vox--2020-02-28--Africa’s biggest city has a Covid-19 case

The Federal Ministry of Health in Nigeria confirmed a Covid-19 case on Thursday in Lagos , the largest city on the African continent .
It ’ s also the first reported case of the new coronavirus in sub-Saharan Africa .
For weeks , health officials have warned that a worst-case scenario for the outbreak involves the disease spreading in Africa ’ s fragile health systems .
But beyond a single case in Egypt , authorities haven ’ t yet identified others — which many suspect is due to under-testing on the continent .
The new case in Nigeria is part @ @ @ @ @ @ @ turning point in the Covid-19 epidemic .
More than 50 countries are now reporting Covid-19 cases — a jump from 26 a week ago .
On Thursday , the World Health Organization announced that , in the days prior , the number of new cases reported in the rest of the world had exceeded the number reported from China , where the virus seems to have originated .
This includes large outbreaks in Iran , Italy , and South Korea .
“ This virus has pandemic potential , ” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Thursday .
( A pandemic means a new virus is spreading in multiple regions of the world — but it doesn ’ t say anything of a disease ’ s severity . )
It was the first time the agency ’ s director general flicked at what other public health experts had been saying in recent weeks with increasing urgency : that we appear to be on the precipice of a pandemic , if we ’ re not already in one .
The Lagos case is linked to Italy ’ s outbreak @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s largest city suggests there will be more to come .
The patient is an Italian citizen who had been working in Nigeria — one of the many cases , as far and wide as Brazil and Spain , linked back to Italy ’ s outbreak .
On February 25 , the person returned from Milan to Lagos , according to Nigeria ’ s Health Minister Osagie Ehanire .
The individual tested positive for the virus on February 25 .
“ I wish to assure all Nigerians that we have been beefing up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of cases in China , and we will use all the resources made available by the government to respond to this case , ” Ehanire said in a statement .
The health agency was already working on tracing the individual ’ s contacts , he added .
“ We have to recognize how well Nigeria did in handling Ebola , ” said Devi Sridhar , chair in Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh .
During the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic , the arrival of cases in Lagos stoked fears that the virus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beyond .
Nigeria ’ s public health officials managed to swiftly get the outbreak under control .
“ They have world-class public health experts so ideally they can track all the contacts for this individual and contain it quickly , ” she added .
Why an outbreak in Lagos is so worrying A single case imported to Lagos doesn ’ t mean the virus is spreading there .
But health experts note that transmission is a concern in Lagos , a densely packed megacity of 21 million in a lower-middle-income country .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ connected to much of the world via travel , this is a concerning report , ” said Jennifer Nuzzo , an infectious disease expert and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security .
And unlike Ebola — which spread only through direct contact with a person ’ s bodily fluids — Covid-19 is a respiratory virus and more contagious .
A mere cough or sneeze appears to be enough to pass it along .
“ Covid-19 isn ’ t Ebola .
Containment [ is ] difficult if not impossible , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , on Twitter .
“ The terrifying possibility is of dozens of cities with Wuhan-like outbreaks , ” he added , referring to the city in China where the virus is believed to have emerged .
Some countries have belatedly started looking for Covid-19 and discovered large outbreaks , suggesting the disease has been spreading even more broadly than it appears , undetected .
Over the last week-and-a-half , Iran went from zero cases of Covid-19 to 270 on Friday ; the country has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) outside of China .
Like Italy , cases with links to Iran have been discovered around the world — from Canada to Lebanon .
In a yet-to-be-published study , researchers estimated there are likely at least 18,000 cases within Iran ’ s borders .
They predict that we can expect outbreaks with links back to Iran in Turkey , UAE , Iraq , Qatar , and Georgia , among other countries .
Until early February , only two countries in Africa had the lab capacity to screen for this disease — Senegal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are now scaling up , this outbreak has been going on since late last year .
It ’ s only now that a first case is found in sub-Saharan Africa , even though it ’ s thought to be at particular risk given its links to China .
As Frieden said of Nigeria ’ s case on Twitter , “ [ A ] pandemic is coming .
”

The World Health Organization has increased its Covid-19 risk assessment to “very high at a global level,” as nearly 50 countries report cases within their borders.
“We are on the highest level of alert or highest level of risk assessment in terms of spread and in terms of impact,” said Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s health emergencies program. The agency isn’t trying to incite panic, he added. “This is a reality check for every government on the planet: Wake up, get ready, this virus may be on its way and you need to be ready. You have a duty to your citizens, you have a duty to the world to be ready.”
The news comes on the same day the Federal Ministry of Health in Nigeria confirmed a Covid-19 case in Lagos, the largest city on the African continent. It’s also the first reported case of the new coronavirus in sub-Saharan Africa. That brings the total number of countries with confirmed cases to at least 49 — a jump from 26 a week ago.
The new case in Nigeria is part of a broader trend that represents a turning point in the Covid-19 epidemic. On Thursday, the WHO announced that in the days prior, the number of new cases reported in the rest of the world had exceeded the number reported from China, where the virus seems to have originated. This includes large outbreaks in Iran, Italy, and South Korea.
“This virus has pandemic potential,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the WHO, on Thursday. (A pandemic means a new virus is spreading in multiple regions of the world, but it doesn’t say anything about a disease’s severity.) It was the first time the agency’s director general acknowledged what other public health experts had been saying in recent weeks with increasing urgency: that we appear to be on the precipice of a pandemic, if we’re not already in one.
The Lagos case is linked to Italy’s outbreak
For weeks, health officials have warned that a worst-case scenario for the outbreak involves the disease spreading in Africa’s fragile health systems. But beyond a single case in Egypt, authorities haven’t yet identified others — which many suspect is due to undertesting on the continent.
The first reported case in Africa’s largest city suggests there will likely be more to come.
The patient is an Italian citizen who had been working in Nigeria — one of the many cases in 14 countries, as far and wide as Brazil and Spain, linked back to Italy’s outbreak. On February 25, the person returned from Milan to Lagos, according to Nigeria’s Health Minister Osagie Ehanire. The individual tested positive for the virus on February 25.
“I wish to assure all Nigerians that we have been beefing up our preparedness capabilities since the first confirmation of cases in China, and we will use all the resources made available by the government to respond to this case,” Ehanire said in a statement. The health agency was already working on tracing the individual’s contacts, he added.
“We have to recognize how well Nigeria did in handling Ebola,” said Devi Sridhar, chair in global public health at the University of Edinburgh. During the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic, the arrival of cases in Lagos stoked fears that the virus could spread throughout the megacity and rapidly beyond. Nigeria’s public health officials managed to swiftly get the outbreak under control.
“They have world-class public health experts, so ideally they can track all the contacts for this individual and contain it quickly,” she added.
WHO’s Ryan reaffirmed that point in a Friday press briefing, noting that Nigeria has worked for years to build up its public health and disease surveillance capacity. In addition to Ebola, they’ve had experience battling back measles, cholera, and polio, among many other infectious diseases.
Why an outbreak in Lagos is so worrying
A single case imported to Lagos doesn’t mean the virus is spreading there. But health experts note that transmission is a concern in Lagos, a densely packed megacity of 21 million in a lower-middle-income country. “Given that Lagos is a large city connected to much of the world via travel, this is a concerning report,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an infectious disease expert and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
“Nigeria is a vast country with a huge population and has many vulnerable people,” said Ryan, “so it is disappointing to see the disease arrive.”
And unlike Ebola — which spread only through direct contact with a person’s bodily fluids — Covid-19 is a respiratory virus and more contagious. A mere cough or sneeze appears to be enough to pass it along.
“Covid-19 isn’t Ebola. Containment [is] difficult if not impossible,” said Tom Frieden, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on Twitter. “The terrifying possibility is of dozens of cities with Wuhan-like outbreaks,” he added, referring to the city in China where the virus is believed to have emerged.
Some countries have belatedly started looking for Covid-19 and discovered large outbreaks, suggesting the disease has been spreading even more broadly than it appears, undetected. Over the past week and a half, Iran went from zero cases of Covid-19 to 270 as of Friday; the country has had the second-highest number of deaths (26) outside of China.
