# Why Driverless Cars Will Never Work



## TCANN (Jun 29, 2017)

Last week Lyft announced the hiring of a couple hundred engineers to their new Driverless Division.

For laughs and giggles I started making a list:
OK, I believe they can keep them from crashing, but:

*1. GPS Location Errors. *
GPS only knows where a property is based on the land records of the local government.
It does NOT know where the driveway/mailbox is.
It says "you are here" but you know you are not there. Call to pas to figure it out.
(this probably deserves its own thread and also ties back to the ride automatically starting thread)

*2. GPS Signal Lost.*
Several times a week, I get the message either Signal Lost, or Searching for GPS
So, a driverless car is going to do what, just stop in its tracks and wait?

*3. Platform Resiliency*
Lyft app freezes, Nav freezes. Need I say more?

*4. Flat tire*
How is a driverless car going to fix a flat?
OK, so they send roadside assistance (2hr wait for pas).

*5. Hunter or Gatherer?*
We all have our own strategy for getting rides.
Some sit and wait, others cruise to a better pickup location.
Would be interesting to know what the driverless car would do

Thoughts? 
Comments?


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## Cynergie (Apr 10, 2017)

Lmao

Good Lord.

The painful logic in this post conjured a score of frighteningly hillarious scenarios in my head just now. Makes you wonder just how seriously committed LyfUber is to public safety and overall civic quality of life.

Just IMAGINE how this would all play out given the supreme cluster [email protected] that is San Francisco? 

Would make for a great Mad Max Deathrow 2020 -- without Max

Just imagine the E Coli fallout resulting from #2 and #3 on Grant St in Chinatown.

With locals trying to murder tourists.... all while everbody is losing their sh*te...

Or on trolley wide one way, steep uphill grade streets like Sacramento when leaving the city/Financial District.

And my personal favorite street in all NorCal aka the suicidal cluster [email protected] that is Market St. Lmao


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## tomatopaste (Apr 11, 2017)

TCANN said:


> Last week Lyft announced the hiring of a couple hundred engineers to their new Driverless Division.
> 
> For laughs and giggles I started making a list:
> OK, I believe they can keep them from crashing, but:
> ...


1. Gps is already good enough and getting better everyday. 99 percent of rides you follow gps with no problem. For the one percent where there is an issue, the pax and call center will figure it out.
2. Driverless cars won't be connected to the cloud continuously for security reasons. The car will get the parameters of the trip and go offline.
3. see, 2.
4. How many times have I needed to change a flat tire in the last 10 yrs? Answer: 0. Many new cars don't even have a spare, you have to call road service. And non pneumatic tires will be here soon.




5. What? The driverless car doesn't care, just like a hammer doesn't care, it's simply a tool. It would be stationed were demand is anticipated and then go pick up the pax.


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## TCANN (Jun 29, 2017)

A picture is worth a thousand words.


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## jfinks (Nov 24, 2016)

I am sure the people that develop this stuff have way more than those 5 bullet points on their list. There could be 10 x that many scenarios that they are looking at where a driverless car can and might fail.

I started a thread a few months back about how I thought a TRUE driverless car would work and questioned if it would look anything like a car on the road today. Things like would it even have a steering wheel? Could it even be safe if it had a steering wheel? If it was truly driverless then it could pick up riders that are not licensed drivers. If it had a steering wheel a rider could purposefully veer the car off course. Maybe the steering wheel disengages when in full driverless mode.

If I were putting money into driverless cars I would start from scratch and build a purposeful all electric 6 passenger car. 3 forward looking seats in the back and 3 backward seats in the front. Thinking about that, would a driverless car like this even have a front or back? Maybe it could just go forward and back on demand by having an electronic steering system front and back. Head lights and tail lights could electronically rotate depending on which way the car was going.

In the middle could be a small vending system, maybe a couple monitors for ads and entertainment. Charging ports for phones and plug ins for laptop power bricks would also be available.


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## emdeplam (Jan 13, 2017)

Just look at the amazing AI in Ubers automated customer support. I honestly can only tell the difference between a live third world agent and the AI machine by the lack of proper grammar in the former.


