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Ask HN: Why dont we have more Remote Controlled Driving Cars?

3 points by alexander2002 ↗ HN
Hi,Isnt it cheaper to have a person in a cheap country drive a car remotely. By Driving,I mean monitor the Self-Driving Car and take over the auto-pilot incase of some fatal error.I dont mean that the Person Drives all the time remotely.

Kind of like a VA but for self-driving car

Edit:The Correct Term might be tele-driving

16 comments

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42lux
Latency and I don't know who would really be confident in a driver that works "oversea" when everyone hates on these workers when they just need to talk with them on the phone. Besides all the working condition shit... but yay let's exploit them even more because you are to inconvined to drive your car around that costs as much as they make in a decade or worse.
alexander2002
I agree with you regarding the exploitation of workers. Sadly , it is quiet common and behind the veil of third-party contractors.

Think about who gives feedback on the AI prompts.Most of the manual load is contracted away overseas

h2odragon
It wasn't an idea that could be sold until cars had the hardware for remote control; which only came into being with the "self driving" hype storm.

When you say "remote control", though; the issues of trust come up in people mind. Those issues should exists when its onboard software you're trusting, too; but humans don't see it that way as easily.

How can you trust that your car isn't being driven by some methed up teenager playing 14 games of "carmageddon" at once for a "click farm" type arrangement?

... It never occurs to people to ask "how can i trust this software is better at carmageddon than the 14 year old?"

alexander2002
I dont mean the car is controlled 24/7 by a remote controlled person. Lets assume a senario in which a tesla auto-pilot is being monitored by the person and the person only steps in remotely in case of fatal issues/extra-ordinary circumstances.
h2odragon
then the teenager will be "supervising" 144 games of carmageddon
alexander2002
ok i will have to check out carmageddon! 9/10 on steam looks nice
JohnFen
But things go from "everything is fine" to disaster in an extremely short period of time. A person remotely monitoring to take over in case of emergency would still have to be paying full attention and alert for the entire duration of the trip.

People are terrible at being "on active standby" like that. If they have to be really alert to the situation, it's better if they're really driving the car themselves than expecting them to recognize a bad situation and take over in time.

mytailorisrich
This is a use-case for some key 5G features: low latency and extremely high reliability.
beardyw
> have a person in a cheap country

So, some sort of remote colonialism. Better be sure they don't rebel.

alexander2002
are u just casually ignoring the freelancing landscape today?
beardyw
Colonialism is the pursuing, establishing and maintaining of control and exploitation of people and of resources by a foreign group.

Just because it happens doesn't make it easier to swallow.

"have a person in a cheap country" sounds casual to me.

lampposthotdog
Your remote employee driver idea is probably the single worst thought in human history.

But it might be cool if I'm at the bar getting schwilly and then I call my mom to remote control me home.

kstenerud
Because the first rule of data communications is that it goes down at the worst possible moment. No matter what, you can't win.

Scenario 1:

You're driving remotely and the connection goes down. The car then crashes into something.

Scenario 2:

You get clever: Whenever the connection goes down, the car automatically stops. The connection goes down, and the car now stops in the middle of an intersection, or the onramp to a ferry, or blocking emergency vehicles.

Scenario 3:

You get even more clever: Whenever the connection goes down, the car seeks a safe place to stop. The connection goes down, and the car runs over a collapsed pedestrian while looking for a safe place to stop.

You can't win.