Google's Self-Driving Cars Are Going to Change Everything - <AUTHOR> http://vancouverdata.blogspot.com/2012/08/googles-self-driving-cars-are-going-to.html <comment><USER4> Author is missing a few important points that are highly relavent:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

<comment><USER5> _Having discussed this with friends, a fair number of people just want their own car that they drive._

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

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

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

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

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

<comment><USER6> Well, not everyone will see it this way. My example:

> Imagine never having to park

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

<comment><USER7> _I like knowing where I parked. Further, we have something called valley parking, in most places that I would want to get off for a while._

You wouldn't need to know where you parked: a quick text message retrieves your car.

 _I will get to the airport after all. The only difference, I can have one or two to relax at home with wife, before the flight._ The end result for the self-driving car is identical to the cab case, you can still have your drinks because you will not be driving the car. However, removing the cabbie from the equation will cut costs dramatically.

<comment><USER6> Again -- where all those cars will be parked, knowing before I would either take a cab, or take a public transportation?

Will we get millions of parkings underground built the same time AC hit the streets? Dont think so.

Further, you saying that removing cabbie will cut the cost. Hmm.. my take is that it is the city that makes the most money out of cabbies. I can bet my left arm (Im lefty) that if the city will realize they losing large chunk of money due to AC driving everywhere, I am sure they will smack you with such an AC ride tax that taxis will become again a reasonable alternative!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The changes the author proposes will not occur for the vast majority of the population of the earth - not in China, or in India, or anywhere in Africa and not in many places in south east Asia or south/central America. He has the first world, US-centric view of most futurists. In places where people don't have reliable access to electricity, or even safe drinking water, absolutely no one would be interested in self-driving cars.

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

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

<comment><USER9> > self-driving cars becoming a norm leads to more car-centered infrastructure > over public transportation

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

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

<comment><USER8> I think there would be a feedback loop in place where self-driving cars demand better infrastructure to support them, and as this infrastructure improves, self-driving cars become more convenient to use, leading more people to want to use them, leading to more such infrastructure. Since this infrastructure gets funded, it's not much of a stretch to think that most transport money would go there.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It will eventually happen, but in order to do so, you first need a catalyst - a major metropolitan area such as Manhattan that converts to 100% robocars within a geographic area. The problem is that if you mix human and robocar drivers, any car company making a robocar is going to get sued into oblivion when they collide with a human driver, regardless of who is at fault. And, there are definitely ways that humans can cause robocars to have unavoidable accidents (swerving across the double yellow line at the last split second, etc).

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

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

<comment><USER11> Doesn't even have to be a major metro area. Start small. Someplace without snow (Google cars still have problems with snow). Puerto Rico. The Bahamas. Hawaii. These are all small places where you can shake out the major issues before expanding.

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

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

<comment><USER12> I don't think tourist-heavy locations like Hawaii and the Bahamas would be good. Lots rental car business and airport traffic relative to the size.

<comment><USER11> You'd be replacing those rental cars with your self-driving cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The laser guidance system costs $70K by itself. [http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/consumer&i...](http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/consumer&id=8703278)

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

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

</comment><comment><USER14> I think this is missing one major thing: private car ownership will drastically decrease. It will be a luxury to own a car, almost everyone will be driven in available commodity cars. I personally hope this becomes public transit: available public cars just like some cities have available public bikes. Request it via your handheld (a la Uber), take it anywhere, hop out and it will either remain where it is or head to where it's needed. But it could just as easily by all private robotaxis.

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

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

</comment><comment><USER15> Without car accidents i bet the supply of organs will decrease dramatically, I wonder (in theory) if it might be enough to push them to sell on the free market.

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

<comment><USER16> The problem with organs is that for most of them, you need freshly-killed young people. Old people's organs are usually no good, as are the organs of those who die of natural causes (if their organs were any good they wouldn't have died), but healthy young people on motorcycles provide top-notch organs, assuming they weren't damaged in the accident itself.

<comment><USER17> Luckily it's harder to automate motorcycle driving : D

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

<comment><USER15> YEah true, though I wonder in the new world of self-driving cars whether some incentives for motorcyle driving will go away.. that and I imagine a decent tranche of motorcyle accidents are caused by cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have hoped/dreamed of this for 10 years. It will happen.

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

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

just incredible!

</comment><comment><USER19> I understand the googly eyed take on "the way of the future" of cars, but self-driving cars are going to be too impractical to become ubiquitous for much longer than 5-10.

