i am suspicious of all the anti-human-driver comments and all the dismissal of any concerns about Waymo in the comments here.
I am not convinced that public testing of such services is safe, let alone commercial service.
One cannot punish a self driving vehicle in any meaningful sense.
Corporate incentives vs the public commons, is a general concern that cannot be sweettalked away.
The metaphors about human drivers recording you also seem like reductio ad absurdum.
puff pieces like this should not be well received on HN or it discredits any pretence at separation of concerns with regards to HN and ycomb.
> i am suspicious of all the anti-human-driver comments [...] I am not convinced that public testing of such services is safe
There are currently over a million fatalities from road traffic crashes every year, being the leading cause of death for the 5-29 year age group[0].
I'd claim that inaction is unacceptably dangerous/deadly here and that, to minimize deaths, we need to be aggressive in trying out and pushing forward potential solutions.
> One cannot punish a self driving vehicle in any meaningful sense.
The goal of punishment for driving offenses is, in my eyes, largely about reducing unsafe behavior - not just to make someone suffer. Fines/incentives for manufacturers and fine-tuning of models based on incident data should fulfill this purpose.
I agree that the US needs to invest far more in public transport.
I don't think that's mutually exclusive with Waymo working on their electric autonomous vehicles, nor that halting Waymo's testing would lead to greater access to public transport. Safer cleaner roads should hopefully even benefit busses, coaches, trams (and bikes) that have to share the road with cars - and the same self-driving technology can likely be adapted for use on public transport vehicles.
China, for instance, has extensive public transport in addition to a fast-growing autonomous vehicle sector. As useful and underutilized as trains are, there will likely still always be a non-negligible portion of transportation that road vehicles are just better suited for, which should be made as safe as possible.
There is also that it seems unfortunately difficult to get financial/political momentum behind building public transport in the US, whereas Waymo's services are something that's already happening and GP is implying should be stopped - which I feel flips the "Why not just" in terms of which is the course of least resistance (but, to be clear, we should definitely still be pushing for public transport).
I am not convinced that public testing of such services is safe, let alone commercial service. One cannot punish a self driving vehicle in any meaningful sense. Corporate incentives vs the public commons, is a general concern that cannot be sweettalked away.
The metaphors about human drivers recording you also seem like reductio ad absurdum.
puff pieces like this should not be well received on HN or it discredits any pretence at separation of concerns with regards to HN and ycomb.