[simmons]

The idea of cars being driven remotely by someone on the other side of the world was mentioned in Charles Stross's 2007 science fiction novel Halting State. I think about it sometimes, but I always come to the conclusion that the latency would be too high. A 100ms latency might make the difference between a near-miss and a collision.

[ff317]

But it does offer a reasonable hybrid solution: the software in the car doesn't have to solve all possible scenarios, it just has to be good enough to navigate the common, easy scenarios and should always be able to safely handle any situation for a short window of time, even if "handle" means "come to a quick safe stop within X seconds and turn on the hazards", all the while it's already starting the process of asking for remote assistance to take over whatever tricky situation, hopefully before the local code actually reaches the emergency-stopped case.

[lastofthemojito]

We see current cars marketed based on their safety features or crash test results - in this driverless future we'll have luxury brands touting that their remote drivers are based in the USA and can respond 5 times faster than more affordable brands with drivers on the other side of the world.

[matthewdgreen]

If you own the car, you'll be the one responding to it. But if self-driving cars work as well as they're hoped to, you won't own the car. Car ownership is absurdly expensive.