I just want a self-driving RV with 1Gbps internet.
Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
571–580 of 634 posts
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#572Earlier quoted context omitted.
The self-driving platform will financially nudge you in the right direction. Currently Uber charges more during rush hour. It's rather obvious that self-driving operator will implement similar price discrimination e.g. $10 if you drive alone, $5 if you share with one or more people. And the more they want you to share, the bigger the surcharge e.g. if $10 vs. $5 doesn't have desired effect then maybe $20 vs $5 will.…
Still, traffic will be worse when you compare one bus with 50 people vs. 12 self-driving cars with 4 people each. A bus is 14-15m long, whereas even a small car like the Chevy Bolt is over 4m. So parked bumper-to-bumper the cars produce >3x as much traffic, and then you add some gaps for actually driving you're up to 4x. Personally I'm very skeptical of both the claim that a) self-driving cars will see huge adoptatio…
The only way I see limiting the impact of traffic increases on self-driving cars is for municipalities to pass laws ahead of time limiting the amount of self-driving cars on the road to a specific number, much like Singapore [0] (or tie it to a percentage of the town population, say 10%)
A town could say, for instance, "we will only allow 3,000 self-driving cars to be actively driving within our borders". If transportation needs are not met, then it's time to start thinking about other improvements like walkability, biking, buses, etc. Realistically though, this would never happen in the United States. Either people would sue to get that law repealed, or every time the cap was hit those in charge would just raise it to keep their constituents happy...
Without strict agreements ahead of widespread self-driving car adoption, I think it's just going to be a free-for-all with lots of car companies freely pushing their products into towns, and the people of course are going to welcome it.
[0] http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/24/news/singapore-car-numbers-l...
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#573Earlier quoted context omitted.
> where I grew up a single school bus cost the district over $1m What? Per year or once? If per year I wonder what amounts of corruption must be going on. A simple 31-seater bus from Mercedes costs approx. 285.000€ to buy new ( https://www.busplaner.de/omnibusmagazin/omnibustest/10035/Me... ), which means over a 5y life it's 57k/y... add the same for insurance premiums and the driver, and still I can't get anywhere c…
In the US, school buses are typically 70-80 seaters; when I was in high school ~4 years ago, I rode a Blue Bird Vision ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Bird_Vision ). These will get around ten miles to the US gallon of diesel and cost around $110,000 US. The lifespan of these buses is typically around 20 years; each school day, they might be driven a hundred miles or more. $1m over 20 years seems reasonable.
Yeah, over 20 years 1M sounds reasonable - wasn't really recognizable what timespan was meant from parent's post...
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#574Earlier quoted context omitted.
The OP was talking about max capacity not real world capacity. Some JR lines run at 4 minute headways during peak times and subways run reliably at 2 minute headways. No freeway today has has 4 passenger cars running at 1 second headways so you end up with a more realistic 1000 to 2000 pax per hour. Which is about the number of pax you can fit in a single train. A 3 lane freeway takes up about the same amount of spac…
> Some JR lines run at 4 minute headways during peak times and subways run reliably at 2 minute headways. I was talking clearly about long distance trains. Not Kyoto to Osaka distance.
JR runs long distance as well as metro trains.
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#575Earlier quoted context omitted.
With the following caveat, I'll bite: "Not available in adverse weather conditions or outside service zones". Said service zones wouldn't include anyplace where increased crime is a concern. The cars would also probably have to be inspected and possibly cleaned between each use... I'm also uncertain the tech is advancing quickly enough to justify a 5 year timeline. Not to mention ensuring society and the government i…
Inspections can be automated with computer vision and gas sensors
Or just cameras and some "is this car clean?" UI.
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#576Earlier quoted context omitted.
> say the average American today spends $600/month total on owning a car. Why would anyone price a self-driving service at $200/month? No, they'd go for an initial price of $400/month for a couple of years to get customers, then sneak back up to $600/month once they've caught most of the market. In year 2000, in order to run a medium web site as a company you need 2 Servers one for each Database, WebServer. People bo…
> People bought each server box for $5000 and server capacity used is only at 15% So why do they need 2 servers? Also, I'm pretty sure VPSes and shared hosting were available in 2000.
VPSes did not exist as a commercial product in 2000. Back then you likely purchased and colo'd your hardware or leased from a provider. You could get shared hosting with CGI access but that was about it.
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#577Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The more comfortable it is to be inside a car and the less people mind long car rides There are places with comfortable public transport today but it seems most prefer would prefer a 40 minute drive than a 1 hour train ride even though it frees up their time.
> it seems most prefer would prefer a 40 minute drive than a 1 hour train ride even though it frees up their time. A train ride frees your time up less than an autonomous car ride because on a train you have no personal space. You always have to be aware of people around you and where your own belongings are, watch for your stop, etc. In a car you can focus on whatever you're doing.
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Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#578Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Car usage will go up by an order of magnitude because a major cost of driving isn't the dollars, but the time. This is why I think self driving cars will make traffic worse, not better. The more comfortable it is to be inside a car and the less people mind long car rides, the more people will drive (self driving or otherwise). If road infrastructure is the same, that necessarily means a much higher density of cars…
To detail one particular addition of traffic to the roads: students - with self-driving cars, students from K-12 may much rather want to have the independence to hop in a car rather than ride a "stinky school bus". Parents may end up loving it, especially those who already drive their kids to school. And I'm sure the school districts would love self-driving cars, because it means they can pass the travel expenses ont…
And if the cars are self-driving, the school doesn't need parking. The kids can be dropped off and the car will drive itself home. Of course that means a doubling the total number of physical trips, but that isn't the school's problem.
I'm waiting for the ability to, rather than pay for parking, have my car circle the block while I eat lunch. The cost of running an electric vehicle for a few hours is far less than paying to park.
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#579Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope, not question their competence - I’m questioning where the answers are to the dialogue we should be having surrounding ai cars???? Where the fuck are the answers, what body owns them?
Presumably each company will have their own approaches to these issues. They don't prima facie seem to be issues that require legislation. In that sense, "we" are not having a dialogue about this at all, any more than "we" are having conversation about cyclist detection, because "we" are not building self-driving cars. Waymo, Cruise, etc. are building self-driving cars, and we are not privy to their internal delibera…
Thank you for this point.
My mention of “we” though are the consumers who will be paying these companies for rides and presuming they have already thought about these safety issues, yet “we” have no privvy to an understanding about who has approached the issues nor who has the best approach and neither a standard to refer to that “we” can expect the companies to uphold.
That’s the whole point of “us” starting to ask questions.
“So, uh, you want me to fly in your plane, to what standards are these planes built to?”
Oh look, “we” have an FAA who manages all that, regardless of who made the damn plane.
Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel
#580Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the question is what happens when the first accident happens caused by autonomous car. US law is not really forgiving in this regard.
In that case the manufacturer (or their insurance) will pay for it. Let that be $10m if someone dies, maybe a bit less if someone gets seriously hurt. Even if it's a multiple of that, that's in no relation to the cost of the programme. As long as they demonstrate that their cars are still a magnitude safer than other cars, paying fines will be enough.
Yeah I was curious how the responsibility aspect of autonomous vehicles might work. If I as the consumer own the car and it hurts someone while driving autonomously am I at fault or would the manufacturer be at fault. It seems like this would be an industry paradigm shift if manufacturers were to take on liability for products performing as expected in a world of the unexpected (so to speak).