Like Italy, cases with links to Iran have been discovered in 11 countries around the world, from Canada to Lebanon. In a yet-to-be-published study, researchers estimated there are likely at least 18,000 cases within Iran’s borders. They predict we can expect outbreaks with links back to Iran in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Qatar, and Georgia, among other countries.
Until early February, only two countries in Africa had the lab capacity to screen for this disease: Senegal and South Africa. Though other countries are now scaling up, this outbreak has been going on since late last year. It’s only now that a first case is found in sub-Saharan Africa, even though it’s thought to be at particular risk given its links to China. As Frieden said of Nigeria’s case on Twitter, “a pandemic is coming.”


vox--2020-02-28--Israeli forces shot a Palestinian journalist in the leg. He got no compensation.

A Palestinian journalist shot in the leg by Israeli forces will receive no compensation for the injury , continuing a worrying trend of the Jewish state ’ s military facing no consequences for harming Palestinian reporters .
Freelance photographer and journalist Ahmad Tal ’ at was covering a protest in the West Bank in 2015 when he was shot in the leg — by , he claimed , an unknown member of the Israel Defense Forces ( IDF ) .
972 Mag reports that , according to a lawsuit filed on his behalf , Tal ’ at at the time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” printed on it as well as a helmet , and was carrying three large professional cameras , which he said made him easily recognizable as reporter .
He also claimed he was shot while standing on the side of the road , accompanied by other journalists .
The IDF had a different story .
Its lawyers said Tal ’ at ’ s lawsuit was merely “ another in a series of cases in which those who were among the rioters and those riling up the crowd to riot dare to file a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” according to 972 Mag .
IDF lawyers argued that Tal ’ at ’ s injury occurred after the protest had ended , and “ that even if Tal ’ at was wounded that day , ‘ it was in the context of attacks by the rioters that endangered the security forces there , ’ ” 972 Mag reports .
The judge hearing the case at a top Israeli court sided with the IDF , ruling that Tal ’ at would not receive compensation for his injures .
The reason , per @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shot during an “ act of war , ” and thus Israel is exempt from any liability .
The IDF , therefore , doesn ’ t have to pay Tal ’ at for any damages .
Tal ’ at was seeking 40,000 Israeli shekels ( about $ 11,600 ) in recompense .
At first , this could seem like an isolated case .
The problem is that Tal ’ at is the latest in a long line of Palestinian reporters that Israeli security forces have harmed or killed but failed to compensate .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , face legal consequences for their actions .
Even more troubling , there ’ s no sign that this trend will end anytime soon .
Israel ’ s abuse of journalists is nothing new In April 2018 , Ahmed Abu Hussein was shot in the abdomen while covering Gaza border protests , in which demonstrators demanded the right to return to their ancestral homes in Israel .
Hussein died from his wounds two weeks later .
A day later , Yaser Murtaja was fatally shot in the abdomen by Israeli snipers while covering @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tal ’ at , was wearing a vest marked clearly marked with “ PRESS.
” The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate in Gaza said five more Palestinian journalists covering the event were wounded .
In November 2019 , Muath Amarneh was blinded in one eye after Israeli Border Police opened fire to disperse protesters at a demonstration near the West Bank city of Hebron .
Other journalists at the scene said Amarneh was hit by a bullet that ricocheted off a demonstrator .
Again , Amarneh wore a clearly marked “ PRESS ” vest .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Abdul Mohsen Shalaldeh ’ s skull while he reported on demonstrations against President Donald Trump ’ s Israel-Palestine peace plan .
He feels he was targeted “ as a clear message to journalists that they had to leave the field , ” he told AlAraby .
Clearly , there is a sustained pattern .
But if Tal ’ at ’ s case is any indication , there is little hope for change or recourse .
“ The ruling against Tal ’ at is a blow to the hopes for redress of Palestinian journalists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gives full impunity to members of the IDF ... whether or not their actions are in line with the IDF ’ s own regulations , ” Ignacio Miguel Delgado Culebras , the Middle East and North Africa representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists , told me .
He also noted that he ’ s unaware of any cases in which Palestinian journalists received compensation for their injuries .
What ’ s more , in many of these cases , the IDF has failed to employ nonlethal methods to deal with demonstrators while @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fact , Culebras said the IDF routinely delays any investigations into its misconduct .
Which means it ’ s more likely than not that the IDF will continue this behavior — and Palestinian reporters will continue to suffer .

A Palestinian journalist shot in the leg by Israeli forces will receive no compensation for the injury, continuing a worrying trend of the Jewish state’s military facing no consequences for harming Palestinian reporters.
Freelance photographer and journalist Ahmad Tal’at was covering a protest in the West Bank in 2015 when he was shot in the leg — by, he claimed, an unknown member of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
972 Mag reports that, according to a lawsuit filed on his behalf, Tal’at at the time was wearing a vest with “PRESS” printed on it as well as a helmet, and was carrying three large professional cameras, which he said made him easily recognizable as reporter. He also claimed he was shot while standing on the side of the road, accompanied by other journalists.
The IDF had a different story. Its lawyers said Tal’at’s lawsuit was merely “another in a series of cases in which those who were among the rioters and those riling up the crowd to riot dare to file a lawsuit as if they are the victims,” according to 972 Mag.
IDF lawyers argued that Tal’at’s injury occurred after the protest had ended, and “that even if Tal’at was wounded that day, ‘it was in the context of attacks by the rioters that endangered the security forces there,’” 972 Mag reports.
972mag translated the story and lawsuit from Hebrew to English from Israeli magazine The Seventh Eye.
The judge hearing the case at a top Israeli court sided with the IDF, ruling that Tal’at would not receive compensation for his injures. The reason, per the judge, is that he was shot during an “act of war,” and thus Israel is exempt from any liability. The IDF, therefore, doesn’t have to pay Tal’at for any damages. Tal’at was seeking 40,000 Israeli shekels (about $11,600) in recompense.
At first, this could seem like an isolated case. The problem is that Tal’at is the latest in a long line of Palestinian reporters that Israeli security forces have harmed or killed but failed to compensate. Security forces also rarely, if ever, face legal consequences for their actions.
Even more troubling, there’s no sign that this trend will end anytime soon.
Israel’s abuse of journalists is nothing new
Palestinian journalists frequently report abuse by Israeli security forces.
In April 2018, Ahmed Abu Hussein was shot in the abdomen while covering Gaza border protests, in which demonstrators demanded the right to return to their ancestral homes in Israel. Hussein died from his wounds two weeks later.
A day later, Yaser Murtaja was fatally shot in the abdomen by Israeli snipers while covering the same protest. He, like Tal’at, was wearing a vest marked clearly marked with “PRESS.” The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate in Gaza said five more Palestinian journalists covering the event were wounded.
In November 2019, Muath Amarneh was blinded in one eye after Israeli Border Police opened fire to disperse protesters at a demonstration near the West Bank city of Hebron. Other journalists at the scene said Amarneh was hit by a bullet that ricocheted off a demonstrator. Again, Amarneh wore a clearly marked “PRESS” vest.
Two months later, Israeli troops fractured Abdul Mohsen Shalaldeh’s skull while he reported on demonstrations against President Donald Trump’s Israel-Palestine peace plan. He feels he was targeted “as a clear message to journalists that they had to leave the field,” he told AlAraby.
Clearly, there is a sustained pattern. But if Tal’at’s case is any indication, there is little hope for change or recourse.
“The ruling against Tal’at is a blow to the hopes for redress of Palestinian journalists who were injured or killed because it gives full impunity to members of the IDF ... whether or not their actions are in line with the IDF’s own regulations,” Ignacio Miguel Delgado Culebras, the Middle East and North Africa representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists, told me.
He also noted that he’s unaware of any cases in which Palestinian journalists received compensation for their injuries. What’s more, in many of these cases, the IDF has failed to employ nonlethal methods to deal with demonstrators while ensuring the safety of journalists. In fact, Culebras said the IDF routinely delays any investigations into its misconduct.
