drive on.
| creer wrote:
| You are seeing a fight that isn't there.
|
| There is precedent for either roads or vehicles for
| choosing not to handle some conditions. In a driving rain
| storm you will find rest areas stuffed full of trucks and
| cars that picked that time to nap. In San Francisco Waymo
| first served some hours and not others, some areas and not
| others - some of these choices apparently related to fog
| and wet pavement. In Oregon, you will find roads open, but
| white-out-ed. Etc, etc. Nobody forces human vehicles to
| keep moving and most of the ones with some sense make
| choices. Which are available also to automated vehicles. -
| Sure it should be expected of the vehicle to find a safer
| place to move itself than right in the middle of the lane,
| like I point out in another response here.
| foofie wrote:
| > Truck or cars are not strictly required to operate in all
| conditions in the current system: roads, entire freeways
| close when the conditions demand. Or demand that vehicles
| stop and put on chains. There is precedent.
|
| I think you're confusing things. Weather changes midway
| anyone's drive, and all drivers are required to drive safely
| and reliably even during sudden extreme meteorological
| events.
|
| For a road to be closed, it takes an administrative action
| that reflects a decision that's largely arbitrary. Until a
| third party makes that decision, any driver is required to
| drive safely and reliability, regardless of the weather.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _but I really don 't feel like society will accept anything
| other than trucks / vehicles that are able to operate under all
| conditions_
|
| Trucks are different because they're just for transportation of
| goods. As challenging weather arrives they can just wait at the
| nearest rest stop, pull over on the shoulder, etc.
|
| Your shipping will be delayed, but outside of that I don't
| think society will care. Totally acceptable as long as weather
| delays only last as long as a storm does.
|
| That's different from rideshare where people do expect to be
| able to call a Waymo even if it's snowing lightly.
| nativeit wrote:
| Society is literally willing to let truck drivers die to
| maintain shipping times. See the responses during the height
| of COVID-19, or even just the demands placed on every day
| operators cross-referenced with their average health and
| mortality rates. Our treatment of truck drivers is already
| subhuman, I don't think we're likely to extend a lot of
| understanding to the robots.
| crazygringo wrote:
| That's a bit of hyperbole. Lots of jobs take their toll on
| your health. That's nothing special about truck drivers,
| and it doesn't mean we "let them die".
|
| And you're ignoring the fact that not requiring a driver is
| significantly cheaper. And when it's speed versus cost,
| cost generally wins. So yes, society is absolutely going to
| be fine with trucks pausing in bad weather, because it
| means _cheaper shipping_.
|
| (And stuff that is urgent and requires next-day delivery is
| sent across the country by plane anyways, not by truck.)
| ScoobleDoodle wrote:
| That might be more a result of capitalist motivations i.e:
| funnel money to the share holders / owners and C-suite and
| away from workers. Which is much more direct than someone
| buying legos or a stove.
|
| We can either legislate that or they need an effective
| union.
| chmod600 wrote:
| "That might be more a result of capitalist motivations"
|
| People wanting to get more stuff faster is a universal
| motivation not limited (in theory or in practice) to
| capitalism. To the extent that anyone is exploited,
| that's just selfishness, again a universal motivation.
| bwestergard wrote:
| Can you provide a few examples of people expressing a
| general desire for "more stuff faster" before 1500 and
| outside Western Europe?
| bee_rider wrote:
| I mean the copper ingot guy was sort of complaining that
| he hadn't gotten enough (good) copper ingots and that his
| couriers had had to make multiple trips and had come back
| empty handed each time. This isn't _exactly_ "more stuff
| faster," but it is pretty close.
| cariaso wrote:
| sure here's one.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_(ship)
|
| As part of the
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| The free-gratis supply of bread; as a daily life-
| preserving staple; to a portion of the population doesn't
| appear to match the spirit of "more stuff faster".
|
| Surely basic food supply is "the bare minimum of stuff"
| and the rate is fixed to 'each day' (and the delivery to
| grain stores is 'each harvest in the supplying region'?
| Yes, it's more as populations grow and centralise, but
| that appears to be occurring the context of the question,
| no?
| TapWaterBandit wrote:
| This is a bizarre framing to support the argument people
| don't like faster delivery of goods.
|
| But in the spirit of good faith I will give some:
|
| - Movement of fish/meat to markets before it spoils
|
| - Delivery of military messages around the battlefield.
| Also supply trains for military expeditions
|
| - Projects like the Grand Canal in China
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canal_(China)).
| Pretty much anywhere in history where people opted for
| using water transport of goods over land transport was
| done for speed/cost reasons.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| There are way more trucks on the road than will fit in
| parking at rest areas, and simply parking on the shoulder is
| a hazard in itself, which is why trucks are required to set
| out warning triangles, etc. when they have to do it.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _There are way more trucks on the road than will fit in
| parking at rest areas_
|
| Not the ones that are taking multi-day trips. By
| definition, we've already made room for them since truckers
| generally sleep at night all at the same time.
|
| This isn't about trucks on a 3-hour haul -- those just
| won't head out at all until the forecast is good.
|
| And parking on the shoulder is a worst-case scenario if
| something suddenly happens that wasn't in the weather
| forecast for the next couple of horus.
| Xelbair wrote:
| >Trucks are different because they're just for transportation
| of goods. As challenging weather arrives they can just wait
| at the nearest rest stop, pull over on the shoulder, etc.
|
| Trucks? waiting? In "just in time" culture of storage
| management, where buffers are low and delays are nightmare?
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| The same problem exists with manned and autonomous vehicles
| here though, it seems. Only for autonomous vehicles you
| don't have to worry about the safety of personnel. They
| might need digging out come the end of the storm?
| jdewerd wrote:
| So it's OK to have more deaths so long as we can punish someone
| with no expectation that doing so will fix the problem? I
| suspect you are right, but I don't think it reflects well on
| us.
| Edman274 wrote:
| I think a way to think about it is that we (at a societal
| level) wouldn't accept a desk calculator to be sold as a
| consumer product if it did correct arithmetic almost all of
| the time but then would spit out a close but wrong answer 1
| time out of 1000, even if that would be significantly better
| than the average person doing arithmetic. Our expectation
| would be that it could (and should) perform flawlessly. If
| our technological progress was such that the _only_
| calculator we could ever hope to produce would still have
| that kind of error 1 time in 1000, would it be unethical to
| prevent that from being sold? That 's hard to say!
|
| One of the heuristics built into us (because we're mortal
| beings living beings in a competitive, historically resource-
| poor environment) is that we trust the devil we know more
| than the devil we don't, and so unless there's a strongly
| compelling reason to trust autonomous driving devices a _lot_
| more than humans, there will be some inertia against using
| them, even if the calculations are that it will save X number
| of lives. I mean, inherent in that calculation is a level of
| uncertainty and people don 't necessarily _trust_ that
| number, because they don 't have a _reason_ to trust it,
| because they haven 't really seen enough to trust it. Why
| take a company's word for it that it's safer when they have a
| financial incentive to do some creative stuff to get their
| marketing pitch? I would say that if you feel it doesn't
| reflect well on us, it's because it hasn't been thought about
| enough.
