Self-Driving Cars Must Meet 15 Benchmarks in U.S. Guidance
What is it about self-driving cars that has HN readers so incredibly excited? Sorry if it&#x27;s a little off-topic.<p>The reason I ask is there are plenty of other countries in the world where cars just aren&#x27;t that important, let&#x27;s take Netherlands for example. If you have automatic cars, society here is not just going to be that excited AFAIK. Public transport here is great and most people cycle everywhere, because it&#x27;s fun, easy and good exercise. Not to mention a lot of people are employed as drivers.<p>Same for many Asian countries where population density is high, people just don&#x27;t have the money&#x2F;room for cars. Scooters are the way to go because of traffic congestion.<p>Besides, don&#x27;t people enjoy driving? I don&#x27;t own a car but when I get behind the wheel, it&#x27;s a lot of fun. Will people really be able to handle the car doing the speed limit?<p>I understand technologically it&#x27;s pretty interesting, but we&#x27;ve had commercial airliners that fly themselves (mostly) for a long time, same for ships and drones and we don&#x27;t marvel over those things all the time, though I agree they are great innovations.<p>So apart from the tech what is the actual excitement about?<p>- Concern for those who will lose their jobs.<p>- Concern for others safety.<p>- Privacy concerns.<p>- Excitement about the safety benefits.<p>- Economic opportunity.<p>- Fundraising hype.<p>- All of the above?<p>As a Silicon Valley outsider sometimes I read HN and it feels like some context is missing. Sure it&#x27;s going to change industries, but is this really good progress, necessary progress, or just the next <i>thing we&#x27;re told we need</i>? I mean can a self-driving car really replace a delivery person yet, a person who can do things like leave packages with a neighbor and build relationships, trust etc?<p>Sorry if this is a little off-topic, but I&#x27;m genuinely curious because it&#x27;s hard to understand, to me as an outsider, it really looks like some kind of ride-sharing turf war hype battle more than anything else?<p>I dare to say it, but it&#x27;s the same for machine learning, a lot of it is fascinating, interesting, exiting tech, but how many product recommendations does one need? How good do my <i>friend recommendations</i> have to be? How smart does Siri need to be? Will a patient really feel better without being treated by a human? Are we really going to trust these things handling nuclear warheads?<p>Maybe I live a strange life and have unusual views, but I just don&#x27;t really see the need most of these things when so many problems could be solved using other means. Using this stuff to help people is great, but how much of this effort is actually being put towards that end?<p>If I&#x27;m a little naive, apologies. I&#x27;m not having a go but these are just honest questions I often find myself asking when reading HN lately. Agreed this might not be the place to ask but I&#x27;m prepared to wear the down votes :)