Which means it’s more likely than not that the IDF will continue this behavior — and Palestinian reporters will continue to suffer.


vox--2020-02-28--Amazon’s bestselling products read like a coronavirus prep guide

Amazon said on Thursday that it blocked more than a million items from sale on its marketplace in recent weeks that made false claims about defending against the novel coronavirus , as schemers across the globe looked to make a quick buck amid a global health threat .
But what ’ s left when searching “ coronavirus ” or “ Covid-19 ” on the e-commerce site is a grab bag of rushed-to-publish pandemic books and protection gear , a mix of products that could be disorienting to the average shopper .
As the global count of confirmed deaths from Covid-19 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kinds of businesses are flooding the Everything Store ’ s digital shelves with inventory .
Meanwhile , Amazon is working to eliminate scams and block merchants from engaging in price-gouging , as uncertainty mounts about where else the virus will spread in the world and what impact it will have .
“ Amazon has always required sellers provide accurate information on product detail pages and we remove those that violate our policies , ” a spokesperson said in a statement sent to Recode .
Search “ coronavirus ” or “ Covid-19 ” on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a header that links to a page directing visitors to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ) website with more information about the virus .
Below that , Amazon serves up books from small-time authors with titles like The Wuhan Coronavirus Survival Manual and the Fuck Coronavirus Swear Coloring Book , with a few listings for things like disinfectant wipes , masks , and medical exam gloves sprinkled in .
Concern over the virus was evident by just glancing at Amazon ’ s bestselling products on Friday afternoon .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and kitchen category in the US was a pack of “ anti-dust ” disposable masks with an awful 2.3 star rating , versus a mattress protector on the same day a year ago , according to data pulled by the e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse .
The CDC does not recommend that people who are well wear face masks , unless instructed by a doctor .
But those infected by Covid-19 and showing systems , as well as health care workers treating those patients , are urged to wear masks .
In Amazon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ top items included a three-pack of “ anti-dust ” cotton face masks , Clorox and Lysol wipes , and elderberry gummies for “ immune support , ” versus fabric softener sheets and batteries on the same day in 2019 .
And in the grocery category , bottled water and instant ramen topped the charts , compared to Nespresso capsules and protein power last year .
Amazon also said on Thursday that it had removed tens of thousands of listings attempting to charge sky-high prices for products in demand as the virus spreads .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Amazon typically never allows , and the company is on high alert for the behavior during situations like natural disasters and disease outbreaks .
“ There is no place for price gouging on Amazon , ” a spokesperson said in a statement .
“ We are disappointed that bad actors are attempting to artificially raise prices on basic need products during a global health crisis and , in line with our long-standing policy , have recently blocked or removed tens of thousands of offers .
We continue to actively monitor our store and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The company has also been placing larger-than-normal orders from some brands and manufacturers to guard against a bigger slowdown in China ’ s manufacturing sector .
The CDC says “ there is likely very low risk of spread from products or packaging that are shipped over a period of days or weeks at ambient temperatures “ and that there is currently “ no evidence to support transmission of COVID-19 associated with imported goods.
” In the days and weeks ahead , Amazon and other e-commerce sites in the US could become indispensable if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ yet significantly impacted by the virus .
But for now , online shoppers may also need to wade through garbage e-books and questionable-quality items to get there .

Amazon said on Thursday that it blocked more than a million items from sale on its marketplace in recent weeks that made false claims about defending against the novel coronavirus, as schemers across the globe looked to make a quick buck amid a global health threat. But what’s left when searching “coronavirus” or “Covid-19” on the e-commerce site is a grab bag of rushed-to-publish pandemic books and protection gear, a mix of products that could be disorienting to the average shopper.
As the global count of confirmed deaths from Covid-19 approaches 3,000, small-time authors and all kinds of businesses are flooding the Everything Store’s digital shelves with inventory. Meanwhile, Amazon is working to eliminate scams and block merchants from engaging in price-gouging, as uncertainty mounts about where else the virus will spread in the world and what impact it will have.
“Amazon has always required sellers provide accurate information on product detail pages and we remove those that violate our policies,” a spokesperson said in a statement sent to Recode.
Search “coronavirus” or “Covid-19” on Amazon today and the site first displays a header that links to a page directing visitors to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website with more information about the virus. Below that, Amazon serves up books from small-time authors with titles like The Wuhan Coronavirus Survival Manual and the Fuck Coronavirus Swear Coloring Book, with a few listings for things like disinfectant wipes, masks, and medical exam gloves sprinkled in.
Concern over the virus was evident by just glancing at Amazon’s bestselling products on Friday afternoon. The bestselling product in Amazon’s home and kitchen category in the US was a pack of “anti-dust” disposable masks with an awful 2.3 star rating, versus a mattress protector on the same day a year ago, according to data pulled by the e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse. The CDC does not recommend that people who are well wear face masks, unless instructed by a doctor. But those infected by Covid-19 and showing systems, as well as health care workers treating those patients, are urged to wear masks.
In Amazon’s health and household category, top items included a three-pack of “anti-dust” cotton face masks, Clorox and Lysol wipes, and elderberry gummies for “immune support,” versus fabric softener sheets and batteries on the same day in 2019. And in the grocery category, bottled water and instant ramen topped the charts, compared to Nespresso capsules and protein power last year.
Amazon also said on Thursday that it had removed tens of thousands of listings attempting to charge sky-high prices for products in demand as the virus spreads. This is the type of price-gouging that Amazon typically never allows, and the company is on high alert for the behavior during situations like natural disasters and disease outbreaks.
“There is no place for price gouging on Amazon,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “We are disappointed that bad actors are attempting to artificially raise prices on basic need products during a global health crisis and, in line with our long-standing policy, have recently blocked or removed tens of thousands of offers. We continue to actively monitor our store and remove offers that violate our policies.”
The company has also been placing larger-than-normal orders from some brands and manufacturers to guard against a bigger slowdown in China’s manufacturing sector. The CDC says “there is likely very low risk of spread from products or packaging that are shipped over a period of days or weeks at ambient temperatures“ and that there is currently “no evidence to support transmission of COVID-19 associated with imported goods.”
In the days and weeks ahead, Amazon and other e-commerce sites in the US could become indispensable if the health threat worsens in geographies not yet significantly impacted by the virus. But for now, online shoppers may also need to wade through garbage e-books and questionable-quality items to get there.


vox--2020-02-28--It’s 2020. Where are our self-driving cars?

When it comes to self-driving cars , the future was supposed to be now .
In 2020 , you ’ ll be a “ permanent backseat driver , ” the Guardian predicted in 2015 .
“ 10 million self-driving cars will be on the road by 2020 , ” blared a Business Insider headline from 2016 .
Those declarations were accompanied by announcements from General Motors , Google ’ s Waymo , Toyota , and Honda that they ’ d be making self-driving cars by 2020 .
Elon Musk forecast that Tesla would do it by 2018 — and then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But the year is here — and the self-driving cars aren ’ t .
Despite extraordinary efforts from many of the leading names in tech and in automaking , fully autonomous cars are still out of reach except in special trial programs .
You can buy a car that will automatically brake for you when it anticipates a collision , or one that helps keep you in your lane , or even a Tesla Model S ( which — disclosure — my partner and I own ) whose Autopilot mostly handles highway @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the above predictions has been rolled back as the engineering teams at those companies struggle to make self-driving cars work properly .
What happened ?
Here are nine questions you might have had about this long-promised technology , and why the future we were promised still hasn ’ t arrived .
1 ) How exactly do self-driving cars work ?
Engineers have been attempting prototypes of self-driving cars for decades .
The idea behind it is really simple : Outfit a car with cameras that can track all the objects around it and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s about to steer into one .
Teach in-car computers the rules of the road and set them loose to navigate to their own destination .
This simple description elides a whole lot of complexity .
Driving is one of the more complicated activities humans routinely do .
Following a list of rules of the road isn ’ t enough to drive as well as a human does , because we do things like make eye contact with others to confirm who has the right of way , react to weather conditions , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ difficult to encode in hard-and-fast rules .