| jdewerd wrote:
| A respectable track record and a margin for error are fine
| things to insist on, but that was not the argument being
| presented or objected to.
| kortilla wrote:
| I have a desk calculator with a worse error rate than that
| because of a button that sticks. I still use it
| gnufied wrote:
| I was thinking about this and one way of thinking is what
| u said. We already allow sale of spaceships which have
| non-zero failure rate. So we don't necessarily need zero
| failure rate self driving.
|
| But a problem with cars is, usually ur malfunctioning
| calculator just harms u, but a malfunctioning car will
| affect people who don't agree with ur choice of driving
| non-zero failure rate self driving car.
|
| So it is not a personal choice anymore.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think intuitively the desk calculator analogy makes
| sense, but from a technology perspective it does not. A
| calculator has a limited number of operations and operating
| modes, and you can feasibly test all of them, quickly,
| easily, and in an automated fashion.
|
| An autonomous vehicle has an uncountable number of
| operating modes, and it is not feasible (perhaps not even
| _possible_ ) to test it in all possible conditions and
| states. Even if you could, doing so for (say) every single
| software change would take years each time.
|
| Maybe that does mean that this is a fool's errand, and we
| just shouldn't be building autonomous cars, at least not
| until we have AGI that can think and act faster and with
| better judgment than a human.
|
| I personally do think that "better record than a human
| driver" should be sufficient (perhaps with some
| significant, TBD margin; 0.1% better is probably not
| enough), but I accept and agree with your toplevel comment
| that sort of thing won't fly in the real world. The bar is
| really more like the self-driving car has to avoid making
| the specific kinds of mistakes and illegal/unsafe acts that
| a human driver would do (all while not creating new classes
| of mistakes that a human driver would not make), and, on
| top of that, be better than a human driver in situations
| where crash would not be deemed that human driver's fault.
| awongh wrote:
| The rest of gen AI tools might prove that wrong- Need help
| with your homework? We have software that will only
| sometimes give you facts that are incorrect. The res of the
| time it does great!
| kevinchen wrote:
| I agree achieving human safety equivalent is the minimum bar.
| Ex: We can all agree that if your system is below human safety,
| it is definitely unacceptable.
|
| That's not the argument being presented though. For example
| Waymo claims to exceed human performance by a large margin:
| https://waymo.com/blog/2023/12/waymo-significantly-outperfor...
|
| (Again, one may disagree about the methodology or the
| conclusions of the study. Just want to point out it's not the
| argument being presented.)
| Edman274 wrote:
| Yeah, I should clarify that my response is in anticipation of
| the comment sections I often see on hackernews about self
| driving cars, rather than arguments from the self driving car
| companies themselves. Waymo won't say "we're slightly better
| than people, let us on your roadways" but I feel like every
| time I see something about self driving on Hackernews there's
| a handful of commenters taking the hyper-utilitarian
| viewpoint of "they're better than people, we all need to let
| the robots do driving for us" which will never convince
| anyone outside these comment sections.
| tempest_ wrote:
| Also isnt waymo only operating in Pheonix and California
| where the weather is always nice?
|
| What happens when it snows ?
| NullHypothesist wrote:
| They don't operate in snow now, but everybody was like
| "This is great, but it doesn't work in the rain!" this
| time last year. I've now taken many flawless rides in
| outright downpours in SF. It might take a year or two,
| but I have no doubt snow will be something that is a non-
| issue in the near future.
| tomrod wrote:
| Sensing tech has to improve to get through the noise. As
| far as I'm aware, you can't see a yellow line or white
| line on a highway if it's covered in dirty snow.
|
| We could also rework our roadways to include better
| sensing design and tech (passive or active!), but we are
| a ways out still from willingness to pay for that.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Do what humans do and drive without lines while trying to
| stay to one side of the road. This doesn't seem like a
| major problem to self driving snow cars. More like, how
| do you deal with other drivers who are RWD with summer
| tires and are fish tailing all over the place.
| sojournerc wrote:
| If the sensors are up for it... Mountain roads covered in
| snow pack are a white blur, especially in certain light.
| Best bets for actually knowing where the road is might be
| previous tracks. I've dipped a wheel in a ditch more than
| once, not from carelessness, but snow drift obscuring the
| road... A road that I drive 500 times a year
| tomrod wrote:
| To clarify, I'm not saying it's impossible to have a
| functional vehicle in dangerous conditions, simply that
| it's an area loaded with edge cases.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I don't drive at all when it snows as a human. Our whole
| city basically shuts down then, and we are pretty far
| north as far as cities go.
|
| Even in places that expect snow, cars are moving much
| more slowly and cautiously than normal. It almost seems
| like self driving cars would do much better in those
| situations given the speeds and caution involved.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > I don't drive at all when it snows as a human.
|
| That's the smart move. I've been quite astounded at
| family members without a driving license pushing family
| members with driving licenses to drive when they thought
| it wasn't safe. If it snows and it isn't 911 level urgent
| then simply stay put.
| eklitzke wrote:
| What is the point you're trying to make? Waymo isn't
| making claims about their driving performance in snow.
| And they're not comparing their performance to using a
| basket of human performance in all weather conditions, if
| you read the linked blog post they're specifically
| comparing to human driving performance in the regions in
| California and Arizona they're testing in.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Honestly, I never want a self-driving vehicle of any sort.
| I like driving, and if my going on about 8 years since even
| a speeding ticket is anything to go by, I'm pretty good at
| it. Driving is genuinely a leisure activity for me (only
| complicated by other, shit drivers) both in the usual way,
| and in the track-day way. So you could say I'm a car guy
| for sure.
|
| I am all for autonomous vehicles _for other people._ And
| you can call that elitist and I frankly couldn 't even
| argue with you, but god damn, so many people have utterly
| no business being in control of a car. I travel quite a bit
| both for work and leisure, almost always by motorway, and
| some of the shit I see is just mind-bending. So much
| inattentive driving, so much pointless risk-taking, as they
| say it's time for Wisconsin's favorite game: Why's that car
| being driven badly? Old, stupid, drunk, or all three?
|
| And like, there's not really an answer for a lot of this.
| As much as I love them, cars suck on a society scale.
| They're basically a poor tax as even the most low-income
| people in my neck of the woods _must have them_ to get
| around, there 's a bus network but it's shit and it has
| very low ridership, and that's all my city has apart from
| taxis. And, old people use them for the same reason, even
| if they're damn well aware that they shouldn't really be
| driving anymore, if they don't have someone to get their
| groceries n such, what are they supposed to do?
|
| So yeah, self-driving cars are awesome. In theory. But then
| I see video of someone using the lane-guidance on a Tesla
| where the car just sees... who knows, something, and
| suddenly jerks to the right, right at pedestrians. Or we
| get the stories of autonomous cars just shutting down and
| refusing to move, even for emergency vehicles. Still
| others, they end up parked on someone's legs, and the
| stupid support system can't allow a remote operator to move
| the vehicle off said leg.