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

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

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

</comment><comment><USER20> Sorry but I will always want to drive myself. I have a great car that I love and because of the way the world has changed since it was made (20 years or so) I don't think they'll ever make anything quite like this again. I intend to keep it forever.

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

<comment><USER21> He addressed this point: you'll be able to drive yourself but it'll cost you much more than giving the control to the car (due to cost of the insurance) and much more than today (insurance spreads risks and in order to work, needs a lot of buyers, in this case drivers; if most people switch from current "person driver", expensive insurance to much cheaper "auto-driver" insurance, the "person driver" insurance will become more expensive because there will be no benefits of scale).

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

<comment><USER22> In the long run, hopefully person driver insurance won't be _too_ much more expensive, simply because they'll be less accidents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Cars won't change 'Everything', self driving or not.

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

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

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

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

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

</comment><comment><USER24> How will this technology work in say, New Zealand? There's a lot of backroads, gravel roads and roads that don't appear in Google Maps.

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

<comment><USER25> They can recognise road edges visually. Best-guess routing to off-map destinations. Cars can feed back trip data to improve the map database.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> To me, there are still so many questions left unanswered...

First and foremost, the majority that believes AC will resolve heavy traffic in the cities is wrong. At the end, its about people, not cars. Think how you behave nowadays in the city crowded with cars -- you are perfectly aware not to f*ck with the driver, because if you step in his way you may get killed. We are humans, we make mistakes. Now, I would imagine those super cars must see everything around -- otherwise noone in the GOV in their sound mind would have approved AC to drive around humans. Therefore, I can imagine hoards of people taking advantage of this and just simply walking in front of a riding AC just because they know its not a human steering the wheel and that the car has no other choice than stop in front of the pedestrian, regardless if he stepped in and force the right of way or not. Heck, most likely the car will not even hunk or course at the pedestrian. Awesome! In the crowded cities, people will establish this behavior: before walking into the street, check the car - <USER2> its AC, fine I am stepping in, no worries! And whos gonna enforce those violators? 100 more cameras at each corner??

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

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

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

[1] [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35589163/ns/business- autos/t/toy...](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35589163/ns/business- autos/t/toyota-revelations-may-free-man-jailed-crash/#.UCsX6LRfElQ) [2] [http://articles.nydailynews.com/2010-02-22/news/27057005_1_s...](http://articles.nydailynews.com/2010-02-22/news/27057005_1_sudden- acceleration-floor-mats-camry-owner)

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

<comment><USER26> > 100 more cameras at each corner??

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Though admittedly sabotage is a very common concern with automatic cars - <USER3> if somebody papers over a street sign or throws rocks at the car whilst it is on a sharp corner? In reality, malicious third parties are of concern, but not any more than if the vehicle was not autonomous. Human drivers can still be distracted by noisy passengers, intoxicated by alcohol and blinded by lasers; all you're doing by putting a robot in control is swapping the weaknesses of one system for the weaknesses of another. Ideally, there would be a mechanical backup system which could be controlled by the driver in the case of an emergency, which would effectively make autonomous cars more reliable than normal ones.

<comment><USER6> > LIDAR. A black bag laying on the street is virtually invisible to it.

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

> If it can be proven to be poor engineering

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

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

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

<comment><USER26> > so when the cats lays in front of it -- it will just run over it, not being > able to see it?

LIDAR stands for Light Detection And Ranging. Much like sonar (which is also used on an autonomous car) it is used to map 3D environments, producing models which can then be analysed by the computer. A plastic bag lying perfectly flat on a road would look like sensor noise, whereas a cat would be a noticeable obstacle (much like a fallen garbage bin or a basketball). This clip[0] from Udacity's CS373 class is great if you want to find out what an autonomous car "sees". In short, if you're a two dimensional cat, you're in trouble. Otherwise you should be fine :)

> Usually after 10 years of deep investigation,

What? I said "I'd imagine..." because that part of my post was pure speculation since AFAIK nobody has ever been in a serious autonomous car accident.

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

Touché, fair point.

[0]: <http://youtu.be/XZL934YQ-FQ> \- you can skip to 0:55 if you just want to see the LIDAR-generated model

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> >Long-haul truck driving will cease to exist. Think how much money trucking companies will save if they don't have to pay drivers or collision and liability insurance. That's about 3 million jobs in the States. Shipping of goods will be much cheaper.

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

1\. Find a truck carrying mobile devices

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

3\. Partner uses blow torch to get the goods

4\. $$$$

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

</comment><comment><USER28> I've also thought about how self-driving cars will affect crime. If police don't have to enforce moving violations does that give them more time to patrol areas with higher crime OR do those departments shrink because of the lack of revenue from said moving violations?