And even the simple parts of driving — like tracking the objects around a car on the road — are actually much trickier than they sound .
Take Google ’ s sister company Waymo , the industry leader in self-driving cars .
Waymo ’ s cars , which are fairly typical of other self-driving cars , use high-resolution cameras and lidar ( light detection and ranging ) , a way of estimating distances to objects by bouncing light and sound off things .
The car ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ build a picture of where other cars , cyclists , pedestrians , and obstacles are and where they ’ re moving .
For this part , lots of training data is needed — that is , the car has to draw on millions of miles of driving data that Waymo has collected to form expectations about how other objects might move .
It ’ s hard to get enough training data on the road , so the cars also train based on simulation data — but engineers have to be sure that their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ simulation data to the real world .
That ’ s far from a complete description of the systems at work when a self-driving car is on the road .
But it illustrates an important principle to keep in mind when wondering where our self-driving cars are : Even the “ easy ” things turn out to hide surprising complexity .
2 ) Why is it taking longer than expected to get self-driving cars on the road ?
Self-driving cars rely on artificial intelligence to work .
And the 2010s were a great decade @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in translation , speech generation , computer vision and object recognition , and game-playing .
AI used to have a hard time identifying dogs in pictures ; now that ’ s a trivial task .
It ’ s this progress in AI that drove the optimistic predictions for self-driving cars in the mid-2010s .
Researchers anticipated that we could build on the amazing gains they ’ d seen ( and are still seeing ) in other arenas .
But when it came to self-driving cars , the limitations of those gains became very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time , money , and effort invested , no team could figure out how to have AI solve a real-world problem : navigating our roads with the high degree of reliability needed .
Much of the problem is the need for lots of training data .
The ideal way to train a self-driving car would be to show it billions of hours of footage of real driving , and use that to teach the computer good driving behavior .
Modern machine learning systems do really well when they have abundant data , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ little bit of it .
But collecting data for self-driving cars is expensive .
And since some events are rare — witnessing a car accident ahead , say , or encountering debris on the road — it ’ s possible for the car to be out of its depth because it has encountered a situation so infrequently in its training data .
Carmakers have tried to get around this in lots of ways .
They ’ ve driven more miles .
They ’ ve trained the cars in simulations .
They sometimes engineer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more training data about those situations for the cars .
And they are getting closer .
Waymo cars do roam the streets of Arizona with no one behind the wheel ( a small pool of specially screened people can call them up like they would an Uber ) .
If all goes well , they may expand to more cities later this year ( more on this below ) .
But it ’ s a hard problem , and progress has been slow .
3 ) What does a world with self-driving cars @ @ @ @ @ @ @ despite the setbacks because self-driving cars , when they happen , will change a lot for the world — and make their creators lots of money .
Many consumers will want to upgrade .
Imagine being able to read or doze off during your morning drive to work or on long car trips .
It also seems likely that taxi and ride-hailing companies will offer self-driving cars , rather than paying drivers ( in fact , companies like Uber are betting on it ) .
Self-driving cars should also make a huge difference @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whom can ’ t get a driver ’ s license and have trouble getting to work , the store , and doctor ’ s appointments .
Experts disagree on whether self-driving cars will change anything fundamental about car ownership in America .
Some argue that people won ’ t need to own a car if they can order one on their phone and get a timely robot ride anywhere .
Others have pointed out that people generally still own a car even in areas with good ride-share coverage and that self-driving cars might @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that most Americans don ’ t want to be driven to work by a self-driving car — but that might change fast once such cars actually exist .
Gallup polling on this question found a small share ( 9 percent ) of Americans who ’ d get such a car right away , with a larger contingent ( 38 percent ) saying they ’ d wait a while , and half holding steadfast that they ’ d never use one .
Over time , our infrastructure will likely change to make it easier @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in fact , some researchers have argued that we won ’ t have widespread self-driving cars until we ’ ve made major changes to our streets to make it easier to communicate information to those cars .
That would be expensive and require nationwide coordination , so it seems likely that it would follow the widespread introduction of self-driving cars rather than precede it .
4 ) What are the leading self-driving car programs , and what are they doing ?
Almost every major car manufacturer has at least tested the waters with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much more serious about it than others .
There are two core statistics useful for evaluating how advanced a self-driving car program is .
One is how many miles it has driven .
That ’ s a proxy for how much training data the company has , and how much investment it has poured into getting its cars on the road .
The other is disengagements — moments when a human driver has to take over because the computer couldn ’ t handle a situation — per mile driven .
Most companies don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the state of California requires that they be reported , and so California ’ s statistics are the best peek into how various companies are doing .
On both fronts , Google ’ s sister company Waymo is the clear leader .
Waymo just announced 20 million miles driven overall , most of those not in California .
In 2018 , Waymo drove 1.2 million miles in California , with 0.09 disengagements every 1,000 miles .
Coming in second is General Motors ’ Cruise , with about half a million miles and 0.19 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ argues that since it tests its cars on San Francisco ’ s difficult streets , these numbers are even more impressive than they look . )
Those two companies are well ahead of everyone else in both miles driven and disengagements in the state of California .
While that ’ s only a limited snapshot of their efforts , most experts consider them the leading programs in general .
5 ) Didn ’ t a self-driving car kill a woman ?
How did that happen ?
And what are the safety issues involved @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2018 , was the first time a self-driving car ran down a pedestrian .
An Uber car with a safety driver behind the wheel hit and killed Elaine Herzberg , a 49-year-old woman walking her bicycle across the street in Tempe , Arizona .
The incident was a reminder that self-driving car technology still had a long way to go .
Some people were quick to point out that humans frequently kill other humans while driving , and that even if self-driving cars are much safer than humans , there will be some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s true as far as it goes .
But it misses a key point .
Human driving produces one fatal accident in every 100 million miles driven .
Waymo , the leader in miles driven , just reached 20 million miles driven .
It hasn ’ t had a fatal accident yet , but given the number of miles its cars have driven , it ’ s simply far too soon to prove that they ’ re as safe as or safer than a human driver .
Uber hasn ’ t driven @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a fatal incident .
The company doesn ’ t release specific figures , but its filings for its IPO last year said that it had driven “ millions ” of miles .
It ’ s hard to tell without specific numbers , but it ’ s fair to wonder if Uber ’ s driving record is much worse than a human ’ s .
Furthermore , a review of Herzberg ’ s death suggests that a lot of preventable mistakes were made .
The accident report by the National Transportation Safety Board , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the near-range cameras and the ultrasonic sensors “ were not in use at the time of the crash.
” Additionally , the system was having such a problem with false alarms — detecting dangerous situations when none existed — that it had been programmed with “ a one-second period during which the ADS [ automated driving system ] suppresses planned braking while the ( 1 ) system verifies the nature of the detected hazard and calculates an alternative path , or ( 2 ) vehicle operator takes control of the vehicle , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even when the car detected the hazard , it didn ’ t brake — which could have made the collision avoidable or much less deadly — but instead continued with exactly what it was doing for a full second .
The system was designed to assume that pedestrians would never cross except at a crosswalk , so when one did cross without using one , it failed to identify her .
Even worse , when the system was unclear on whether an object was a bicycle ( as it was with Herzberg ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ information about how the object was moving .
The system sensed her presence six full seconds before the impact — and yet did nothing ( except possibly braking in the last two-tenths of a second ) before colliding with her at deadly speed .
Uber pulled its cars off the road in response , returning to self-driving car trials a year later with a drastically changed program .
“ We ’ ve implemented key safety improvements from both safety reviews , shared our learnings with the larger self-driving industry , and accepted the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Safety Management System , which is underway today , ” Nat Beuse , Uber ’ s self-driving cars head of safety , told Vox in a statement in response to a request for comment .
“ As we look ahead to the future , we ’ ll continue to keep safety at the center of every decision we make.
” Nonetheless , deadly accidents with self-driving cars will keep happening — and it ’ s not just Uber .
A report from the National Transportation Safety Board implicated Tesla ’ s Autopilot system @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the driver had his hands off the wheel , the car steered into a concrete divider and crashed , killing him .