|
| At this point, as much as I hope we get it, I also kind of
| recognize that truly autonomous cars simply might not be
| viable yet. I think a much better idea is to just de-carify
| our societies. I don't want them gone entirely, but people
| need more options than JUST buying or leasing these
| enormous, polluting, dangerous machines that they do not
| want to learn to operate well. And like, I don't even judge
| people for that necessarily? I love them, to be clear, but
| that's something that's true for me and not necessarily
| everyone else, and if you don't care about something,
| you're not going to put your best effort into it. It
| becomes a chore. A necessary step to doing what you
| _actually_ want to do, and as a result, people don 't try
| and they just suck at it.
|
| Edit: I'd much prefer and think it's more practical to
| create cities where cars are an option, not a requirement.
| If you WANT one, you're welcome to have one. And maybe it
| drives itself, or maybe you drive it. With those options
| being on the table, we can then raise the bar for driving
| tests which we badly need to do, there needs to be a higher
| skill floor for driving and more stringent requirements,
| especially as people age. Maybe once you get to a certain
| point in your life, as most of us probably will, you just
| can't have a manual car anymore. Then you can buy one that
| drives itself, or just join people on a robust public
| transit system.
|
| This doesn't need to be hard, but it's made hard because
| tons of entities involved have a financial stake in keeping
| us dependent on cars. I think that's why self-driving cars
| are getting so much traction and funding, because then they
| get to sell you a new, more expensive car, instead of
| actually solving the problems of mass transit. And that
| just sucks.
| ivalm wrote:
| But issue is that human safety is kind of long tailed. Eg
| more than a third of all fatal crashes are DUI. I'm guessing
| if you take out high risk behaviours then the rate will be an
| order of magnitude lower. What we care about is not being
| better then an average driver (which basically is bad due to
| high risk individuals), but better than median driver.
| 8note wrote:
| I dunno. If you got all the duo drivers to automatically
| kick in self driving, then a ton of the most dangerous
| drivers would be much less dangerous
| jacquesm wrote:
| The problem is that it is better than _average_ human
| performance but it needs to be better than specific human
| performance for any human to be incentivized to switch.
|
| For now what you could do is to demand that anybody that has
| a DUI or other such item on their record to mandatory only be
| allowed to be in vehicles that have self driving if the
| manufacturer is willing to assume liability. And if that
| doesn't happen then they might as well take a regular cab.
| hinkley wrote:
| The bar for commercial driving should definitely be higher than
| for "civilian".
|
| But I think the bar for civilian is also woefully out of date
| now. Giant trucks should require a commercial license. Make it
| easier to get than a delivery truck license, but weed out the
| soccer moms and bring back the station wagon. If you're a
| professional tree trimmer, general contractor, or a forester,
| renewing your license is on the clock and not a big deal.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| This is a great idea and the first I've heard of it. Set a
| maximum weight of 5,000 lbs for an ordinary license. Minivans
| will come in just under the line. Small SUVs like the CRV or
| RAV4 will be allowed, as will small trucks like the Ford
| Maverick. Indeed, most of those vehicles are under 4,000 lbs.
| Even some larger SUVs like the Honda Pilot or (just barely)
| the Toyota 4runner get under the bar. Even a low-specced
| F-150. But nothing bigger than that.
|
| Truth is, I'd prefer the bar at 4,000 lbs, which would limit
| us to Camrys and CRVs, but 5,000 would really allow just
| about any reasonable vehicle.
|
| And big heavy EVs with massive acceleration are just too
| powerful for somebody who's got a Starbucks in one hand, a
| cell phone in the other, their knee on the wheel, and
| shouting kids in the back seat. "Pedal misapplication" will
| go tragic really fast.
|
| 5,000 lb limit.
|
| Sincerely,
|
| A Pedestrian
| davchana wrote:
| It would also help to make it expensive to maintain/own
| vehicles over certain wait. California charges weight fees,
| but only for pickups, no car or SUV gets that weight fees.
| c0nfused wrote:
| I actually think we should also include a hood height
| limit.
|
| I would be for a CDL for any vehicle that is tall enough
| that an aver age pedestrian standing on the street cannot
| see over the hood.
|
| I'm over 6 feet tall and I regularly have trouble doing
| this as a pedestrian in the USA. I can only imagine how it
| is to be smaller.
| sneak wrote:
| A distracted driver can kill pedestrians just as easily in
| a 3999lb vehicle.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Pretty much done in Europe.
|
| First of all for vehicles with total mass of above 3500 kg
| you need extra license. And also separate one if you have a
| trailer. This is get it and keep it, until certain age. But
| good enough often.
|
| And then in general commercial operations also need more
| licensing. Which needs to be renewed after certain time.
| foofie wrote:
| > We'd demand a way higher standard because these companies
| don't really have any skin in the game, except for financial
| penalties which we now understand is not a deterrent for
| anything.
|
| I'll add that one of the penalties for accidents caused by
| human error is a prison term.
|
| Until a Tesla/Uber/Waymo exec responsible for autonomous
| driving can serve a prison term for accidents caused by their
| service, the penalty for accidents caused by autonomous driving
| is orders of magnitude lighter than those applied to human
| drivers.
| amelius wrote:
| We should also demand that these companies are run by
| engineers, not MBA types. Otherwise, we'd end up with neglect
| of safety measures as seen at Boeing. And I'm not sure if any
| kind of external incentive could change that.
| bluGill wrote:
| > one of the penalties for accidents caused by human error is
| a prison term.
|
| Really? How does anyone get that. I've only seen murder with
| a car worth 90 days in jail and loss of the car.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _we wouldn 't allow someone to be an Uber or Lyft or truck
| driver if they were candid and said "I'm going to text on my
| phone, and be drunk driving and sleepy and distracted as often
| as the average motorist"_
|
| Half the taxi and Uber drivers in New York are perpetually on a
| phone call, and frequently interacting with their phones.
| ben_w wrote:
| I'll take your word for it (not being an American and only
| having visited NYC once), but even then most of the rules of
| the road are... not perfectly enforced. I suspect if the
| rules were perfectly enforced, the only humans allowed to
| drive would be those who actually don't.
|
| I suspect -- no, I _hope_ -- that anyone who admits in
| advance that they intend to break the rules, won 't get a
| license.
| tempest_ wrote:
| I mean just look at how popular automated enforcement like
| speed and red light cameras.
| kelnos wrote:
| Not sure which side you're arguing. Does the US even have
| automated speed traps? Every time I hear about them,
| there's opposition and it doesn't happen. I think the
| most recent one I heard about in the US, the plan was to
| issue a ticket unless the speed is at least 11mph over
| the limit, which seems... both fine but also kinda silly?
|
| Red light cameras were even a big fight to get
| implemented back when they were a new idea, though
| they're relatively uncontroversial these days.
|
| To me, the difference is that the speed limit is
| intentionally poorly enforced, because law enforcement
| knows that speed limits in many places are set
| inconsistently and at unreasonable levels (and I believe
| that's also intentional; I recall reading that limits in
| many places are set at the 85% percentile of actual
| measured traffic speed, or something like that). An
| automated speed trap can't judge whether a particular
| speed is safe for the current weather and traffic
| conditions.
|
| On the other hand, it's never safe to run a red light;
| that's just a binary "you did it"/"you didn't do it".
| Yes, I know, technically it is safe to run a red light
| when visibility is plentiful and there's no cross-traffic
| within sight, but I think we as a society have accepted
| the idea that you just shouldn't run red lights, and
| getting ticketed for doing so is fine under nearly any
| circumstances.
