In a pinch, a car can just put on its hazards and pull over

That “just” is doing some heavy lifting! The car still has to deal with all the normal hazards of the road while pulling over, plus the hazards it is itself creating by acting abnormally.

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anonymars 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Well if we're being picky, technically the car itself doesn't have to deal with the hazards it has created, rather everyone else does.

The point is you can't just "stop" a plane and wait for someone to figure things out (https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9449023?hl=en). Whatever the difficulties in dealing with an abnormal situation in a car, it is strictly much more difficult to deal with them in a vehicle constantly fighting the homicidal urge to fall out of the sky.

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Dylan16807 3 days ago | parent [-]

They each have their own unique issues. Being in a pinch is not universally harder for a plane.

Also constant urge to fall out of the sky is a helicopter. A plane generally wants to glide.

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dcrazy 2 days ago | parent [-]

Or a fighter jet. But definitely not a passenger plane; those things settle into a phugoid cycle.

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anonymars 2 days ago | parent [-]

Ok cool, so a plane merely needs to continue at highway speed, in the face of any difficulty, be it mechanical, electrical, software, weather... Like the movie Speed.

	▲	Dylan16807 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		The hard part is it has to keep moving, and it has to keep that up for a long time. The easy part is that it largely keeps itself moving, and that you have a thousand times fewer obstacles to avoid. Both situations are very hard, and both have very hard aspects that only apply to that situation but not the other one. The plane is not "strictly more difficult". As a car, finding a safe place to stop in an emergency is over a lot faster than in an airplane, but it's far more dangerous per second and per meter.

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e_y_ 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Could also be a big challenge if you have dozens or hundreds of autonomous cars in the area that need manual intervention to get them out (plus the people who get stuck there)

	▲	anonymars 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Is that situation somehow less difficult with aircraft?