More seriously AI has made lots of things better, it’s really the hype cycle that’s disappointing. More FPS in games just isn’t as exciting as self driving cars. But by the time you can buy a level 5 self driving car the technology will be pedestrian.
When COVID hit, my American Airlines flight got canceled and when I went online to ask about getting credit, I got connected to a bot. When I asked to be connected to a real person instead of a bot, the person came online and said: "My name is Eliza. How can I help you today?" At this point, I was very skeptical, but she was indeed a person.
If a city banned all manually driven cars and allowed only self driving cars, the number of car-related deaths would drop to almost nothing. Goods could also be transported more efficiently. The technology to achive this exists right now, L5 or not. The only thing stopping citites from doing this is the cost that inhabitants will have in connection with selling or switching our their car. And all the complaining. But lives would be saved, and the city would be safer and more efficient.
Cities will not need to do that. In Europe they are gradually banning cars as a whole from city centers an you are right, it saves lives. And it also makes those cities more livable.
When I say gradually, it's an euphemism, it's an _extremely_ slow process, but it's the global tendency here.
They aren't banning cars. They're requiring special permits. That's a difference. In effect, they're banning cars for the masses and keep them for a small group (the wealthy, all sorts of delivery drivers, officials).
* making pedestrian zones (i.e. banning)
* deny access to certain types / times (no vans, no old cars, etc.. i.e. also banning)
* reducing roads (i.e. 2 > 1 lane, thus reducing attractivity)
* raising driving prices (the congestion / air quality certificates you mention)
* reducing access to parking (remove places, make them more expensive, etc)
.. all the while increasing alternatives (i.e. use those reduced lanes for bikes)
In addition to this, Cities are more open to changing which rules cars should follow. The effects of climate change are more visible, and the effects of polluted air are better known.
Cruise is currently operating self-driving "taxi" service between the hours of 9pm and 5:30 am throughout the city to members of the general public who've waited on the wait-list. Waymo is too, in Phoenix, and supposedly SF too, but I don't know anybody personally of the general public in SF that has ridden one.
Creating a self driving car which can navigate a dark, rainy parking lot is something we do not know how. Not even in theory. You can't just throw more compute at it. You can't go from a Vickers Type 464 bomb -- one of the most complex bombs in WW II -- to the "Little Boy" by just putting more explosives in there.
> Creating a self driving car which can navigate a dark, rainy parking lot is something we do not know how. Not even in theory.
I do not recognise the reality you are in.
Navigating dark and rainy parking lots is not hard. At all. Not hard in theory, and not hard in practice either.
We have lidars which work very well in rain. We have cameras with excellent dynamic range. Parking lots are slow environments where everyone moves slowly and you are generally allowed to stop if you are suddenly spooked or need a bit more time to check things.
There are hard problems about self driving cars, but dark and rainy parking lots are not the stumbling block.
Where do you even get this idea?
Let me tell you two harder things about self driving cars: "How many nines do you want in your certainty that the car won't hit anyone?" and "How do you want that proven? With stats or with fault tree analysis, or a mix of both?"
Level 5 driving just means it can drive a child or blind person around who can’t take over in an emergency. That’s the difference between Little Boy and a Moab.
However current level 5 cars aren’t something a consumer would buy. A car that refuses to drive in 99% of situations isn’t marketable. The minimum threshold for that might be a car that can only drive in Hawaii, not a large enough market to pay for R&D, but still plenty use for a blind person living in the area.
Level 4 is steering wheel mandatory. Level 5 is steering wheel optional.
Geofencing is part of the criteria, but a car that can only drive in the USA but can’t drive in Europe still qualifies as level 5.
Similarly a car that refuses to drive in a blizzard but can do everything else is level 5. Being able to drive at night or moderate rain is mandatory however.
That said, there is plenty of slightly different definitions thrown about. I am sure someone is going to argue a car needs to be able to drive in any country to qualify etc etc.
Edit: To be clear existing self driving taxi services aren’t level 5 services with existing restrictions, but the car is physically capable of much more than it’s being used for. It can operate at night and in the rain etc they are however being extremely cautious.
Steering wheel doesn't matter, despite the cute mnemonic.
Level 4 cars need a steering wheel to be generally useful. But a limited vehicle like a taxi doesn't need a wheel, no matter whether it's 4 or 5.
I agree with the rest of what you said. Geofencing entire continents isn't about driving ability, and blizzards are an acceptable human-level restriction.
“For vehicles designed to be solely operated by an ADS, manually operated driving controls are logically unnecessary.29 To account for this, the NPRM proposed a regulatory scheme in which the affected standards would not assume that a vehicle will always have a driver’s seat, a steering wheel and accompanying steering column, or just one front outboard passenger seating position.”
They are apparently allowing level 4 Taxi to be considered full ADS even if they have additional “Stowed controls” options.
These levels come from the US’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration formal definition in 2013. It’s been updated a few times since then with SAE introducing an extra level in 2014, but the point was really a formal definition for regulation.
More seriously AI has made lots of things better, it’s really the hype cycle that’s disappointing. More FPS in games just isn’t as exciting as self driving cars. But by the time you can buy a level 5 self driving car the technology will be pedestrian.