| fallingknife wrote:
| The problem is that if you have safer than human systems but
| you don't deploy them it's basically killing people. If you had
| autonomous driving that was 90% as deadly as the average human
| driver, not deploying it would cause 4000 deaths every year in
| the US.
| jampekka wrote:
| We have a lot safer transportation systems than private cars
| but don't deploy them. Is this basically killing people too?
| Driving is murder?
| bluGill wrote:
| Yes. There are a lot of people who are driving for things
| that a good public transit system could handle. Sure you
| can have your SUV for towing the boat to the lake - but you
| only do that on weekends (and no every weekend) - why are
| you driving to work, to church, get groceries - for most
| people those are tasks that that a good transit system
| could handle.
|
| Note that by good transit system I mean one where you never
| check the schedule because the next bus/train is never more
| than 5 minutes (that is a maximum time). By good transit I
| also mean a system of transfers to express service so you
| can get to more distance places quickly. Nobody in the US
| has a good system (NYC's subways don't even come that
| often!), but there is no reason we can't have that, and
| some places in the world do have it (at least for a few).
| lotsoweiners wrote:
| Yeah I'd totally take transit so long as it will pick me
| up in my driveway, is ready within a minute of me
| deciding I need to leave, and is a ride for only me and
| my family/friends.
| bluGill wrote:
| This attitude is why we can't have nice things. You have
| probably never experienced a system like I outlined and
| you won't even consider it without adding other
| requirements that drive up the cost until we cannot get
| it.
|
| If instead you would accept that you can wait up to five
| minutes, and "other people" are nice enough and so you
| can share a space with them - we could have a nice
| transit system.
|
| The five minute time I used above is not arbitrary. While
| there is some debate on the exact number, 5 minutes
| allows for a lot operational things that are really nice.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _the next bus /train is never more than 5 minutes [..]
| there is no reason we can't have that_
|
| There's no logistical reason, but very few municipalities
| have the density to support that kind of frequency (via
| fare revenue), and taxpayers (especially in the US, but
| in other places as well) don't want to pay for all that
| unoccupied space on trains and buses.
|
| I'm not saying that's a universal truth. There are a few
| places that _do_ have the density to support that. And
| there are a few places that don 't, but local residents
| are happy to pay more in taxes to get that kind of
| frequency. But most places are not like either of those
| things.
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| It's not murder. Relying excessively on a dangerous mode of
| transportation is killing people.
| paganel wrote:
| The same way as getting out of the house during a
| pandemic was similar to "killing people" for a big chunk
| of the educated Western electorate.
|
| You can see how that viewpoint might be received in a lot
| of places nowadays, especially blue-collar places that
| rely on that type of work to still be available and not
| farmed out to some AI bots that will manage to also kill
| some of us in the process (but in smaller numbers
| compared to what our fellow humans would have registered,
| that's a relief).
| jayd16 wrote:
| Negligence is not murder but people still die.
| justanotherjoe wrote:
| since this is literally the trolley problem, the issue here
| is whether you want to take authorship of the deaths or not.
| I personally never move the lever in those puzzles.
| ivalm wrote:
| Many people are safer than average driver, since most deaths
| are associated with high risk driving (more than a third are
| dui alone). So forcing everyone to use autonomous vehicles
| essentially kills safe drivers.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Really the bar for humans to legally operate a vehicle is
| whatever licensing process is in place in a given state. We
| don't make them pinky swear to not do anything dangerous or
| illegal.
|
| If an autonomous system can get a CDL, it's probably gonna be
| more effective at continuously meeting that standard than a lot
| of the humans that do the same thing (but are distracted on a
| given day or have started using substances, or didn't sleep
| well or whatever).
| Edman274 wrote:
| > Really the bar for humans to legally operate a vehicle is
| whatever licensing process is in place in a given state. We
| don't make them pinky swear to not do anything dangerous or
| illegal.
|
| That is not sufficient for self-driving vehicles. The license
| is the thing that shows "okay, this person seems safe" but
| then some of the things that keep them safe are the threat of
| accidentally killing themselves, or being arrested and put in
| jail for a crime they commit while driving, or the financial
| penalty of being sued for an injury / damage they cause, or
| the risk of having their license taken away for errors. If a
| human being applying for their license was invincible,
| incapable of being jailed, sued, or having their license
| taken away, you might expect that our CDL or other licensing
| processes would be more stringent.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Wait, why do you think that permission to operate the
| autonomous vehicles would not be withdrawn? It's happened!
|
| It's totally bizarre to give mediocre humans credit for
| their self preservation and then demand that an autonomous
| system be beyond superb because it doesn't have it.
| Statistically, the mediocrity is going to be the bigger
| problem.
| thfuran wrote:
| Maybe, but our driving tests are designed around assessing
| humans. A system that fundamentally works quite differently
| likely has very different performance characteristics and
| failure modes and may need to be assessed differently to
| demonstrate that it will probably perform adequately in non-
| test conditions.
| ben_w wrote:
| I agree, though I either don't see (or I see and misperceive)
| many examples of people mistaking the utilitarian result for
| the politically acceptable one.
| jayd16 wrote:
| > like, we wouldn't allow someone to be an Uber or Lyft or
| truck driver if they were candid and said "I'm going to text on
| my phone, and be drunk driving and sleepy and distracted as
| often as the average motorist".
|
| But we do allow it. Sure its illegal but we don't put in the
| effort to actually prevent it. Just because we don't like it
| and would want it to be better doesn't mean we aren't allowing
| it.
| weaksauce wrote:
| trucking autonomous driving needs to be parity or better than
| the average truck driver not the average driver.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > We'd demand a way higher standard because these companies
| don't really have any skin in the game, except for financial
| penalties which we now understand is not a deterrent for
| anything.
|
| As we have seen with the titan sub, not even death is a full
| deterrent. A lot of companies will still risk it for the
| biscuit and take the risk of getting jailed for their shot at
| leading the market (in fact, a lot of people risk actual
| jailtime for financial gain). Having strict regulation and not
| allowing subpar cars on the street really is the only way.
| gumballindie wrote:
| Autonomous driving vehicles advocates are as ignorant of reality
| as are those thinking ai will replace competent programmers.
|
| The trick in driving is not straight lines and clear weather.
| It's rainy, snowy, foggy, conditions that make it challenging.
| Edges cases are the real difficulty, as with everything.
|
| I suppose when your knowledge of the world is limited by a few
| multiplayer notepad interactions everything is simple.
| lvl102 wrote:
| We need smart roads. Not just smart cars. Until that happens,
| autonomous is impractical. You don't want to build an autonomous
| system to match human error rate. That basically got us nowhere
| in the past seven years since Elon bs'd his way to selling
| vaporware.
| nativeit wrote:
| Aaaaand we're back to reinventing trains. There should be a
| name for this phenomenon. How long do tech folks discuss how to
| improve transportation until they attempt to reinvent trains?
| nativeit wrote:
| Come to think of it, wouldn't it be much more logical to
| automate trains first?
| Mashimo wrote:
| City trains are often automated[1]. Have been for decades
| as far as I know.
|
| Long distance or regional trains are often driving on very
| very old train networks.
