Dude, where's my self-driving car?

AJ Sadauskas@aus.social to Technology@beehaw.org – 25 points –

Dude, where's my self-driving car?

A good look at The Verge about the history of false claims made by the Silicon Valley hype machine around self-driving cars:

"In 2015, the then-lead of Google’s self-driving car project Chris Urmson said one of his goals in developing a fully driverless vehicle was to make sure that his 11-year-old son would never need a driver’s license.

"The subtext was that in five years, when Urmson’s son turned 16, self-driving cars would be so ubiquitous, and the technology would be so superior to human driving, that his teenage son would have no need nor desire to learn to drive himself.

"Well, it’s 2024, and Urmson’s son is now 20 years old. Any bets on whether he got that driver’s license?"

https://www.theverge.com/24065447/self-driving-car-autonomous-tesla-gm-baidu

@technology #cars #technology #cars #urbanism #UrbanPlanning

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There are autonomous cars on the road right now driving people around without anyone in the front seat. The article even admits this.

This entire article is just complaining that it's happening slower than predicted as companies refine the technology, like that's somehow a bad thing.

It's still happening.

AVs don't have a driver, instead they have 1.5 operations staff per vehicle.

It's not happening.

Cruze has had a lot of self driving issues.

Waymo also has some human operators for if their cars run into issues, but they report that one ops team member is able to cover multiple vehicles.

I haven't heard about Waymo being below 1:1. Do you have a source? I'd love to read it.

https://old.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/n031vq/you_voted_and_were_excited_to_chat_about_waymo/gwhqc1t/

From a reddit ama 3 years ago.

And here's where they discuss what their operators do: https://old.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/n031vq/you_voted_and_were_excited_to_chat_about_waymo/gwhnzib/

Thanks for the links. As I read it, none of that is saying their ratio is below 1:1, just that they switch between vehicles as needed.

And the "what their operators do" link sounds like they are the equivalent of a driving instructor sitting in the passenger seat, giving instructions but not "directly controlling" the vehicle.

During testing, sure... That's not going to be the long term value.

That's the whole point of this post: When? 'Cause it's not happening now.

It isn't though, nowhere is it asking when, it's just complaining it isn't here yet.

Meanwhile, toyota's driver assist tech from 2023 models will actively jerk the wheel from you and try to steer itself into obstructions on the side of the road you're trying to pass, if you have to move closer to the double yellow dividing lines to do it. Oh you live in a rural area and more than half the roads don't even have markings? It will occasionally attempt to steer you into the middle of the two lane road, into oncoming traffic.