</comment><comment><USER29> This is the next big thing and it will happen. Just imagine a city full of robotic cars were you dont have to own a car anymore because you can always call one. Less traffic jams because they can drive at peak efficiency and can plan ahead because they all know where everyone wants to go and all of them will be electronic cars.

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

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

<comment><USER30> _One of the biggest downside of this a lot of people like cab/truck driver will lose their jobs due to this "revolution"_

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I love Google's Self Driving Cars. But do you think auto industry will allow self driving cars without any problems? For simple concept like Uber, we are already seeing so many hurdles. For any radical innovation to happen lots of naysayers and incumbents will try to kick innovators at every opportunity. Unfortunately, auto industry will use some sort of machination to lobby for evil regulations.

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

<comment><USER32> Self driving cars have the ability to increase the number of passenger miles driven.

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

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

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

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

<comment><USER11> Why would Google license the tech when they could buy Tesla (TSLA market cap is $3 BB; CHEAP for the value they deliver) and turn out Google cars themselves? They then control the entire ecosystem, similar to Android, versus having to cede control to car companies who drag ass on innovation.

<comment><USER32> Tesla doesn't have the capacity to build large numbers of cars. Even if it wanted to ramp up, it would take a long time to build a large-volume car.

GM could licence the tech and punch out 500,000 cars in no time at all. That is the difference.

Google will not want to become an auto-maker. Of that I am almost certain.

<comment><USER25> Google went from zero to making a large amount of computer hardware in a decade, partly through using the large existing contract manufacturing chain. The auto industry is not entirely different: Bosch, Rotax, ZF, etc would all design and build parts for Google...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> FYI, the article suggests self-driving cars have been approved in Nevada and California, which is true -- but in both states, a human passager (presumably with a driver's license) has to be in the vehicle. In Nevada, you actually have to have _two_ passengers, which in some cases makes it more inconvenient than regular driving.

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

</comment><comment><USER34> Very good points. Almost all of them. This, however...

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

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

</comment><comment><USER25> I doubt that car insurance is dominated by fixed costs - istr payout rates are over 70%. Even if the number of policy holders falls by half (which is unlikely to happen in a decade) premiums shouldn't skyrocket.

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

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

</comment><comment><USER12> The other day I was driving 2 of my kids (6 and 7) to one of their Summer rec programs. I told them that they would be driven by robotic/self-driving cars someday soon. The questions never stopped after that:

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

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

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

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

<comment><USER35> At first the robot cars will take you to get frozen yogurt. Then they will begin to refuse, citing your weight and the three laws.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Never underestimate the Kronos Effect that Tim Wu talks about in The Master Switch. If what this article predicts starts to pan out, I'd expect a lot of lobbying dollars to scare people into keeping it illegal. Even if it is safer/better.

<comment><USER32> Too late

[http://jalopnik.com/5934213/autonomous-google-cars-will- kill...](http://jalopnik.com/5934213/autonomous-google-cars-will-kill-you-old- lady--a-florida-political-ad)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I am a firm believer that if the car was never invented until 2012, we would not be in control of them, they would be computerized and autonomous.

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

</comment><comment><USER38> Interesting thoughts, but you're ignoring the demographic that enjoys driving for driving.

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

<comment><USER39> People still ride horses and enjoy doing it, but I don't see anyone advocating using horses for their daily driver (the Amish excluded). Driving for pleasure doesn't have to go away.

<comment><USER30> Exactly. And I can see a new sport/hobby of semi-automated driving where you can perform maneuvers that are difficult or impossible for the best humans today. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY93kr8PaC4> is a simple example; imagine what you could do with a high-performance vehicle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does anyone have a good summary of the actual monetary costs associated with human drivers? That would be really compelling.

</comment><comment><USER40> Come on, let's not get swept away in the hyperbole and be reasonable for a minute: MADD will never go away.

</comment><comment><USER41> How would a young programmer get into this field?

Are PhD's a prerequisite?

<comment><USER42> DSP, Decision Theory, Machine Learning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Also these cars would be mostly electric, which have fewer moving parts

</comment><comment><USER44> Self driving cars is such a dumb, short-sighted idea. We don't need more cars on the road, and we don't need more roads either. It's not sustainable.

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

The emperor is in the buck on this one.