|
| I don't know much about trains, but I guess if you would
| build a new train line now you could also automate it. But
| that is just a guess.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_driverless_train_
| syste...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _we're back to reinventing trains_
|
| The term you're looking for is armchair logistics.
|
| Trains and trucks have been competing for a long time.
| Autonomous trucks, even in convoys, even where freeways have
| RFID signs, are vastly different from trains. You don't need
| to lay and maintain tracks. You're not limited to where
| tracks go. You can assemble and disassemble on demand.
| atahanacar wrote:
| Yet you need to lay and maintain roads, you're limited to
| where roads and RFID signs go. You also have the added
| inefficiency and environmental problems of rubber-to-
| asphalt contact. In addition, you need to carry batteries
| which means even more inefficient transportation.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _you need to lay and maintain roads, you 're limited to
| where roads and RFID signs go_
|
| No, the roads and signs are already there and being
| maintained.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| You could probably save a lot on maintenance if you
| didn't have trucks driving on the roads.
| aserafini wrote:
| > there are no driverless truck deployments
|
| Is this really correct? What about gatik.ai, they certainly
| appear to have driverless trucks on the road do they not?
| polishTar wrote:
| Gatik has yet to remove safety drivers as I understand it.
| hinkley wrote:
| I think I would be more comfortable with triple trailers with
| parking assist and stability control than with fully autonomous
| trucking.
|
| Growing up we had a neighbor who drove UPS trucks and was rated
| for double trailers, and that earned him extra money. I gotta
| assume triples make even more. Doubling the payload per driver
| mile by making it so any trucker can manage doubles and the old
| double drivers can manage triples seems doable.
|
| The thing with doubles and triples though is that they are
| shorter trailers. And it's probably less likely to pack a triple
| trailer to the gills than a single, so are they getting 70% as
| much payload per trailer? If so that puts triples around 2x the
| practical capacity of a single.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The trucks could also be commercially viable with only freeway
| driving capability, or freeways plus a short segment of surface
| streets needed to reach a transfer hub.
|
| The question is... isn't the problem being approached from an
| entirely bad premise in the first place? Why would it even _make
| sense_ to develop autonomous trucks for that part of any freight
| 's journey? Laying train tracks might incur a large initial
| expense since the tracks, unlike highways, aren't there anyway,
| but a train is way more energy efficient as only the first
| locomotive has to deal with air resistance and steel-on-steel is
| less friction than tires.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| To a pretty good approximation, everything that feasibly _can_
| get shipped by rail already is. Railroad companies operate
| fairly close to capacity, and they have no desire to reduce
| their massive profit margins building new rails en masse and
| handling the maintenance burden. That leaves only the shippers
| themselves, who are often much smaller companies that couldn 't
| reasonably build a new rail line or buy cars for every
| customer, but can easily afford a few trucks to be relocated
| anywhere in the country they have demand.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Railroad companies operate fairly close to capacity, and
| they have no desire to reduce their massive profit margins
| building new rails en masse and handling the maintenance
| burden.
|
| I'm talking from a "looking at the wide, societal picture"
| viewpoint. And from that, it makes so much more sense to
| shift as much long haul traffic to railways as possible. I'm
| aware that the mechanics of modern day capitalism are _not_
| aligned with what 's best for society at large, long-term -
| mostly that railway infrastructure is orders of magnitude
| better regarding emissions and energy consumptions, but that
| it takes many more years for investments to pay off, which is
| why there is so few railway capacity in the US and what is
| there, is often enough in shabby condition.
| stefan_ wrote:
| That's a good summary: someone else has paid for the roads,
| but won't for the rail.
| samstave wrote:
| Why not create autonomous A-B trains.
|
| A train that will take a smaller number of cars ONLY between
| point A and B. Then at each end offload to a truck.
|
| Not the same as current rail frieght, I am saying a dedicated
| track between say port of oakland and port of long beach - with
| some intermediary way points along the way - it just has two
| lines - there, and back with a dedicated automated train that
| simply goes back and forth - with gantry ports the train drives
| beneath at certain locations to lift off cars quickly for that
| node.
|
| We have done a poor job of leveraging rail in a future-proof
| manner...
| RockyMcNuts wrote:
| I feel like a truck convoy of 10 trucks with one or two humans in
| the first truck (or first and last) and getting alerts seems more
| doable.
| crote wrote:
| That would essentially be a virtual road train. It's a great
| solution because you can reduce the distance between the
| trucks, which improves the fuel efficiency - especially for
| European-style trucks.
|
| The problem is that they are an absolute _nightmare_ when it
| comes to highway merging. You really don 't want third-parties
| in-between elements of the convoy, so it essentially becomes a
| single really long vehicle for merging purposes. On most
| highways that's simply not a realistic option.
| marktangotango wrote:
| Indeed there are multiple such optimizations. One that occurs
| to me is a hub/spoke model where inter-city/state is
| driverless, from/to truck "yards" on the outskirts of cities.
| Then human drivers take over and drive the last few miles.
| Drivers get to go home every night and lead normal lives
| instead of living on the road.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Or more or less automate the highway so that vehicles share
| information back and forth. Huge task, but goes a long way
| towards helping big heavy vehicles have information about what
| is ahead.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Or a variant of it: as a truck driver, I can << latch onto >> a
| truck in front of me and take a 1h nap.
|
| Would require a virtual handshake between the two drivers, but
| heck why not esp. if you're guaranteed that the truck behind
| you won't try to pass you for an hour :-)
| Havoc wrote:
| Yes trucks slow down slower than cars but that's just physics.
| You've got the exact same problem with humans driving under say
| rainy or foggy conditions.
|
| If anything driverless helps dramatically on this front. If you
| can run trucks 24/7 without stopping then you can cut their speed
| say 33% or whatever and still come out on top.
|
| You can also adjust the cargo to reduce stopping distance - use
| autonomous truckers for things that are large but not heavy.
|
| Or hell even just add more wheels for more stopping traction.
| Sure gets you more wear & tear but that's an infinitely easier
| problem than trying to teach an AI to recognise a kid running
| into the road in a busy urban steet or navigate construction site
| or whatever other surprises come up.
|
| Author makes some valid points - stopping distance vs sensor
| range - but to me the conclusion that trucking on highways is
| hardest doesn't follow at all.
| foofie wrote:
| > If anything driverless helps dramatically on this front. If
| you can run trucks 24/7 without stopping then you can cut their
| speed say 33% or whatever and still come out on top.
|
| I think that this line of reasoning misses the forest for the
| trees. If the promise of a silver bullet is a mode of
| transportation that can safely and reliably work 24/7 day and
| night with limited to no human interaction and be able to move
| large volumes of goods, then we already have that: it's called
| railway.
| fallingknife wrote:
| And when there is a railroad to every warehouse in the
| country, it will replace trucks.
| o11c wrote:
| The problem with rail is that most businesses don't want a
| whole train worth, and removing just a single car from the
| train is hard.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Why don't containers already solve that problem? You can
| unload individual containers just fine, even put them on a
| truck for last-mile delivery. And then there's this
| American idea of putting entire trailers on flatbed cars,
| so you can just roll them on and off.
| jmull wrote:
| > ...you can cut their speed say 33%...