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## tomatopaste (Apr 11, 2017)

TCANN said:


> A picture is worth a thousand words.
> 
> View attachment 145391


Ok, and how did you resolve the issue? You called the pax. The call center would call the pax and resolve the issue.

In addition, the next time this address came up the system would know where to go automatically. With the current system each driver is starting from scratch and will have to figure it out from square one.


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## TCANN (Jun 29, 2017)

Yeah, called pas.
I told him what street I was on.
He said it is the next one over and referenced a visual landmark.
Would love to see a call center rep handle that.


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## PickEmUp (Jul 19, 2017)

TCANN said:


> Last week Lyft announced the hiring of a couple hundred engineers to their new Driverless Division.
> 
> For laughs and giggles I started making a list:
> OK, I believe they can keep them from crashing, but:
> ...


You left out the most important unresolved issue. I have brought this up with many passengers and none had an answer. Who is liable? If the driverless vehicle has a malfunction or something else causes an at-fault accident, who is liable? The car owner? The programmer? Someone else?


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## Cynergie (Apr 10, 2017)

This is one of the reasons why driving in SF

Driving behind one of these is a priceless experience

Especially when the vehicle's LIDAR encounters a discontinuity in the road's cyber grid. Like the dozens of construction zone moon craters which saturate the SF landscape.

And then the CPU/nav sensors decides it needs to tunnel through the nearest bldg on the sidewalk....


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## Jufkii (Sep 17, 2015)

For the 3rd time in the past 2 weeks my GPS said I have arrived when I was in the middle of a highway,not at an actual pickup location, and guessing not even close to where the pax actually was. Quite frustrating.

Not sure what the deal was in those 3 instances. I never bothered to find out as I cancelled all 3 rides.

Not sure what a driver less car will do when the pickup point is in the middle of a highway like what happened to me.. Maybe it will stop right there on the highway. Maybe it will do something different. No idea but will be very interesting to find out.


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## Jamesp1234 (Sep 10, 2016)

Had the GPS tell me to make a UTurn on the highway a few times. The pax goes "WHAT?".

But you know the college kids/pranksters are going to start requesting cars into an area and then cancel before a fee as they arrive. After a few dozen get trapped, I'm sure the news vans will have a field day.


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## Johnydoo (Jul 25, 2017)

Hackers....Will be hacking. You will not need a hitman when hackers can do the job...


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## tomatopaste (Apr 11, 2017)

TCANN said:


> Yeah, called pas.
> I told him what street I was on.
> He said it is the next one over and referenced a visual landmark.
> Would love to see a call center rep handle that.


He'll handle it with ease. The call center rep will be sitting in front of a 50 inch HD monitor, not just a 4 inch iphone. The car will have cameras with a 360 view of the entire surroundings.
Call center guy: ok on the right side is and Exxon station and on the left it looks like a cow is trying to mount a palm tree.
Passenger: ok that's Rufus, what you need to is...


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## Old Smokey (Sep 13, 2015)

TCANN said:


> Last week Lyft announced the hiring of a couple hundred engineers to their new Driverless Division.
> 
> For laughs and giggles I started making a list:
> OK, I believe they can keep them from crashing, but:
> ...


Well another week another ANT who thinks he is too valuable to the company and can't be replaced by automation. General Motors already has a sizable investment in Lyft. Maybe you have heard of "ON-STAR" cars are going to be driverless and electric.


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## SurgeSurferSD (Nov 15, 2016)

Just got this from LinkedIn in an email this AM:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-...7L9t9mQ&fromEmail=fromEmail&ut=2ZMPYGrqcWXTQ1


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## TCANN (Jun 29, 2017)

bump in the road


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## NoDay (Jul 25, 2017)

Autonomous cars are nothing too new. The industries have been working on it for a very long time. I remember many stories of tech colleges setting up courses in parking lots, highways and more - all in the last 10 years. The new part is that these vehicles are entering transportation and not just a science experiment.

