Thread by @jpr007

The dream of the truly driverless car is officially dead

Look beyond the headlines and you'll find human overlords watch from afar over purportedly automated systems
businessinsider.com/driverless-car…

Lyft's quest for driverless cars is over

The company recently announced the sale of its self-driving unit to the auto giant Toyota

The move isn't surprising

Despite hefty investment, Lyft's driverless utopia, like many others, remains more fiction than fact

It wasn't supposed to be like this

In 2016 Lyft President John Zimmer predicted that driverless cars would "account for the majority of Lyft rides within five years"

By 2025, Zimmer reasoned, "private car ownership will all but end in major US cities"

Such reasoning was largely rooted in "techno-optimism": a belief that machines are superior to humans in terms of servitude

Sensors and software, after all, don't complain, don't tire, and don't demand pay hikes — or salaries at all, for that matter

This trifecta is purportedly a surefire way to lift profits — hence the tech-centric spending spree on all things autonomous

Ride-hailing companies have burnt millions over the years on perfecting the technology

Yet, autonomous does not mean humanless

In "Our Robots, Ourselves: Robotics and the Myths of Autonomy," the historian David Mindell explained why

"There are no fully autonomous systems"

"The machine that operates entirely independently of human direction is a useless machine. Only a rock is truly autonomous"

Put another way, the type of automation that ride-hailing companies are betting on to boost earnings doesn't exist

It never has

And if it did, humans would still play a role

The reason ?

Machines — much like humans — can't be trusted to get it right all the time, every time

Take what is arguably the longest-serving piece of automation today: the airplane autopilot

First introduced in 1912, the system is designed to balance an airplane so human pilots don't have to

The result is a smoother, safer ride for passengers

But as we know, there have been hiccups

In 1985, a jetliner flying for China Airlines nearly crashed after the autopilot failed to inform the crew about an imminent loss of control — a dangerous condition that can cause a crash

Because of such oversights, autopilot use today is contingent on human supervision

This also explains why driverless cars remain, after years of development, not so driverless after all

Look beyond the headlines and you'll find human overlords watch from afar over purportedly automated systems

Customer-support staff are also on hand to answer rider queries

- such as "What if I want to change my destination during the trip ?"

And then there's an armada of pricey engineers standing ready to solve vexing road problems, like what to do when a lane is blocked by double-parked cars, orange traffic cones, or the occasional taco truck

All this human capital means more, not less, expense; bloated, not pared down, balance sheets

And that's problematic for an industry that has struggled to turn a profit

In 2019 alone, ride-hailing companies lost more than $10 billion, their financial statements being described as, "a hemorrhaging fountain of red ink with no path to profitability"

Company execs had hoped self-driving investments would provide relief

The available evidence suggests otherwise

It's time we see the driverless dream for what it is :

- a Disneyland-style spectacle that can't "live up to its sci-fi imaginings, a series of very expensive and glitzy pilot projects that can't cut it in the real world"

Driverless technology might, on its best days, be astounding, but those days have been few and far between

Self-driving algorithms might — given the frequency of human folly — make intuitive sense, but intuition isn't always right

Earlier this year, the UK government suggested that driverless cars could soon hit the A10, a major road in England that connects London to various cities to its north

"We're on the cusp of a driving revolution," noted Transport Minister Rachel Maclean

But turning that revolution into reality demands a guarantee of technological perfection – a guarantee that few if any driverless tech developers can give

Until that happens, expect human drivers to stick around

Axel Springer, Insider's parent company, is an investor in Uber