|
| You probably can't have cars going 70 or faster sharing the
| road with trucks going a steady 45.
| alemanek wrote:
| In the US there are lots of long 3-4 lane highway stretches
| where this is perfectly fine. Also we already see this on
| mountain ascents. Plenty of times I have seen trucks climbing
| a pass at 30-45mph in the right lane and cars zipping up it
| at 80mph in the left lane.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Isn't dual speed limits (lower for trailers) fairly normal in
| Western Europe? Pretty sure that's true in the UK for
| caravans/personal trailers, though I don't recall if that
| lower limit applies to commercial trucks.
| chefkoch wrote:
| In Germany you share the Autobahn with trucks going 90km/h
| and some cars going 200 km/h.
| perlgeek wrote:
| ... and I hate it, it's so much stress (unless you're
| constantly on the right lane and driving 90km/h).
|
| When you cross from the Autobahn to Denmark, where there's
| a speed limit of at most 130km/h, traffic immediately
| becomes less stressful.
| lotsoweiners wrote:
| Sounds like you're the problem.
| Sayrus wrote:
| I can understand where you're coming from but driving on
| a road where everyone has the same speed on average is
| less stressful than driving on a road with large
| differences in speed.
|
| The latter requires a good evaluation of the speed of the
| vehicles behind / in your mirror rather than just
| checking for whether a vehicle is there. On the former,
| you can simply match speed with the person in front and
| you're good to go.
|
| Due to this, ADAS is also broken on roads with high speed
| differences. It won't alert you of a vehicle is coming
| 100+ kmh than you in your blind spot.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Germany is much more disciplined than the US about being in
| the right lane and only overtaking on the left. Most of the
| US has the same rules in theory, but people following the
| rules less strictly combined with the low speed limits
| means they don't get the clearly separated speeds for each
| lane you get on a German Autobahn.
| coryrc wrote:
| Adding more wheels does not reduce stopping distance.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| Doesn't it though? More rolling resistance and braking
| surface area?
| ars wrote:
| But then pressure (force) on each tire is lower now, so the
| friction is also lower.
|
| Effective friction is a function of weight and coefficient
| of friction between the materials. Interestingly the
| surface area of the contact is not part of the equation.
|
| On a flat surface a truck and a car using the same tire
| compound should have identical stopping distances. The
| issue comes when you are going downhill.
| lpapez wrote:
| That equation works for friction between idealized
| solids. Tires are not even close to an idealized solid,
| they deform as more weight is added to them, so the
| contact surface area increases as more pressure is added.
|
| That is why you see racing cars with big fat tires,
| because it's more grip and the relationship is not
| linear.
| ars wrote:
| The equation still holds. As the tire deforms to have
| more area the pressure on any particular part of the tire
| is lower. The total friction is unchanged.
|
| > That is why you see racing cars with big fat tires
|
| If you mean drag racers those tires are glued to the
| ground, and do not work off of friction. Other than that,
| what race cars have big fat tires?
|
| Tires are usually sized so that the ground pressure of
| the tire is in the 40 to 100 psi range (which is also the
| tire inflation pressure). That's simply to keep the
| ground from deforming and the tire from popping. It does
| not affect friction.
|
| This is also why off-road tires have lower pressure - the
| sand and mud they work on is not strong enough for a
| higher pressure. It is NOT for increased friction, it's
| because the surface they drive on can't handle it, so you
| spread out the weight, and reduce the pressure.
| eeklipse wrote:
| From a fundamentals of physics standpoint; it's only about
| the coefficient of friction and the normal force, surface
| area doesn't come into play.
|
| Realistically, surface area does come into play because
| things deform and heat up, but I can't say how much.
| lokar wrote:
| Humans can often identify the need to slow/stop further out
| then current AV systems.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _If you can run trucks 24 /7 without stopping then you can
| cut their speed say 33% or whatever and still come out on top._
|
| Well, they should still be driving no slower than the rest of
| the traffic in the slow lane (modulo what is safe for a larger
| vehicle under whatever the prevailing road/weather conditions
| are).
|
| I think a bigger benefit to not needing drivers that need to
| rest/sleep is that you can allow for self-driving software that
| can't handle all the weather and road conditions that humans
| can handle. The self-driving software can pull the truck over
| for a few hours in a snowstorm that a human driver would be
| able to handle, and still be ahead of a similar human-driver
| schedule.
| gwern wrote:
| How much of this is just money? Waymo has been operating for a
| decade and a half and has spent billions upon billions. Probably
| it's spent more than all the trucking startups listed put
| together. So it'd not be surprising if they are doing much
| better.
| telotortium wrote:
| Didn't they recently lay off a bunch of people in their
| trucking division? They clearly think rideshare is more
| promising, at least in the short term.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| Is this not the most obvious statement ever? At the most basic
| level, trucking requires loading and unloading freight, whereas
| rideshare passengers load and unload themselves.
| aurizon wrote:
| Australia has there system of 'road trains'
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXL9UfP6FMk. They use these
| because they have very long sections of highway that are
| suitable. The USA has a smaller length version used on the
| controlled access interstates, with the same hookup as tractor
| trailers, with the trains broken down to 1 or 2 trailers for
| local delivery(usually the third one is shorter and is called a
| 'pup' trailer. Very common in gasoline/oil delivery. On larger
| flat areas, with automobiles forbidden, it would be quite doable
| to have longer trains, with the hauling force/strength suited to
| the grade. We already do this with piggybacked trailers on
| flatbedded rail cars, some of which can have side load/unload of
| trailers for granular load access at stretches to avoid having to
| unload them all to get at one. Railyards do this via switching
| 'hump-yards' where long trains are distributed car by car. Here
| is one in operation, usually the hump has enough height to allow
| gravity sorting and there are numerous remotely operated switches
| where a long load of 100-200 cars is sent over the hump one at a
| time and assembled into trains of cars on diverse lines for other
| geographic destinations, with some send directly for local
| delivery, both as unit containers to be picked of by special
| top/bottom/side lift fork lifts(locked load type).
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0CUtE5-kKQ
|
| I can see that this would allow integration with road trains, as
| methods evolve.
|
| I saw several posts that spoke about the ground level interaction
| of bicycle traffic and car traffic being dangerous to bicycle
| traffic. Years ago we had elevated railways, that came to be
| unsightly, but functional ways to mix subways(elways) - it made
| me think that elevated bike-ways might work to reduce bike/car
| interactions. Bikes are so much lighter in weight that a
| suspended bike 'mono-road' would work well, it could even be
| roofed against weather. It has been done in a few places, and
| seems to work.
| https://www.google.com/search?q=bicycle+elevated+path&sca_es...
