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The story
Businessman Hiroyuki reportedly shared his views on YouTube about the slow adoption of self-driving cars in Japan, saying, “At this rate, America is going to eat us alive.” On 5channel, some argued that Japan’s narrow roads and complex traffic rules make practical self-driving deployment difficult, while others voiced alarm over Japan’s so-called “digital deficit,” estimated at ¥7 trillion a year. Still, plenty of posters brushed off Hiroyuki’s comment itself as “just him talking nonsense as usual,” leaving opinions split.
Hiroyuki shares his take on Japan’s stalled self-driving rollout: “Unfortunately, in five or ten years…”
Businessman Hiroyuki Nishimura (49) updated his official YouTube channel by the 9th with his take on the issue of self-driving car adoption.
On the fact that self-driving hasn’t taken off in Japan, Hiroyuki commented, “At this rate, we’re just going to get eaten alive by America.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article
What people said
Don't worry about it
So true
He's an amateur in literally every field
Can't beat the US or China
Not gonna happen under salaryman CEOs
Almost every web service Japanese people use is American-made
This is one factor putting downward pressure on the yen
With the AI era arriving, they say this digital deficit will keep ballooning without limit
Japanese labor costs are getting replaced by AI usage fees paid to the US and China
Japanese jobs and wages are being siphoned off by American and Chinese AI companies
If we end up as an AI colony, Japan is finished
Guess we should just block X, YouTube, and Instagram and switch to mixi and Niconico Douga
That money isn't actually going to America, so it has nothing to do with the weak yen
It'd need some adjustments, but it's plenty usable
If Japan tries to build its own, we'll just end up importing this patent-locked-down tech lol
Ride-sharing got crushed by industry lobby groups,
so until then we're stuck riding taxis driven by guys with an average age over 60. Hell.
There's no way that works
Narrow alleys packed with utility poles, some old lady driving straight at you—will the self-driving car actually back all the way up to a wide spot to let her by?
Is there room for safeguards to kick in, like there is with ride-sharing?
And given how small the Japanese market is, it's fine if they ignore us at first
Just running it on highways is good enough
Honestly for highways I feel like the cruise control we already have is enough lol
All you geezers saying "self-driving is impossible in Japan"—can you still say that after watching this ↑?
Once you throw pedestrians into the mix there's just too much data to process—no way
On regular roads it has to handle bikes, pedestrians, illegally parked cars, all kinds of stuff
Roads are empty there and it'd give the old folks a way to get around too
You'd have to map the whole area first, so it wouldn't turn a profit in depopulated regions
There's always that one guy whose only talent is pretending to demand perfection right out of the gate just to find excuses not to do it
Whatever happened to that?
Even if they collect data in that little diorama town, it'll take like 10,000 years
Isn't that the one above about measuring with sensors on the fly instead?
Tesla's approach isn't gonna work
it's nothing but people who don't even know the current state of self-driving tech
"What about cold climates," "what about roads with no lane markings"—
how many years out of date is that take?
That's already old news at this point
Their brains just haven't updated lol
Self-driving tech has to keep updating along with car types and model years too, you know
I think that fits Japan's road conditions better anyway
Oh my bad, I meant ACC
Fault gets assigned too
If you hand it over to a machine, how does liability even work?
In the end it can only be settled with money, but Japan can't accept that and won't move forward unless the risk is zero
While the US and China just plow ahead with self-driving and shrug off accidents when they happen, Japan's answer is bringing in foreign drivers instead
But that kind of rational thinking just doesn't fly here
Assume it takes 10 years for self-driving to really get established
Do you think some 70-year-old granny today is gonna be able to handle using it?
Oil's still such a powerful force, after all.
They'll become a hobby for the wealthy
Ordinary people will just get around in self-driving EVs (robotaxis)
Background and Key Points of the Debate
Legally, Japan’s self-driving efforts are still at the stage of limited “Level 4” pilot operations in designated areas, and haven’t reached nationwide rollout. Behind this lies not just road conditions—narrow alleys and complicated intersections are common—but also the fact that legislation clarifying liability in the event of an accident is still a work in progress. What divided the thread wasn’t so much the technology’s practicality as differing attitudes toward how much risk to tolerate: several posters pointed out that the US and China keep pushing self-driving development forward even when accidents occur, while Japan tends to demand zero risk. Separately, the “digital deficit” refers to the situation in which what Japanese companies pay for US-based cloud and IT services exceeds what they earn domestically—a structural problem often cited not just for self-driving but for AI-related services in general. As for whether Hiroyuki’s comment itself holds up, a fair number of posters questioned whether it had any real expert backing, and the thread’s split between agreeing with the content and judging the speaker himself is a nuance that doesn’t come through from the quoted article alone.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt/summary of the 5channel (Geinosuposoku+) thread “Hiroyuki shares his take on Japan’s stalled self-driving rollout: “Unfortunately, in five or ten years…” “At this rate, we’re just going to get eaten alive by America.”“
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