A full investigation hasn ’ t yet been conducted on three more recent deadly Tesla crashes .
The problem , according to NTSB chairman Robert Sumwalt , is that drivers assume Autopilot lets them take their attention off the road , when they shouldn ’ t .
That won ’ t be a problem with fully autonomous vehicles , but it ’ s a potentially major one now .
As I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ self-driving cars on the road can save hundreds of thousands of lives .
But it takes a lot of engineering work to get the cars good enough to be lifesaving .
6 ) Are self-driving cars going to be good for the environment ?
Some advocates have argued that self-driving cars will be good for the environment .
They claim they might reduce car trips by making car ownership unnecessary and transitioning society to a model where most people don ’ t own a car and just call for one when they need @ @ @ @ @ @ @ argued that human drivers drive in a wasteful way — braking hard , accelerating hard , idling the engine , all of which use up fuel — which a computer could avoid .
But as self-driving cars have inched closer to reality , most of these claimed benefits have started to look less likely .
There ’ s not much evidence that computers are dramatically more fuel-efficient drivers than humans .
There ’ s one small study suggesting adaptive cruise control improves efficiency a little ( 5 to 7 percent ) , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Furthermore , researchers have examined the effects of more fuel-efficient cars on miles traveled and found that , under many circumstances , people drive more when cars get more fuel-efficient — so self-driving cars having higher fuel efficiency might not mean that they produce lower emissions .
One study attempting to estimate the effects of self-driving cars on car use behavior simulated a family having a self-driving car by paying for them to have a chauffeur for a week , and telling them to treat the chauffeur service the way they ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drive itself .
The result ?
They went on a lot more car trips .
It ’ s still possible that some big transition to a lower-driving world will happen .
A study of one week of driving habits isn ’ t enough to settle the question for sure .
The researchers who conducted that study are preparing future studies , and it ’ s possible those comparisons will turn up more encouraging results .
7 ) So if they ’ re not necessarily safer and they ’ re not necessarily greener , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The above few sections might inspire some pessimism , but there ’ s plenty of reason to be excited about self-driving cars .
They will likely make life easier for older people and those with disabilities who can not safely drive .
They might provide better , safer , and cheaper options for people currently forced to own a car to get anywhere .
Additional research and development will make them safer — and once the kinks are worked out , there is a likelihood that self-driving cars will be safer than human-driven @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re in an awkward transition moment where we want self-driving cars they aren ’ t yet an uncomplicated positive .
Research and development is proceeding anyway , mostly because self-driving cars will probably be a gold mine for the first company to get them on the road .
They ’ ll likely be able to establish themselves in ride-hailing , taxi , and trucking markets while competitors are still struggling to catch up , and then they ’ ll benefit from the additional miles traveled to further improve their cars .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be dangerous and barely worth it when it is first invented , only to eventually be refined into a valuable part of modern life .
The first airplanes were dangerous and commercially useless , but we improved things dramatically from there .
8 ) What role does policy play in the development of self-driving cars ?
There is no federal law regarding self-driving cars .
Much of the action on policy has largely taken place at the state level .
And the laws surrounding self-driving cars vary enormously by state , with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ car development mostly happens in the states that have been friendliest to it — especially California and Arizona — and it ’ s easy to envision some states banning self-driving cars long after they become commonplace in other states , especially if the safety case for them isn ’ t a slam-dunk .
When self-driving cars were first proposed , I heard a lot of worries that regulators would unnecessarily delay their implementation .
By 2016 , it was obvious that hadn ’ t come to pass .
Indeed , in some cases @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for example , in light of Uber pulling its cars and instituting new safety procedures , it seems the vehicle that killed Elaine Herzberg probably shouldn ’ t have been on the road at all .
Policy might also shape whether self-driving cars are good or bad for the environment .
With high taxes on gasoline , for example , the social costs of carbon emissions could be reflected in the price of using self-driving cars — and the money can be spent on climate adaptation and clean energy .
But right now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do much of anything about the social costs of driving , and that ’ s a problem that will only get worse if self-driving cars put more people on the road .
9 ) So just when are we getting self-driving cars ?
In some senses , we ’ ve been “ close ” on self-driving cars for years now .
Waymo is doing test runs with no one behind the wheel in Arizona , which it ’ s been doing since 2017 .
Cruise delayed the 2019 launch of its autonomous taxi @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2020 .
Earlier this year , the company unveiled a car with no steering wheel ... and no timetable for when it ’ ll be available for sale .
Tesla ’ s periodic software updates make its Autopilot highway self-driving work better , but it remains well short of full self-driving .
There are certainly skeptics .
Recently , the CEO of Volkswagen said that fully self-driving cars might “ never happen.
” That might be an overly harsh forecast , considering the progress that ’ s been made .
But it is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of how long until self-driving cars happen for real for the typical American , both because no one knows for sure and because companies have incentives to publicize optimistic estimates .
The companies boast about their progress but don ’ t publish their mishaps .
Timelines slip , and the change in plans is often publicly acknowledged only long after it ’ s become obvious that the deadline can ’ t be met .
At the same time , companies hesitate to put their cars on the road when there ’ s any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ They are well aware that killing someone , as Uber did , is not only horrible but also probably spells doom for their business .
So there ’ s ample incentive to say optimistic things and not actually launch .
It ’ s not hard to imagine their arrival later this year , at least in sufficiently limited contexts ; it ’ s also not hard to imagine that the deadlines will be pushed out another three or four years .
Self-driving cars are on their way .
They ’ re closer than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they ’ ll actually get here is anyone ’ s guess .
Sign up for the Future Perfect newsletter and we ’ ll send you a roundup of ideas and solutions for tackling the world ’ s biggest challenges — and how to get better at doing good .
Future Perfect is funded in part by individual contributions , grants , and sponsorships .
Learn more here .

When it comes to self-driving cars, the future was supposed to be now.
In 2020, you’ll be a “permanent backseat driver,” the Guardian predicted in 2015. “10 million self-driving cars will be on the road by 2020,” blared a Business Insider headline from 2016. Those declarations were accompanied by announcements from General Motors, Google’s Waymo, Toyota, and Honda that they’d be making self-driving cars by 2020. Elon Musk forecast that Tesla would do it by 2018 — and then, when that failed, by 2020.
But the year is here — and the self-driving cars aren’t.
Despite extraordinary efforts from many of the leading names in tech and in automaking, fully autonomous cars are still out of reach except in special trial programs. You can buy a car that will automatically brake for you when it anticipates a collision, or one that helps keep you in your lane, or even a Tesla Model S (which — disclosure — my partner and I own) whose Autopilot mostly handles highway driving.
But almost every one of the above predictions has been rolled back as the engineering teams at those companies struggle to make self-driving cars work properly.
What happened? Here are nine questions you might have had about this long-promised technology, and why the future we were promised still hasn’t arrived.
1) How exactly do self-driving cars work?
Engineers have been attempting prototypes of self-driving cars for decades. The idea behind it is really simple: Outfit a car with cameras that can track all the objects around it and have the car react if it’s about to steer into one. Teach in-car computers the rules of the road and set them loose to navigate to their own destination.
This simple description elides a whole lot of complexity. Driving is one of the more complicated activities humans routinely do. Following a list of rules of the road isn’t enough to drive as well as a human does, because we do things like make eye contact with others to confirm who has the right of way, react to weather conditions, and otherwise make judgment calls that are difficult to encode in hard-and-fast rules.
And even the simple parts of driving — like tracking the objects around a car on the road — are actually much trickier than they sound. Take Google’s sister company Waymo, the industry leader in self-driving cars. Waymo’s cars, which are fairly typical of other self-driving cars, use high-resolution cameras and lidar (light detection and ranging), a way of estimating distances to objects by bouncing light and sound off things.
The car’s computers combine all of this to build a picture of where other cars, cyclists, pedestrians, and obstacles are and where they’re moving. For this part, lots of training data is needed — that is, the car has to draw on millions of miles of driving data that Waymo has collected to form expectations about how other objects might move. It’s hard to get enough training data on the road, so the cars also train based on simulation data — but engineers have to be sure that their AI systems will generalize correctly from the simulation data to the real world.