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| With new markets you often want to target a small niche, I've
| always thought that relatively slow moving road trains travelling
| at night would be a good place to start.
|
| Air resistance means slower speeds are more efficient (you don't
| need to worry about human driver needing paid per hour or limited
| by regulations).
|
| Less other traffic at night, but (presumably) sensors can be
| designed to work well in these situations.
|
| If you split a truck in 3 it can travel together as a pack for
| aero yet reduce stopping times as each part brakes seperately.
|
| You could probably even section off an entire lane in certain
| areas.
|
| Some of these possibly needed EVs to mature more before they
| become practical.
| bluGill wrote:
| Trucks pay for more than air resistance though. Last I talked
| to a trucker their computer was set at 68mph because the
| company had data showing that was the most efficient speed.
| Engines get more fuel efficient the more load they are under.
| There is also the constant load of the lights. With autonomous
| trucks the computer/sensors is source of constant load.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Yep, and efficiently using the human driver is probably a
| part of that calculation, nudging it upwards.
| sva_ wrote:
| I've been observing that AI tools often don't really replace
| people, but rather amplify the amount of work that a single
| individual can do. In that way, rather than seeking to replace
| truck drivers, it might first be more useful to make it possible
| that one driver can navigate two trucks in tandem, and later
| perhaps more. The largest issue with autonomous driving seems to
| be the ~20% edge cases that may occur, and have high variance,
| and ~80% could be automated. So perhaps at some point a single
| driver could drive more than one or two trucks.
|
| It seems like there are a lot of 'default routes' that trucks
| take, and in the beginning, it'd probably just be a small number
| of highway routes that could get clearance in such a way, and
| then scale up.
| rexreed wrote:
| This is called "augmented Intelligence":
| https://www.cognilytica.com/ai-today-podcast-020-augmented-i...
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| > two trucks in tandem, and later perhaps more.
|
| Or we could put them on tracks and physically attach them to
| one another.
| fleischhauf wrote:
| you mean like a .. train
| skybrian wrote:
| No. Trains are great for what they do, but roads go more
| places.
| ItsMonkk wrote:
| Yep.
|
| I don't really see the point in anything long range for
| autonomous vehicles in the near-term. We should optimize the
| use-case of them driving people and goods to and from train
| stations. For this use-case it should be entirely fine if the
| max speed they can achieve is 20mph. The stopping times and
| force that can be achieved at those speeds should bring down
| the danger by quite a bit.
| sva_ wrote:
| Yeah that would be ideal. Sadly a lot of stuff goes wrong in
| building rail because governments have to do it and clearly
| suck at it, and if it weren't so, there wouldn't be nearly as
| many trucks on the road.
|
| Unlike building rail, the concept I outlined would be
| feasible to do for a private corporation though, even a
| startup. The delta in necessary resources between the two is
| huge.
|
| I'm also not quite convinced that you can pack nearly as much
| cargo on a rail at the same time (with different
| destinations) as on the road, but the reason for that believe
| might be the fact that I'm not a rail expert.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| It would be interesting if the asymptote for autonomous trucking
| evolution turns out to just be the reinvention of railroads.
| ramboldio wrote:
| I'm wondering why there is so little talk about changing road
| infrastructure to make self-driving easier to pull off.
|
| E.g. dedicated lanes for self driving or hand-off stations where
| human drivers can take over etc etc.
|
| Amid the massive potential upsides, any reasonable government
| would invest in measures that turn out to effectivley improve
| self-drivability of the respective national grid.
| ramboldio wrote:
| Since self-driving trucks do not need to rest, they can be also a
| lot slower while on the road to help with safety.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Great post with good details. I wonder whether a "truck only"
| roadway might be a reasonable simplifier here (yes building a
| 1000 miles of road for trucks only is billions of $ but there are
| perhaps segments between say ports and warehouses where that
| might make sense. And as someone who has been fooling around with
| robotics since the 80's the whole "sensors have to see far enough
| ahead to respond" is well known. The "workaround" is to go
| slower, and granted 40 mph trucks on the freeway would be
| annoying it gives you a way to test responses while sensors catch
| up.
| sdeframond wrote:
| You must mean a railway then ?
|
| Edit: by the way, why don't we have autonomous freight trains?
| thereisnospork wrote:
| Freight trains have a much lower fraction of human labor as
| cost vs. benefits relative to trucking or cab driving. 1
| truck and driver carries 20 tonnes. 2 engineers on a freight
| train carry close to 20,000 tonnes, so there is only 1/50th
| (ish) the benefit.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Caught that did you? :-) The one interesting disruptive thing
| might be paved roads vs rail infrastructure. It is easier to
| have a steerable vehicle turn on different paths than doing
| railroad switches. So the underlying physical plant of
| building things might allow for rapid deployment vs rails.
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| > While MRC behaviors are annoying for other road users and
| embarrassing for the AV developer, they do not add undue risk on
| surface streets given the low speeds and already chaotic nature
| of city driving.
|
| Except in the case of Cruise.
|
| MRC could be handled somewhat successfully for trucks on the
| highway on sections of highway with good cellular data
| connection. You could have someone making minimal money play a
| driving game on the computer all day to keep them paying
| attention. If an autonomous truck encounters an unusual
| situation, their screen switches over to a camera feed for the
| truck, and they can take over the controls of the truck to get it
| past the obstacle.
|
| Not sure what fraction of highway has sufficient connection to
| give them a sufficient live feed. Probably a lot though.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > No guarantee of a timely response from remote operators or
| backend services. > Therefore, all safety-critical decisions must
| be made by the onboard computer alone.
|
| Why is the requirement that _all_ safety-critical decisions must
| be made on board, versus the seemingly-simplifying assumption
| that only _some_ or _most_ decisions would have to be made on
| board, because a remote operator or backend service could be
| available a lot of the time? It doesn 't seem unreasonable to me
| to have a single operator remotely monitoring multiple vehicles
| that are autonomous under ideal conditions (driving along a
| straight road in good weather) and then taking over when
| necessary. Let's say you would only use such a system for major
| routes with solid satellite visibility, not last-mile routes
| hauling heavy equipment on a dirt road in the boonies, or
| something like that. Maybe this wouldn't work, but it's not
| obviously ridiculous to me, so I wonder why he just starts out
| saying the truck most be fully autonomous with no human ever in
| the loop.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| Ya, I wonder the same thing. In an extreme case it seems like
| you could build dedicated repeaters/cell phone towers/something
| along specific stretches of highway, and then start testing
| along just that stretch with remote operators on call. I
| suspect remote operators are cheaper than devoted drivers,
| potentially making a profit from that transition alone, and
| also collect training data to develop full autonomy.
| Faark wrote:
| > and then taking over when necessary
|
| Yes, and that has to be safely possible. From my reading, the
| article has no problems with remote operators giving command.
| The truck just also needs the ability to both safely execute
| them and come to some safe state by itself if necessary
| commands don't arrive [in time].
|
| The interesting question is how complicated those safe states
| are to realize. Just hitting the breaks on a freeway seems
| hardly acceptable. Generally, this being harder than for cars
| in cities is a core conclusion of the article.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| I've begun thinking that human wages are a good indication of how
| hard a job will be to automate.
|
| It turns out we already have general intelligence (producible in
| about 16 years) available on demand. And so, the market is
| already a good indication of which jobs are easy and hard to
| automate for general intelligence.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I just think that rail, freight and passenger, is the place to
| start. Automate that first, get 10 years of that under our belt,
| then figure out how to add steering and traffic.
|
| Edited - typo
| skywhopper wrote:
| Or you know, instead of trying to eke out tiny efficiencies from
| trucking by eliminating the human driver who can solve all these
| local issues themselves, we could invest in a proven, highly
| efficient, low staff requirement, long distance freight system...
| ahigherugliness wrote:
| I wonder why we don't lower the ambitions: chain five trucks
| together, so that for long stretches of highway (hundreds of
| miles) one driver can drive the "train of trucks" while the other
| truck drivers sleep. The trucks could be really close together so
| no cars can come between them.
|
| What problems am I overlooking that are not easily solvable?
