My thoughts on this are complex and involved and probably lend themselves to list format. They are also going to be verbose. Know that I'm fighting that verbosity with a cudgel and a machete, and that I'm doing my level best not to use bullet points. First, I have subscribed to your newsletter. I find it entertaining that you chose to link to me ragging on the Segway, rather than the comment just up the page where I practically begged you to do exactly this: To be clear, I appreciate this, I encourage you to continue with this, and I consider it a valuable service to hubski in particular and humanity at large and wish to remind you publicly that I've been a big booster of this particular thesis for something like four years now. So. Dive in, rock on, vaya con dios. BUT C'mon, man. This is Henry Petroski. I'm a big fan of Petroski. Dude wrote The Evolution of Useful Things, which I nagged you to read not two months ago: In fact, I'm halfway convinced I put that book in your very hands not a year ago. Petroski is the kind of dude who can sell an entire book on the history of the pencil. In the Evolution of Useful Things he makes a compelling argument that the fucking fork created the middle class in renaissance Europe. So no, he's not an AV junkie, aficionado, advocate or expert. But he's a hell of a mile-high kinda guy. And your blind spot on this, I think, is that you see Petroski asking questions as if they're unanswered... rather than seeing it as Petroski asking questions that will be answered multiple ways. Just as a reminder: 434 pages on the PENCIL. I can only imagine what the article looked like before the WSJ edited it. In fact, I suggest you as a graduate student in autonomous vehicles to write the guy at Duke and ask him. Because here's you: Here's Petroski: Worthy of note: Google ain't focusing on head-tracking. Tesla ain't focusing on head-tracking. Nissan ain't focusing on head-tracking. Daimler is. So could there theoretically be a municipality that passes a law allowing head-tracking AVs to run yellow lights? Tell me you haven't seen weirder legislation. Okay, I'm kinda with you on the Segway jab. I'd argue that Segways haven't found acceptance because they're all the utility of a bicycle at two orders of magnitude more expense. But if I were trying to come up with a "disruptive" technology whose acceptance has been hampered by legislation I'd probably end up pointing at a Segway, too. Either that or burning 2500 words explaining why scooters are popular everywhere but the US. I mean, you've got an engineering professor in the Wall Street Journal whose editor has required him to explain what a Segway even is. That there's no easy thing to point to for parallel argument demonstrates that this is something nobody's thinking about much. And that's the gist of the article - "nobody is thinking about this much". Instead we're looking at Youtube videos of Teslas nearly running into things and going "woo hoo! Driverless cars are just around the corner!" instead of recognizing that the probable eventuality is a massive publicly-funded FAA-grade "ground traffic control system" that is going to radically alter our landscape. So yes. Please continue to do these. And know that I will be grilling you on every one. ;-) I saw a demo by Daimler a while ago that would use cameras to track pedestrian movement. The car would model the direction that pedestrians were turning their head, since people who intend to cross the street (including jaywalkers) turn their head to look for oncoming cars. Not using information like that and sticking to the rules means your car will run over that pedestrian.
Many potential problems can already be handled by vehicles equipped with sensors, controls and warning devices to assist in changing lanes, slowing down or stopping, if vehicles get too close to one another. Cities also can make their traffic signals communicate wirelessly with vehicles. But naturally that involves spending money that may have to be diverted from fixing potholes and other infrastructural necessities.
Whether cities will even allow self-driving vehicles will depend mainly on public policy. Despite its popularity as a touring aid in some cities, the Segway—a self-balancing electric scooter—has failed to find acceptance in the broad transportation market in part because there is little uniformity among communities regarding rules governing its use.
