this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
239 points (98.4% liked)

News

36292 readers
2867 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.


Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.


7. No duplicate posts.


If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.


All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

General Motors, Ford and other established automakers risk becoming relics if they don’t catch up to Chinese carmakers and technology companies in electric vehicles and self-driving cars.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Depends on whose. The Waymo ones do remarkably well. Other makers aren't nearly as good.

[–] CADmonkey@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Isn't waymo just using remote workers to drive the cars?

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Not exactly; they've got a remote worker facility where they've got about 1 person per 100 cars, who maps out what to do in situations where the software can't handle it, but doesn't do a full-on remote-drive. This enables them to gracefully handle the long tail of situations the software can't do yet, so long as not every car hits it at once (as with, say, a power outage causing all traffic lights to fail in San Francisco, or flash flooding causing issues all over Phoenix)

[–] homes@piefed.world 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I’d prefer that to them just letting an AI do it

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I'd rather pay a taxi driver.

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

For a lot of people, the main risk with a taxi is being attacked by the driver.

[–] cenzorrll@piefed.ca 6 points 23 hours ago (1 children)
[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 3 points 22 hours ago

Those have the same problem, but less concentrated ownership

[–] homes@piefed.world 1 points 1 day ago
[–] empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

I don't care. Any self driving car is resigning my autonomy to a corporation. That is not fucking happening. for the love of god just invest in busses already

[–] TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah, but the whole point of a car is autonomy and independence. The person's, not the car's. If you're looking for someone, or something, to transport you places, buses and trains are much cheaper and safer.

[–] ramble81@lemmy.zip 0 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (2 children)

Self-driving cars can give an amazing level of autonomy and independence to people like never before. Think about elderly and disabled people who normally would have to rely on others to get around having the ability to do so on their own terms.

Also think about freedom of time you would get back. Stuck in a traffic jam? Watch a movie, read a book, get some road head. Everyone suddenly has their own personal drivers.

Accidents would decrease too (Waymo has published a peer reviewed paper showing that it’s almost 12x safer than people). No having to worry about drunk or tired drivers.

Most people don’t care about driving, they just want a way to get from point A to B, and self-driving enables all of that.

[–] jtrek@startrek.website 6 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I'd rather live somewhere with buses and trains. You can get places when old and/or drunk, you build a better world for everyone, and you don't funnel money into shitty privately owned tech companies.

[–] ramble81@lemmy.zip 1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

And until we can tear down and rebuild the world, that’s not going to be possible for a large swath of people. Think about places that don’t have good mass transit infrastructure and probably won’t. This gives those people access.

[–] jtrek@startrek.website 3 points 17 hours ago

There are many, many, people that could be granted good bus service without tearing down and rebuilding the world. The problem is political. Every day and every dollar we put into other lesser solutions comes with a large opportunity cost.

Imagine if we'd focused on buses for the past 22 years instead of waymo. How many people could be served by the $16 billion in funding waymo got?

[–] TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world 7 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Everyone suddenly has their own personal drivers.

I don't want a driver. Even if I had enough money to pay a personal chauffeur, I wouldn't want one. I prefer to drive my own car.

But maybe I'm in the minority on that one. Maybe most people would prefer self-driving cars. That's fine, I guess, but I just hope someone keeps making regular cars, because I ain't interested in being driven around by a robot.

Ideally I'd be able to live in a city or town designed around people, not cars. So I wouldn't have to own a car, autonomous driving or otherwise, to get around.

[–] village604@adultswim.fan 2 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

Eventually your auto insurance will go up to the point where it's unaffordable to drive yourself.

This isn't a near future prediction, but it'll happen once self-driving cars reach a critical mass.

[–] WoodScientist@lemmy.world 3 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Why would the cost of insuring human-driven cars increase? It's not like the risk of a human drivers will suddenly go up with driverless cars on the road. In fact, driverless cars, if they worked, would lower the claims rate of human-driven cars.

And the insurance companies won't pressure owners to switch to driverless vehicles. True self-driving vehicles won't require insurance at all. If the manufacturer is completely responsible for any risk, then it's the manufacturer that has all the liability. Your self-driving car would just have a lifetime worth of insurance coverage built into the purchase price. A world of only self driving cars is a world where car insurance companies don't exist.

[–] village604@adultswim.fan 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Because humans are terrible drivers and would be responsible for the vast majority of crashes. And the fact that self driving cars don't need insurance would drive up the costs since the premium pool would be much smaller.

[–] WoodScientist@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

That makes zero mathematical sense.

[–] village604@adultswim.fan 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

It does if you understand how insurance works.

The insurance companies pool all of the premiums they receive and pay claims out of that. The more people paying into the pool, the lower the financial burden of a single payout.

With auto insurance specifically, everyone with a different insurance company paying into that company's pool is further mitigating the risk.

If self driving cars aren't required to carry insurance, then the number of people paying into the pool is going to shrink but the total cars on the road won't at the same rate.

Since fully autonomous vehicles are going to be way more expensive than manually driven vehicles, the premiums will need to rise dramatically.

[–] WoodScientist@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

There's a limit to the gains from pooling insurance risk. Sure, you gain a lot by going from 1000 people in a pool fo 10000. But 10 million to 20 million? You reach a point where the law of large numbers takes over and adding more people doesn't produce further gains.

[–] village604@adultswim.fan 1 points 1 hour ago

But decreasing the pool will decrease your gains. Self driving cars would greatly decrease the pool while also greatly raising the risk.

[–] TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world 3 points 20 hours ago

Eventually your auto insurance will go up to the point where it's unaffordable to drive yourself.

Then I'll sell my car for scrap and walk or bike. And when I can't walk or bike anymore, well, there's always mobility scooters.