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| It sounds like you are re-inventing the road train:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_train
| ahigherugliness wrote:
| Interesting, but does every unit have a driver? I was
| thinking, it could be interesting that they all have their
| drivers, because finally they won't all go to the same
| destination.
|
| So it would be great that as a truck driver, you could attach
| yourself to one of these trains, sleep for a couple of
| hundred miles, put the alarm clock, wake up, then detach at
| the right time and go to your final individual destination.
| Maybe even take another "road train" for another couple of
| hundred miles...
| gear54rus wrote:
| Inability to change lanes without killing a few of those small
| vehicle operators :)
| akira2501 wrote:
| There aren't any logistic piplines that make this favorable. If
| you actually wanted to do this you'd load it on intermodal
| freight cars and push it down rail to the destination.
|
| People seem to think trucks go from one "transfer hub" to
| another. That hardly ever happens, and when it does, the
| trucker usually drops off one trailer and picks up a different
| one.
|
| Most truck routes are actual deliveries or pickups. You go from
| the distribution center for a supplier and then you do a chain
| of stops at 4 or 5 stores where parts of the load are taken off
| the truck and the rest goes to the next stop. Or you pick up an
| empty and go to 2 or 3 locations to pick up finished product to
| either be delivered or brought to distribution.
|
| I mean.. there's _thousands_ of hours of truckers on Youtube
| just doing their job and discussing it. You could watch any of
| those channels for a few hours and be _lightyears_ ahead of the
| typical "AV programmers" thinking on the subject.
|
| It's kind of depressing really, how so many silicon valley type
| people never take the time to learn how the industry works.
| ahigherugliness wrote:
| Sorry to depress you. You're right, I don't know anything of
| the business.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Interesting article, but breaking distance vs sensor range feels
| like a 2nd-order or 3rd-order problem in the space of self-
| driving challenges.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| The article assumes that the reason autonomous trucks haven't
| happened yet is that it's harder. I think the real reason is
| probably simply that #1 it's less glamorous for investors and #2
| most of the companies producing trucks are probably not great at
| doing anything with software. So, the investment levels and
| effort that has gone into autonomous trucks so far just isn't at
| the same level and the companies that have gotten the furthest
| with autonomous driving just haven't focused much on trucks so
| far. Not because it's harder but because cars are hard enough,
| more lucrative, and they want to focus on those first. That could
| change. Once they nail cars, trucks are an obvious next target.
|
| There are a few other possible reasons; such as electrical trucks
| still lagging a bit behind electrical cars in terms of volume
| production and a few other things. Electrical trucks are a lot
| easier to drive for humans because they don't have a lot of
| complicated gears, hydraulics, and other things to worry about.
| That makes them easier to control autonomously as well.
|
| Other than being bigger, the job of autonomously controlling a
| big truck isn't that different from that of controlling a car. If
| you can do one, you should be able to do the other. Ballpark it's
| the same kind of problem. Same roads, obstacles, problems,
| traffic situations, challenges, etc. Same everything, basically.
| I don't think the speed or the size of the vehicles is that much
| of a factor for how hard this is to do.
|
| As for safety, the barrier is actually pretty low. There os a
| high number of accidents that involve truck drivers asleep or
| unfocused behind the wheel because they've been driving for way
| too long. Or getting distracted by their phones. Happens more in
| the US than in Europe because some differences in rules related
| to mandatory breaks. But it happens on both sides and it's a bit
| of a challenge.
|
| We're measuring with very different standards for humans and
| autonomous vehicles. With autonomous driving it's all about
| hypothetical things that may or may not go wrong and therefore we
| should wait until it's so perfect that it can never happen, 100%
| guaranteed. With human drivers, it's just an endless stream of
| never ending accidents, fatalities, and misery where we just go
| "ah well, that's just life". Never mind all the obvious issues
| with aging truck drivers that are severely out of shape due to
| life style issues associated with trucking after they've been on
| the road for ten hours. This attitude is more than a little bit
| irrational.
| shahbaby wrote:
| All the CEOs thinking that they can replace their workers
| overnight with an LLM should pay close attention here.
| jeffparsons wrote:
| I didn't expect fully autonomous trucking to be here yet. What I
| did expect, however, is semi-autonomous many-trailer
| trucks/convoys, because it's a much simpler technical problem
| that still offers enormous efficiency gains.
|
| Let's get a little bit crazy and imagine something very different
| from what we have today, but still only requiring a single
| driver. One truck cab at the front. Individual trailers have
| their own wheel motors, their own steering, and a small battery
| for short range manoeuvring (e.g. at a loading dock/port or).
| Trailers follow each other at a distance that allows for
| emergency braking, but close enough that they can be connected by
| high voltage cables for receiving power from a "battery car".
| Both the cab and individual trailers constantly communicate, and
| the moment any participant suspects that all is not right, the
| whole train tries to slow down and pull over.
|
| If one trailer has a blowout or other issue, it can be left
| behind to be picked up by another convoy.
|
| At a port or loading dock, the convoy disassembles and individual
| trailers are driven by remote control, either directly by a human
| or eventually by the "site AI", so that large articulated
| vehicles never have to enter the area.
|
| I'm imagining ~12 trailer convoys to balance efficiency gains
| with disruption to local traffic.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Maybe we could make the infrastructure cheaper, add some power
| lines and maybe make the road surface from steel for low
| friction!
| jeffparsons wrote:
| I take your point, but that requires long-term planning and
| alignment of a lot more people and organisations, all of whom
| have their own messy incentives.
|
| I'm trying to think of solutions that can be mostly built by
| the private sector and deployed with only modest legislative
| changes.
| jdksmdbtbdnmsm wrote:
| > _semi-autonomous many-trailer trucks /convoys_
|
| Prepare to have your mind blown:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train
| jeffparsons wrote:
| Yes, I like trains, too.
|
| Largely copied from my reply to a similar comment:
|
| Trains requires long-term planning and alignment of a lot
| more people and organisations, all of whom have their own
| messy incentives. They're a political quagmire that you might
| never emerge from.
|
| I'm trying to think of solutions that can be mostly built by
| the private sector and deployed with only modest legislative
| changes.
|
| For the same reasons, a friend who works in mass transit
| talked me around to favouring better "smart bus"
| infrastructure over lobbying for more rail -- at least in
| most cases where actually getting more rail is an unrealistic
| outcome.
| jdksmdbtbdnmsm wrote:
| Trains are faster and easier than all of the above, and they have
| about a century more track record. This case was closed before it
| was even opened. Autonomous trucking has been an idiotic pursuit
| since long before it was ever pursued.
| aga98mtl wrote:
| The issue with braking distance and jackknifing could be resolved
| with smaller trucks. The 18 wheeler we know is optimal because it
| maximize the cubic volume driven by one person. If you don't need
| the human driver, two smaller trucks might be better than one.
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