> will be able to take me from my apartment in Boston to my work in Cambridge, regardless of weather, time of day, etc.

Having driven from my apartment (at the time) in Boston to my job in Lexington going through Cambridge every day for almost two years... I will NOT take that bet and I'm pretty optimistic about self driving cars :P

But, they don't need to replace all driving overnight. They just need to replace a portion of driving to have a big impact.

Although, I often wonder if driving like muscles can become atrophied and if we end up with a situation like: "the car will drive me in fair whether but I need to drive myself when it snows"... if my body will forget how to drive by the time winter comes.

"regardless of weather, time of day, "

Thats difficult. People who talk about "self driving cars 5 years away" aren't usually talking about mythical level 5 self driving that is actually 40 years away. They are talking about level 3, which basically means, "end to end travel, in 90% of situations".

Just like how 1/10 times you might not be able to flag down a taxi cab, today, 1/10 times you won't be able to get the self driving taxi to go EXACTLY where you need to go.

But it will work for most situations, most of time, and thats good enough. (IE, imagine if 90% of taxi drivers or truck drivers were made obsolete. That is industry destroying)

I would make an exception for snow, but not for rain or night. Although I think being unable to cope with snow is a pretty significant issue.

About "5 years away", I've been reading the same dream of all cars being self driving for so many years. I distinctly remember an after-work party in 2010 where a coworker with a phobia of driving going on about how self driving cars would soon be driving him around. Everything I hear today has been repeated for so long.

What you're describing is more like Level 4 which is basically Level 5 with a bit of hedge for weather and/or other specific environments.

"Level 3: Within known, limited environments (such as freeways), the driver can safely turn their attention away from driving tasks, but must still be prepared to take control when needed."

L3 on the other hand may be a good and useful system to, say, automate freeway driving but it's basically useless as a system for replacing taxis.

So on days conditions are bad, the city comes to a stand-still?

No. On days where self driving cars don't work, price goes up, and the market puts more humans on the road.

So 10% of the time you pay the normal taxi price that you pay now, and 90% of the time you get the super cheap self driving price.

That's still awesome!

>No. On days where self driving cars don't work, price goes up, and the market puts more humans on the road.

So all these humans are just hanging around waiting for it to snow so that they have the pleasure of driving other people around? The market will react instantaneously?

Or are they doing other gigs in the meantime, like delivering people's lunches, laundry, groceries et al?

I don't know. The market will decide.

Maybe they will have other jobs. Most uber drivers work part time anyway, so that's not any different.

Maybe you have to pay people a premium to be an emergency driver.

Or maybe people will just drive less when it is snowing. Most of the time when I am using transportation, I don't 100% NEED to go on the trip. Maybe Ill just buy groceries tomorrow instead of today.

But even so, if 90% of the time, transportation prices are near 0 $, that is still crazy distruptive.

The market can easily solve any of the problems you are bringing up, just with behavioral/price chances.

And trucking isn't even affected by any of the issues you brought up. An x% chance of being a day late is easily worth 90% shipping cost decreases.

I mean there's a rational financial reason why someone optimistic about self-driving cars would be hesitant to take your bet -- they're magnifying their risk wrt self-driving cars, so if the technology doesn't come to fruition they're doubly screwed. If anything they'd rather take the opposite side of the bet so they can hedge.

It's more about people publicly putting their name against me, which I would post on my website, saying to the world that they actually think self driving cars are going to happen. I would like people actually in the tech industry to bet against me, not people looking to make money. It's more a reality check about who is willing to put their money where their mouth is, because I think there are few.

I think a fair wager would be, "On March 26th 2022 at 2am, 830am, 5pm, and 11pm, a self driving call will legally take seibelj from [his address] in Boston to [address] in Cambridge. The car will require no human intervention and it will arrive at the destination regardless of time, weather, traffic, and construction."

Ha, I'd still say it's possible for people to believe (say, >75% probability) that self-driving cars will come in the next five years AND have a good reason not to take you up on the bet. Namely, in the event they lose the bet they NOT ONLY (a) don't get to enjoy self-driving cars, (b) don't see a return on whatever time/financial investment they made into the technology and (c) lose $1000 to you, but they also (d) are publicly embarrassed on your website.

If I thought autonomous cars would be ready in 5 years, I'd be extremely hesitant to take that bet, specifically with regard to weather.

Personally, just around the corner means 10 years in the top 50% of weather. Operating in a blizzard may be very far away, and I'm fine with that. Would I take this bet? Probably not, but I'm passively optimistic.

The weather is one thing, but I would argue that city driving in Boston itself is worse. It's survival of the fittest driving. If, for example, getting right up to the bumper of a self-driving car and honking makes the self-driving car pull over, every driver in Boston will do this, and the self-driving car will be stuck on the curb. You just can't imagine what drivers here are like until you live it.

I'd consider that bet on non-1:1 odds. You could submit a more strict version of it as a category on PredictIt.

Just for context, here is where self-driving cars were 10 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xibwwNVLgg

This is where they were in 1989.

https://youtu.be/VwwB6xcx8Wg

http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/27/13752344/alvinn-self-driv...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market?

I'd be willing to side with you on that bet.