That’s far from a complete description of the systems at work when a self-driving car is on the road. But it illustrates an important principle to keep in mind when wondering where our self-driving cars are: Even the “easy” things turn out to hide surprising complexity.
2) Why is it taking longer than expected to get self-driving cars on the road?
Self-driving cars rely on artificial intelligence to work. And the 2010s were a great decade for AI. We saw big advances in translation, speech generation, computer vision and object recognition, and game-playing. AI used to have a hard time identifying dogs in pictures; now that’s a trivial task.
It’s this progress in AI that drove the optimistic predictions for self-driving cars in the mid-2010s. Researchers anticipated that we could build on the amazing gains they’d seen (and are still seeing) in other arenas.
But when it came to self-driving cars, the limitations of those gains became very apparent. Even with extraordinary amounts of time, money, and effort invested, no team could figure out how to have AI solve a real-world problem: navigating our roads with the high degree of reliability needed.
Much of the problem is the need for lots of training data. The ideal way to train a self-driving car would be to show it billions of hours of footage of real driving, and use that to teach the computer good driving behavior. Modern machine learning systems do really well when they have abundant data, and very poorly when they have only a little bit of it. But collecting data for self-driving cars is expensive. And since some events are rare — witnessing a car accident ahead, say, or encountering debris on the road — it’s possible for the car to be out of its depth because it has encountered a situation so infrequently in its training data.
Carmakers have tried to get around this in lots of ways. They’ve driven more miles. They’ve trained the cars in simulations. They sometimes engineer specific situations so that they can get more training data about those situations for the cars.
And they are getting closer. Waymo cars do roam the streets of Arizona with no one behind the wheel (a small pool of specially screened people can call them up like they would an Uber). If all goes well, they may expand to more cities later this year (more on this below). But it’s a hard problem, and progress has been slow.
3) What does a world with self-driving cars look like?
Companies continue to invest despite the setbacks because self-driving cars, when they happen, will change a lot for the world — and make their creators lots of money.
Many consumers will want to upgrade. Imagine being able to read or doze off during your morning drive to work or on long car trips. It also seems likely that taxi and ride-hailing companies will offer self-driving cars, rather than paying drivers (in fact, companies like Uber are betting on it). Self-driving cars should also make a huge difference for Americans with disabilities, many of whom can’t get a driver’s license and have trouble getting to work, the store, and doctor’s appointments.
Experts disagree on whether self-driving cars will change anything fundamental about car ownership in America. Some argue that people won’t need to own a car if they can order one on their phone and get a timely robot ride anywhere.
Others have pointed out that people generally still own a car even in areas with good ride-share coverage and that self-driving cars might not be any different. Polls suggest that most Americans don’t want to be driven to work by a self-driving car — but that might change fast once such cars actually exist. Gallup polling on this question found a small share (9 percent) of Americans who’d get such a car right away, with a larger contingent (38 percent) saying they’d wait a while, and half holding steadfast that they’d never use one.
Over time, our infrastructure will likely change to make it easier for self-driving cars to navigate, and in fact, some researchers have argued that we won’t have widespread self-driving cars until we’ve made major changes to our streets to make it easier to communicate information to those cars. That would be expensive and require nationwide coordination, so it seems likely that it would follow the widespread introduction of self-driving cars rather than precede it.
4) What are the leading self-driving car programs, and what are they doing?
Almost every major car manufacturer has at least tested the waters with self-driving car research. But some are much more serious about it than others.
There are two core statistics useful for evaluating how advanced a self-driving car program is. One is how many miles it has driven. That’s a proxy for how much training data the company has, and how much investment it has poured into getting its cars on the road.
The other is disengagements — moments when a human driver has to take over because the computer couldn’t handle a situation — per mile driven. Most companies don’t share these statistics, but the state of California requires that they be reported, and so California’s statistics are the best peek into how various companies are doing.
On both fronts, Google’s sister company Waymo is the clear leader. Waymo just announced 20 million miles driven overall, most of those not in California. In 2018, Waymo drove 1.2 million miles in California, with 0.09 disengagements every 1,000 miles. Coming in second is General Motors’ Cruise, with about half a million miles and 0.19 disengagements per 1,000 miles. (Cruise argues that since it tests its cars on San Francisco’s difficult streets, these numbers are even more impressive than they look.)
Those two companies are well ahead of everyone else in both miles driven and disengagements in the state of California. While that’s only a limited snapshot of their efforts, most experts consider them the leading programs in general.
5) Didn’t a self-driving car kill a woman? How did that happen? And what are the safety issues involved with self-driving cars?
March 18, 2018, was the first time a self-driving car ran down a pedestrian. An Uber car with a safety driver behind the wheel hit and killed Elaine Herzberg, a 49-year-old woman walking her bicycle across the street in Tempe, Arizona.
The incident was a reminder that self-driving car technology still had a long way to go. Some people were quick to point out that humans frequently kill other humans while driving, and that even if self-driving cars are much safer than humans, there will be some fatal incidents with self-driving cars. That’s true as far as it goes. But it misses a key point. Human driving produces one fatal accident in every 100 million miles driven. Waymo, the leader in miles driven, just reached 20 million miles driven. It hasn’t had a fatal accident yet, but given the number of miles its cars have driven, it’s simply far too soon to prove that they’re as safe as or safer than a human driver.
Uber hasn’t driven nearly as many miles and has had a fatal incident. The company doesn’t release specific figures, but its filings for its IPO last year said that it had driven “millions” of miles. It’s hard to tell without specific numbers, but it’s fair to wonder if Uber’s driving record is much worse than a human’s.
Furthermore, a review of Herzberg’s death suggests that a lot of preventable mistakes were made. The accident report by the National Transportation Safety Board, released in December 2019, found that the near-range cameras and the ultrasonic sensors “were not in use at the time of the crash.”
Additionally, the system was having such a problem with false alarms — detecting dangerous situations when none existed — that it had been programmed with “a one-second period during which the ADS [automated driving system] suppresses planned braking while the (1) system verifies the nature of the detected hazard and calculates an alternative path, or (2) vehicle operator takes control of the vehicle,” according to the NTSB report. So even when the car detected the hazard, it didn’t brake — which could have made the collision avoidable or much less deadly — but instead continued with exactly what it was doing for a full second.
The system was designed to assume that pedestrians would never cross except at a crosswalk, so when one did cross without using one, it failed to identify her. Even worse, when the system was unclear on whether an object was a bicycle (as it was with Herzberg), it was unable to retain any information about how the object was moving. The system sensed her presence six full seconds before the impact — and yet did nothing (except possibly braking in the last two-tenths of a second) before colliding with her at deadly speed.
Those are avoidable failures.
Uber pulled its cars off the road in response, returning to self-driving car trials a year later with a drastically changed program. “We’ve implemented key safety improvements from both safety reviews, shared our learnings with the larger self-driving industry, and accepted the NTSB’s recommendation to implement a Safety Management System, which is underway today,” Nat Beuse, Uber’s self-driving cars head of safety, told Vox in a statement in response to a request for comment. “As we look ahead to the future, we’ll continue to keep safety at the center of every decision we make.”
Nonetheless, deadly accidents with self-driving cars will keep happening — and it’s not just Uber. A report from the National Transportation Safety Board implicated Tesla’s Autopilot system in another lethal 2018 accident; while the driver had his hands off the wheel, the car steered into a concrete divider and crashed, killing him. A full investigation hasn’t yet been conducted on three more recent deadly Tesla crashes. The problem, according to NTSB chairman Robert Sumwalt, is that drivers assume Autopilot lets them take their attention off the road, when they shouldn’t. That won’t be a problem with fully autonomous vehicles, but it’s a potentially major one now.
As I’ve written before, getting good self-driving cars on the road can save hundreds of thousands of lives. But it takes a lot of engineering work to get the cars good enough to be lifesaving.
6) Are self-driving cars going to be good for the environment?
