One of the big problems that I've been predicting for years, is the standard for driverless cars.

As a society, I figured driverless cars would have to be vastly superior to human drivers before they were accepted.

If driverless cars had one-tenth the accident and fatality rate, they would still be prohibited or sued out of existence.

Now I'm not claiming they are even that good yet.

But I still expect to see widespread adoption in other countries before the US.

Sounds like first hand experience, thank you for sharing.

Hopefully they will get this problem figured out soon before they release too many more of these vehicles.

I wonder if these vehicles stop and gawk at homeless people shitting in the streets?

Agreed, I think one of the biggest hurdles for driverless cars will be cars with drivers, because people can be unpredictable and stupid, for lack of better words. Human drivers aren't going to mesh well with autonomous vehicles.

On the interstate, absolutely true.

For urban environments, you have to add in bikes and jaywalking pedestrians.

And really dense urban environments like SF and NYC have additional issues.

On 'side streets', there are so many double parked delivery trucks, for instance, you sometimes have use the oncoming lane of traffic to go around them.

So there is no way to follow the letter of the law, and sometimes it's not clear if the oncoming traffic is going to wait for you.

If you want to wait for a huge gap in oncoming traffic, you can wait a long time.

If it was all driverless, it would be easier.

If people's Bluetooth, smartphones broadcast their location as a pedestrian, bicyclist, that would help a little bit.

Well, I'm excited to give Waymo a try when I visit Phoenix in a month or so. :)

That the DMV will be the final word about some technological fix for these myriad issues is somewhat worrisome. Not an organization that I would turn to for technological knowledge or progress. Ever.

But I'm sure this will work out fine.

Unfortunately for me it is first hand experience.

The problem for Cruise is the only way for them to get it figured out is running them “in the wild”.

Lol. Shit, used needles, tranq zombies, sidewalk tent suburbs with full on living room set ups including a couch and lamps on night tables all plugged into the city grid. The homeless rule entire swaths of the city now. It’s going to take something major to ever stop this place from being a extreme, far left liberal shithole. It’s so far gone.


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Let's be honest the driving age at 14 is an absolute joke it should probably be 18 at the youngest and probably more like 21


they never should have given me a license at 15 I was a danger to everyone around me

Such a sad deal, I was shocked at walking up on a guy shitting between two cars when I was there at a convention a long time ago, sounds like it has just gotten worse.

Hopefully it will be an experience you look back on with nothing but joy.

Speak for yourself, we weren’t all no driving dipshits like you. I grew up in the country where we had to drive at 14 yrs old

Just have to share: After spending a few days this last week with my PHd, 50 year old, Scientist daughter, she told me she hopes to able to purchase a self driving car for her next vehicle. :D Change is going to happen whether I like it or not.

At this point, I don't really even think that's a straightforward statement. We've learned in the past 10 years or so that "self-driving" is a spectrum, not a definition. I would imagine that a majority of mid-tier or higher cars sold today have at least adaptive cruise control and/or lane control. That's all my 2021 Rav4 Prime has, but it certainly can drive itself on the highway if the rules are "stay in lane and don't hit the car in front of you."

Teslas add a few additional steps to that - more advanced versions of the above, change lanes with just the push of the turn signal, stopping at stop lights/signs, etc.

Beyond that, there really aren't any options that are truly ready for prime time, and it seems like the growth curve has been flattening out in terms of tangible progress. Everything that's out there is really only able to adapt to a specific geographic area, and the ones that can do more than that (Tesla's FSD) still can't handle a lot of fringe scenarios (weird road construction markings, for example).

I do think things will get there, but it's going to take longer than everyone was thinking a few years ago. So for the forseeable future, the question is going to be what self-driving features a car has rather than whether it is "self-driving."

I started driving at 8. My parents made me drive all the way across the state and into KC at 14. I was good to go.

The problem driverless cars ran into is the limits of AI. Yes, AI can do a good job emulating human decision-making, but when you run into a weakness it hits a quandry and can't come up with reasonable work-arounds on the fly. Instead, it brick walls and as in the above OP, will created congestion trying to deal with minor hazards that aren't in its programming.