<comment><USER45> Speaking of dumb and short-sighted, how do you fail to see that robotic drivers can make vastly more efficient use of existing infrastructure than humans? How do you not see that reducing traffic jams lowers the amount of gasoline burnt idling, and carbon emitted to no effect? How do you not see that the same technology can be the basis for a very different transportation system? Can you not imagine a world where few people own cars (which are parked most of the the time) and, instead, rely on fleets of robotic taxis simply pick people up and drop them off where and when they're called? If crashes were a thing of the past, do you see how dramatically engineering would change? How much smaller and lighter cars could become? How much less fuel they'd use?

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

What are you building?

<comment><USER16> autophil probably goes too far, but he isn't entirely wrong--even perfectly efficient robotic cars powered by pixie dust are inefficient and not a panacea for the problems of traffic and pollution that car-centric infrastructure has caused.

<comment><USER21> True but assuming the future is that of mostly robo-taxi companies (and not individually owned self-driving cars), there will tremendous business pressure on robo-taxi companies to make their cars as efficient as possible, as the cost of gas (or other energy) will be part of their cost of providing the service.

Today car companies sell cars based on many criteria. Fuel efficiency is one of them but when gas prices aren't too high, individual customers don't care about that very much.

Someone who operates a fleet of 10.000 cars will make fuel efficiency their top-most priority because that will drive down the cost of their service and the cost will be a major reason why customers will pick one provider over another, not how stylish the car is or how fast it goes from 0 to 60.

E.g. if they realize that by putting solar panel on the roof of the car they can save money in the long term, they'll immediately put solar panel in every car. The progress in making cars more efficient will be much faster.

<comment><USER16> Anything like a car is always going to be space and weight inefficient. A Smart car has an order of magnitude more weight than a person, and occupies two orders of magnitude more space on the ground--you're not going to get significantly below that, so propelling those cars and fitting them all on the street already adds a bunch of overhead on top of the original problem of people-moving. That's _before_ tackling engine efficiency or energy sources.

This isn't to say self-driving cars are useless. They might be just the kick needed to get people out of car ownership, which will enable the fundamental land use and infrastructure changes necessary to make more sustainable improvements. But they aren't the endgame for sustainability.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Frequon Invaders: kill Frequons by achieving destructive interference with them - <AUTHOR> http://www.blonzonics.us/games/frequon-invaders <comment><AUTHOR> Your mission is to destroy each invading Frequons by moving the cursor on top of it. What could be easier? Except for one itty bitty detail: the Frequons are not displayed in the usual spatial domain, but in the Fourier Domain. Frequons look like colored waves. Your "self" is a wave too, with opposite polarity. Instead of manipulating some local point on the screen, you manipulate a global wave pattern. You destroy Frequons by achieving destructive interference with them.</comment>


FossilEra Founder Interview & Google thinks Megalodon endangered? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wac6.com/wac6/2013/11/trick-question-can-a-shark-a-million-years-extinct-be-an-endangered-species.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WilliamCarletonCounselorLaw+%28William+Carleton%2C+Counselor+%40+Law%29&utm_term=%24%7BWilliamCarletonCounselorLaw%7D

<comment><USER2> This looks pretty interesting, but can someone explain google here? I assumed it would be resolved at the end of the article. Nope, just casually mentions that google considers something that is extinct endangered and banned their account. Even after appeals or whatever they are sticking to their seemingly absurd position.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you think of this idea? - <AUTHOR>

A stock market for fantasy sports players. The NFL is easiest to start with...the stock market would be open during games and each player would have a stock price associated with him. So let's just say I start out with quarterbacks. Tom Brady and Peyton Manning would have large stock prices while Mark Sanchez would probably have a lower stock price. At the same time, for every time Manning or Brady throws an interception, their stock price will fall farther than that of Sanchez if he were to throw an interception. During games, you would be able to buy/sell and trade stock with other players. I envision this to be with real money, of course pending the legality of it.<p>I am currently writing up algorithms for this but I figured I'd gain HN's feedback as well. Do you think this is a good idea? If you want more info, feel free to ask below or contact me: aashayk at google's email service. <comment><USER2> I had thought of something similar sometime back. But looked like the legalities are a bit overwhelming.

For eg. each of these players/actors(or whoever) are a brand in themselves. And I am not sure whether they will easily consent to such a kind of thing.

In fact, am not sure how Fantasy Sports(for different sports) are working without much legal hassles or probably no one in this space has made it so big that no celebrity wants to sue them. I dont know. Someone who is working in this space can probably educate us.

I had thought of something similar for movies.</comment>


Jet Pack Dreams Take Flight - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com/Photos-Jet-pack-dreams-take-flight/2300-11397_3-6228153.html?tag=nefd.lede

<comment><USER2> These dreams are about to make a hard landing.