Some advocates have argued that self-driving cars will be good for the environment. They claim they might reduce car trips by making car ownership unnecessary and transitioning society to a model where most people don’t own a car and just call for one when they need one.
In addition, others have argued that human drivers drive in a wasteful way — braking hard, accelerating hard, idling the engine, all of which use up fuel — which a computer could avoid.
But as self-driving cars have inched closer to reality, most of these claimed benefits have started to look less likely.
There’s not much evidence that computers are dramatically more fuel-efficient drivers than humans. There’s one small study suggesting adaptive cruise control improves efficiency a little (5 to 7 percent), but there’s little else beyond that. Furthermore, researchers have examined the effects of more fuel-efficient cars on miles traveled and found that, under many circumstances, people drive more when cars get more fuel-efficient — so self-driving cars having higher fuel efficiency might not mean that they produce lower emissions.
One study attempting to estimate the effects of self-driving cars on car use behavior simulated a family having a self-driving car by paying for them to have a chauffeur for a week, and telling them to treat the chauffeur service the way they’d treat having a car that could drive itself.
The result? They went on a lot more car trips.
It’s still possible that some big transition to a lower-driving world will happen. A study of one week of driving habits isn’t enough to settle the question for sure. The researchers who conducted that study are preparing future studies, and it’s possible those comparisons will turn up more encouraging results.
7) So if they’re not necessarily safer and they’re not necessarily greener, why are we even doing this?
The above few sections might inspire some pessimism, but there’s plenty of reason to be excited about self-driving cars. They will likely make life easier for older people and those with disabilities who cannot safely drive. They might provide better, safer, and cheaper options for people currently forced to own a car to get anywhere. Additional research and development will make them safer — and once the kinks are worked out, there is a likelihood that self-driving cars will be safer than human-driven ones.
In a sense, we’re in an awkward transition moment where we want self-driving cars they aren’t yet an uncomplicated positive.
Research and development is proceeding anyway, mostly because self-driving cars will probably be a gold mine for the first company to get them on the road. They’ll likely be able to establish themselves in ride-hailing, taxi, and trucking markets while competitors are still struggling to catch up, and then they’ll benefit from the additional miles traveled to further improve their cars.
It’s not uncommon for a technology to be dangerous and barely worth it when it is first invented, only to eventually be refined into a valuable part of modern life. The first airplanes were dangerous and commercially useless, but we improved things dramatically from there.
8) What role does policy play in the development of self-driving cars?
There is no federal law regarding self-driving cars. Much of the action on policy has largely taken place at the state level. And the laws surrounding self-driving cars vary enormously by state, with 29 states having passed legislation.
Self-driving car development mostly happens in the states that have been friendliest to it — especially California and Arizona — and it’s easy to envision some states banning self-driving cars long after they become commonplace in other states, especially if the safety case for them isn’t a slam-dunk.
When self-driving cars were first proposed, I heard a lot of worries that regulators would unnecessarily delay their implementation. By 2016, it was obvious that hadn’t come to pass. Indeed, in some cases regulators may have been too permissive — for example, in light of Uber pulling its cars and instituting new safety procedures, it seems the vehicle that killed Elaine Herzberg probably shouldn’t have been on the road at all.
Policy might also shape whether self-driving cars are good or bad for the environment. With high taxes on gasoline, for example, the social costs of carbon emissions could be reflected in the price of using self-driving cars — and the money can be spent on climate adaptation and clean energy. But right now, our transportation policy doesn’t do much of anything about the social costs of driving, and that’s a problem that will only get worse if self-driving cars put more people on the road.
9) So just when are we getting self-driving cars?
In some senses, we’ve been “close” on self-driving cars for years now. Waymo is doing test runs with no one behind the wheel in Arizona, which it’s been doing since 2017. Cruise delayed the 2019 launch of its autonomous taxi service but thinks it might happen in 2020. Earlier this year, the company unveiled a car with no steering wheel ... and no timetable for when it’ll be available for sale. Tesla’s periodic software updates make its Autopilot highway self-driving work better, but it remains well short of full self-driving.
There are certainly skeptics. Recently, the CEO of Volkswagen said that fully self-driving cars might “never happen.”
That might be an overly harsh forecast, considering the progress that’s been made. But it is exasperatingly difficult to get a good estimate of how long until self-driving cars happen for real for the typical American, both because no one knows for sure and because companies have incentives to publicize optimistic estimates. The companies boast about their progress but don’t publish their mishaps. Timelines slip, and the change in plans is often publicly acknowledged only long after it’s become obvious that the deadline can’t be met.
At the same time, companies hesitate to put their cars on the road when there’s any chance they aren’t ready. They are well aware that killing someone, as Uber did, is not only horrible but also probably spells doom for their business. So there’s ample incentive to say optimistic things and not actually launch.
It’s not hard to imagine their arrival later this year, at least in sufficiently limited contexts; it’s also not hard to imagine that the deadlines will be pushed out another three or four years.
Self-driving cars are on their way. They’re closer than they were a year ago. When they’ll actually get here is anyone’s guess.
Sign up for the Future Perfect newsletter and we’ll send you a roundup of ideas and solutions for tackling the world’s biggest challenges — and how to get better at doing good.
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vox--2020-02-28--The Invisible Man gives a classic horror story new life in a fable about abusers

The question seems almost perverse .
Of course they ’ re not invisible ; to their victims , they ’ re all too visible , taking up all the space in the victims ’ lives and minds , crowding out the possibility of feeling “ normal.
” Some grab headlines and demand to be heard .
They ’ re larger than life .
But it ’ s all too common , when an abuser is revealed , for people to be shocked .
He was so lovely , we say .
He seemed so nice .
We never saw it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is an open secret , and whose temper is no secret at all , can be “ charming , ” a Dr. Jekyll side to the Mr. Hyde core .
Charisma can help an abuser hide in plain sight , while the people around him scurry to tend to his needs and stay out of his way .
And even when he ’ s absent , he ’ s present — a looming mental presence even when physically removed .
That ’ s why The Invisible Man seems so eerily well-timed , releasing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s conviction on two criminal charges , including rape .
The movie ’ s plot may not seem so contemporary , based loosely on an H.G .
Wells novel first published in 1897 ( subtitled “ A Grotesque Romance ” ) and a film released in 1933 .
( Neither the new film nor its source materials are related to the 1952 Ralph Ellison novel . )
Previous retellings have centered on the Invisible Man himself and served as a warning against hubris and grandiosity .
This one takes another tack entirely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( a splendid Elisabeth Moss ) who is desperate to escape the clutches of her fabulously wealthy and abusive husband Adrian ( Oliver Jackson-Cohen ) .
Adrian ’ s wealth comes from his work as a leader in the field of surveillance technologies .
So even when Cecilia flees , with her sister ’ s help , to the home of their friend James ( Aldis Hodge ) and his teenage daughter Sydney ( Storm Reid ) , she worries that Adrian will find her .
She ’ s so shaky and fearful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Then Adrian turns up dead , and it seems as though Cecilia ’ s nightmare might be over .
And yet she can feel a presence , as if she ’ s being not just watched but stalked .
She ’ s convinced he ’ s alive and invisible , while everyone around her , even those who love her , is confident that her emotional instability is devolving into some kind of madness .
The Invisible Man understands how scary an absent predator is The Invisible Man uses one of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wonder what ’ s lurking around the edges of the screen .
But because the villain isn ’ t visible to anyone , not even the characters in the film , it ’ s extra creepy , and extra effective .
You ’ re in Cecilia ’ s headspace , experiencing what she ’ s experiencing , checking corners of a room for what we know wouldn ’ t be visible even if it were there .
Adrian once controlled everything about Cecilia — where she went , who she talked to , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Even if he ’ s not really there , even if he ’ s dead , he ’ s still in her mind .
But in this story , he ’ s also actually there , a fact the movie wastes no time establishing ; sometimes , it even seems more preoccupied with fitting in cool horror scenes than with building tension .
It ’ s as if the movie gets distracted by clever images and loses its way .
But Moss ’ s extraordinarily committed performance , under the direction of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the whole thing together .