If you've ordered something from Amazon, there is a good possibility a robot helped get it to you. They're using robotic forklifts and more. The technology is different, yes. But it has revolutionized that industry. Making way for transportation revolution to be next.

Will there be problems? Yes, absolutely. Will they get around every one of the OP's points, oh yes. When? Who knows. 
The benefits appear to outweigh the disadvantages in the long term.

In regards to OPs
*1. GPS Location Errors. *
GPS is not perfect, true. But it expands. 10 years ago, your address might have been on a gps. If you've updated the software from the navigation company. When there a can't find you issue - it will be a rarity to have it happen twice; if reported. Drones can easily be assigned mapping protocols and work this out more and more.

*2. GPS Signal Lost.*
"So, a driverless car is going to do what, just stop in its tracks and wait?" Computer will know the enitre route if GPS is lost, it still knows what to do. If it runs into unique situations, it addresses them as needed.

*3. Platform Resiliency *
This will be the expectation among any early adopters. They will know there will be glitches its bound to happen. As time persists it will get better.

*4. Flat tire*
There are already run flat tires to buy you some miles before repair. Even if they only stuck with this, it will prevent most tire related concerns. 
When an issue is submitted, it will know to go to a contracted service location for repair.

*5. Hunter or Gatherer?*
These things will be much better at knowing when rides will be needed and were than we are. Because we're not employees the companies will not put out a best to park here spot. But they will have something like it eventually. 
These vehicles will know the likely hood of ride requests via some proprietary algorithms.

_"By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox." ~ Galileo Galilei_


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## Laino (Jul 29, 2017)

Just imagine how many 1* ratings you will get. With comment "the driver is not taking to me", "I asked it to stop immediately but it said its not possible because we are on the motorway and its not safe", "where the f*** is the driver?", "omg there is a sh*ts all over the back seat" and so on. They created self driving cars now they have to invent self cleaning cars and they are done.


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## Cynergie (Apr 10, 2017)

On a more serious and darker note, I hope they're not considering a pool/line service feature with the robocar. The fact riders have to share a confined space with no human driver 3rd party,. Not good given the anti dashcam attitudes of LyfUber riders in a city like SF. This creates a potential nirvana hot spot for pedobears and other sexual predators IMO, because security cameras can be disabled.


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## borchardt2 (Jul 23, 2017)

as all i can think about is the person who drove off a cove cause gps told her too... yea that was awhile ago but will these cars know to stop.


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## Cynergie (Apr 10, 2017)

where was this story in the news?


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## RamzFanz (Jan 31, 2015)

TCANN said:


> *1. GPS Location Errors. *
> GPS only knows where a property is based on the land records of the local government.
> It does NOT know where the driveway/mailbox is.
> It says "you are here" but you know you are not there. Call to pas to figure it out.
> (this probably deserves its own thread and also ties back to the ride automatically starting thread)





borchardt2 said:


> as all i can think about is the person who drove off a cove cause gps told her too... yea that was awhile ago but will these cars know to stop.


They don't rely on GPS. They have laser accurate internal maps that are accurate to a centimeter and can update on the fly via V2V communication.



TCANN said:


> *2. GPS Signal Lost.*
> Several times a week, I get the message either Signal Lost, or Searching for GPS
> So, a driverless car is going to do what, just stop in its tracks and wait?


See above.



TCANN said:


> *3. Platform Resiliency*
> Lyft app freezes, Nav freezes. Need I say more?


You're comparing a smart phone to cutting edge redundant processors?



TCANN said:


> *4. Flat tire*
> How is a driverless car going to fix a flat?
> OK, so they send roadside assistance (2hr wait for pas).


Um, call another car?



TCANN said:


> *5. Hunter or Gatherer?*
> We all have our own strategy for getting rides.
> Some sit and wait, others cruise to a better pickup location.
> Would be interesting to know what the driverless car would do


This _will_ be interesting. You can be sure they are going to use our data to decide their strategies.



Laino said:


> They created self driving cars now they have to invent self cleaning cars and they are done.


Cleaning will become a profit center.


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