Allow me to rephrase that - there is no _chance_ that jetpacks will be a conceivable way of personal flight in the forseeable future. Imagine how inefficient space rockets are: gravity drag constantly works against you and at all times you have to create about 10N/kg of thrust just to keep from falling down. And this is thrust you have to provide by expelling mass from your engines. It will be a cold day in hell before it will be viable to use this technique to stay in the air for prolonged periods of time. The problems that make it difficult to climb into orbit are doubled for atmospheric flight through mass ejection. (This is also why purely chemical rockets will _never_ turn into a cheap way of getting into orbit, another pet pieve of mine).

Until we should happen to master large-scale production and lightweight, mobile storage of anti-matter (right, that's only going to be in like 50 years or so anyway), wings and atmospheric displacement are the only viable ways to achieve atmospheric flight of any significant duration. And among those, only wings allow you to gain any significant speed. If anyone can point out a flaw in my physics I would be delighted, but as far as I can tell this is the reality we have to face. No amount of daydreaming is going to change Newton's laws.

On the other hand, strapping your body to a set of wings while wearing an aerodynamic suit and a lightweight chemical engine (like <http://www.jet- man.com/prod/index.html>) could probably be a viable and exciting way to get closer to the air. Unless my intuition is off you will not get very good fuel efficiency, but some people think that modern sailplanes or experimentals are not a sufficiently fun and cheap way to stay in the air and travel long distances fast.

And even that being said, politics is a much greater impediment to the development of aviation than physics has been for the last 100 years. Google "aviation lawsuit" for a small taste of what anyone not playing _squarely by the book_ have in store for them.

<comment><USER3> If you go to the website of the company it says for promotional and entertainment use. Nobody was really saying it's viable. It's quite awesome though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow. It's 1965 all over again.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Rocket_Belt>

</comment><comment><USER5> Surprised that there was no remark on how loud it is to have a hydrogen peroxide burning rocket that close by. I was under the flight path of the Rocketman at last year's Tournament of Roses Parade. It was very cool but also the loudest noise I've ever been exposed to.

<http://www.rocketman.org/events/RoseParade/>

</comment><comment><USER6> There are already untethered jetpacks out there! <http://www.jetpackinternational.com/video.html> There are more videos on YouTube somewhere. Try searching "jet pack rose parade" or "jet pack wired nextfest"

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks like a lot of fun - a pity it only has a flight time of ~75 seconds at the moment (it does say they'll get it up to 35 minutes ... we'll see how that pans out).</comment>


Ask HN: Interested in helping out a survey on refactoring tools? - <AUTHOR> https://illinois.edu/fb/sec/8454746

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have experience with a programming language and an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) like IntelliJ IDEA, NetBeans, Eclipse, or Visual Studio? If so, we would appreciate your feedback.

This post is not a news story but we expect the results of the survey to become an interesting piece of news if you participate in the survey.

Your responses to our survey at <https://illinois.edu/fb/sec/8454746> will be used for a research project at the University of Illinois that aims to augment IDEs with new ways of refactoring code.

This survey will take about 20 minutes and all responses will be completely anonymous. To participate you should be at least 18 years old and be familiar with an IDE.</comment>


Ask YC: What is your backup in case your startup fails? - <AUTHOR>

PG mentions that not having a backup is probably a good strategy (desperate to succeed), but I'm interested in hearing what range of backups are being considered.<p>There is always "everything else," but I'd be interested to know if folks will just try again, go to university, or join a BDC, etc. <comment><USER2> I wouldn't have started tarsnap if Google hadn't offered me a job; that gave me the confidence that if tarsnap didn't work I would be able to get a well- paying job in silicon valley.

</comment><comment><USER3> Keep your old boss happy (i.e. dont just quit to start a startup).

If mine goes down the pan I still have my old job (within reason) to go back to (in point of fact I am still working there almost full time, but the points stands :D).</comment>


More Than 30 Killed, Others Taken Hostage In Brazen Terrorist Attack in Nairobi - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/nairobi-mall-attack-terrorism-2013-9

<comment><USER2> Silly Kenyans. Don't they know terrorism is just an excuse for the US government to infringe civil liberties?</comment>


Show HN: ~200 byte in-browser, no JS, private notepad - <AUTHOR> https://jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj.github.io/new-note/ <comment><AUTHOR> I wanted a place where I could write down my thoughts without them being stored in the cloud or connected to an account (notes, onenote, evernote, docs, paper, gist, etc). I don't really like terminal text editors, notepad, or IDEs for writing, so I made this very simple notepad. It's a  html tag with the contenteditable attribute making it editable, and some