Cecilia is being gaslit , she knows it , and she can ’ t express it to anyone else , because nobody would believe her .
Just look at her eyes .
In that way , The Invisible Man is a strong evocation of what we really mean when we talk about how important it is to “ believe women.
” It ’ s not that every woman , or everyone who says they ’ ve been abused , should not be questioned ; it ’ s that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a default position of suspicion to one of cautious but compassionate trust .
Living inside The Invisible Man for two hours , we get to experience the existential terror of being a survivor of abuse who isn ’ t believed , and witness the many ways that crafty predators can manipulate their prey , making it seem as if they are the abused ones , and the accuser is the one who ought to be punished .
It ’ s an old , old story , and an all too familiar one .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ movie was originally announced as a vehicle for alleged domestic abuser Johnny Depp . )
One need look no further for an example of this dynamic in action than the case of Bill Cosby , or even more recently , the case of Harvey Weinstein — in some sense the most invisible man of them all , the one whose bold refusal to treat the women he victimized like humans allowed him to act with impunity for decades .
People didn ’ t “ see ” Weinstein because they didn ’ t want @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they didn ’ t need to .
Brilliantly , the Weinstein-esque character in another recent film , The Assistant , was portrayed as both suffocatingly ever-present and sort of invisible .
In that movie , we never see the abusive character ’ s face or clearly hear his voice ; we just feel the force of his fury and sense the way he looms over the lives of everyone who works for him , especially when he ’ s physically away from them .
Defending Weinstein in court required building a case that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the powerful executive , who was being used and even abused by the women who accused him , because they wanted something from him .
It is the sort of case that feels as though it ’ s turned reality inside out , making the plainly obvious invisible and magnifying what ’ s not even there .
Weinstein ’ s legal team exploited digital technologies and revised history in an attempt to “ prove ” that his accusers were lying — producing emails that showed cordial relationships and smiling photos of Weinstein ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ red carpets .
They tried to defend Weinstein by instead putting his accusers on trial .
The Invisible Man similarly explores ( albeit too briefly ) the way digital surveillance technologies can be employed by abusers to confuse their victims and make themselves look innocent — and it shows how they turn the tables when their victims finally fight back .
So while The Invisible Man doesn ’ t entirely succeed in pacing , it does one thing very well : plunge us emotionally into Cecilia ’ s own horror story and urge @ @ @ @ @ @ @ victims under their thumbs , even when they ’ re absent .
That ’ s plenty shocking on its own , and now is just the right time to be telling this story , this way , as a piece of effective entertainment with a core of instinctual horror .
The Invisible Man opens in theaters on February 28 .

Are abusive men invisible?
The question seems almost perverse. Of course they’re not invisible; to their victims, they’re all too visible, taking up all the space in the victims’ lives and minds, crowding out the possibility of feeling “normal.” Some grab headlines and demand to be heard. They’re larger than life.
But it’s all too common, when an abuser is revealed, for people to be shocked. He was so lovely, we say. He seemed so nice. We never saw it coming. Even someone whose predatory behavior is an open secret, and whose temper is no secret at all, can be “charming,” a Dr. Jekyll side to the Mr. Hyde core. Charisma can help an abuser hide in plain sight, while the people around him scurry to tend to his needs and stay out of his way. And even when he’s absent, he’s present — a looming mental presence even when physically removed.
That’s why The Invisible Man seems so eerily well-timed, releasing in theaters mere days after Harvey Weinstein’s conviction on two criminal charges, including rape. The movie’s plot may not seem so contemporary, based loosely on an H.G. Wells novel first published in 1897 (subtitled “A Grotesque Romance”) and a film released in 1933. (Neither the new film nor its source materials are related to the 1952 Ralph Ellison novel.)
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark
Previous retellings have centered on the Invisible Man himself and served as a warning against hubris and grandiosity. This one takes another tack entirely, focusing on a woman named Cecilia (a splendid Elisabeth Moss) who is desperate to escape the clutches of her fabulously wealthy and abusive husband Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). Adrian’s wealth comes from his work as a leader in the field of surveillance technologies. So even when Cecilia flees, with her sister’s help, to the home of their friend James (Aldis Hodge) and his teenage daughter Sydney (Storm Reid), she worries that Adrian will find her. She’s so shaky and fearful that she can barely leave the house.
Then Adrian turns up dead, and it seems as though Cecilia’s nightmare might be over. And yet she can feel a presence, as if she’s being not just watched but stalked. She’s convinced he’s alive and invisible, while everyone around her, even those who love her, is confident that her emotional instability is devolving into some kind of madness.
The Invisible Man understands how scary an absent predator is
The Invisible Man uses one of the great visual horror devices: Letting you wonder what’s lurking around the edges of the screen. But because the villain isn’t visible to anyone, not even the characters in the film, it’s extra creepy, and extra effective.
You’re in Cecilia’s headspace, experiencing what she’s experiencing, checking corners of a room for what we know wouldn’t be visible even if it were there. Adrian once controlled everything about Cecilia — where she went, who she talked to, what she wore, what she ate. Even if he’s not really there, even if he’s dead, he’s still in her mind.
But in this story, he’s also actually there, a fact the movie wastes no time establishing; sometimes, it even seems more preoccupied with fitting in cool horror scenes than with building tension. It’s as if the movie gets distracted by clever images and loses its way. But Moss’s extraordinarily committed performance, under the direction of writer and director Leigh Whannell, holds the whole thing together. Cecilia is being gaslit, she knows it, and she can’t express it to anyone else, because nobody would believe her. Just look at her eyes.
In that way, The Invisible Man is a strong evocation of what we really mean when we talk about how important it is to “believe women.” It’s not that every woman, or everyone who says they’ve been abused, should not be questioned; it’s that the balance needs to shift away from a default position of suspicion to one of cautious but compassionate trust.
Living inside The Invisible Man for two hours, we get to experience the existential terror of being a survivor of abuse who isn’t believed, and witness the many ways that crafty predators can manipulate their prey, making it seem as if they are the abused ones, and the accuser is the one who ought to be punished. It’s an old, old story, and an all too familiar one. (In a strange meta-twist, this movie was originally announced as a vehicle for alleged domestic abuser Johnny Depp.)
One need look no further for an example of this dynamic in action than the case of Bill Cosby, or even more recently, the case of Harvey Weinstein — in some sense the most invisible man of them all, the one whose bold refusal to treat the women he victimized like humans allowed him to act with impunity for decades. People didn’t “see” Weinstein because they didn’t want to, and because he convinced them they didn’t need to.
Brilliantly, the Weinstein-esque character in another recent film, The Assistant, was portrayed as both suffocatingly ever-present and sort of invisible. In that movie, we never see the abusive character’s face or clearly hear his voice; we just feel the force of his fury and sense the way he looms over the lives of everyone who works for him, especially when he’s physically away from them.
Defending Weinstein in court required building a case that, actually, it was he, the powerful executive, who was being used and even abused by the women who accused him, because they wanted something from him. It is the sort of case that feels as though it’s turned reality inside out, making the plainly obvious invisible and magnifying what’s not even there.
Weinstein’s legal team exploited digital technologies and revised history in an attempt to “prove” that his accusers were lying — producing emails that showed cordial relationships and smiling photos of Weinstein’s accusers standing next to him on red carpets. They tried to defend Weinstein by instead putting his accusers on trial. The Invisible Man similarly explores (albeit too briefly) the way digital surveillance technologies can be employed by abusers to confuse their victims and make themselves look innocent — and it shows how they turn the tables when their victims finally fight back.
So while The Invisible Man doesn’t entirely succeed in pacing, it does one thing very well: plunge us emotionally into Cecilia’s own horror story and urge us to understand. Abusers keep their victims under their thumbs, even when they’re absent. That’s plenty shocking on its own, and now is just the right time to be telling this story, this way, as a piece of effective entertainment with a core of instinctual horror.
The Invisible Man opened in theaters on February 28. On March 20, it became available on a wide variety of on-demand services, including iTunes, Google Play, Amazon Prime and FandangoNow.