Driverless cars are stuck in a jam • Hacker News Board

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#341

Post by criddell » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

bonoboTP wrote: post #153

bogle wrote: post #133

If we expect driverless cars to be further delayed and we continue building our cities to encourage micromobility (bikes, electric scooters, segregated lanes, car free streets, etc.) then at which point does the value of the driverless car become moot because we no longer drive? Does this sound unlikely? Consider European cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam which have encouraged cycling over the last two decades and…

Not everyone lives in cycling distance to work, not all are fit enough to cycle regularly (old age, disability, obesity). In many countries such people use public transportation, but that's crowded and inconvenient for the richer folks who can afford cars. Why do you think people still have cars in Amsterdam?

> Not everyone lives in cycling distance to work, not all are fit enough to cycle regularly

And don't forget lack of showers at workplaces. If there wasn't a shower available where I work I definitely wouldn't bike to work.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#342

Post by ygjb » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

cloudwalking wrote: post #256

bpyne wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Live in the city and want to go hiking 20 miles away?" Yes, you want to use a car in this case. But, in the life I imagine, I would rent a car. I dislike driving intensely, but I can see use-cases in which cars are necessary. However, Americans have been largely forced into car ownership, despite the expense and hassle of owning one. A reduction in car ownership coupled with more pedestrian-friendly community design…

If you have to rent a car to go hiking, you aren't going to hike very often.

Car rental doesn't mean going to your local car rental shop. It more often means using a car share service like ZipCar, Modo, or others, and it's so convenient that I often use it despite owning a vehicle.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#343

Post by rootusrootus » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

astrodust wrote: post #324

ghaff wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people don’t live in urban cores. And it’s outside those cores where people can drive significant distances where self-driving has the most value. I actually expect we will eventually see self-driving on limited access highways and other “easy” situations. Self-driving in cities and as taxis may be indefinitely postponed.

> Lots of people don’t live in urban cores. That's what has to change. Both the location of people, and the definition of "urban core".

As a practical matter, meaningful change to the population density distribution will take decades, if not centuries. And it will not happen at all until we can find a way to make urban living less brutally expensive.

And yeah, urban core will need to be redefined. Not everyone wants to live in a skyscraper. We need to strike a balance.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#344

Post by criddell » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

stkdump wrote: post #225

de_watcher wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are places where it's cold, where it rains and snows. So we can't bike everywhere. The good thing about the driverless cars is that they solve the parking problems in the cities. We can even add lanes or pavements by removing all parking spaces in the city centers.

> There are places where it's cold, where it rains and snows. Like Amsterdam and Copenhagen? > The good thing about the driverless cars is that they solve the parking problems in the cities. They solve the search for parking by humans. But if you want to get the cars out of the city while they aren't used, you practically double the traffic and emissions.

Amsterdam and Copenhagen don't get very cold.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#345

Post by lmm » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 4:47 PM UTC

cloudwalking wrote: post #254

kiba wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all have cars because cars are incredibly useful; Got 4 young kids and you need to get groceries for the week? This only work that way because that's how your life is structured, not that it is a law of nature. If you live near a grocery store, you wouldn't have to buy enough grocery to last you a week. You can just buy what you need.

And then go back to the grocery store every day. What a waste of time. You can also wash your laundry but hand. The reality is we have these appliances (including cars) because they increase our personal efficiency quite a bit.

Nah, the suburban life was a strange fashion that took hold for a few decades but never really made sense, and thus it's now in decline as people return to the city cores. For the older generation owning a car was a status symbol, but the younger generation doesn't care.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#346

Post by todd8 » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

stkdump wrote: post #225

de_watcher wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are places where it's cold, where it rains and snows. So we can't bike everywhere. The good thing about the driverless cars is that they solve the parking problems in the cities. We can even add lanes or pavements by removing all parking spaces in the city centers.

> There are places where it's cold, where it rains and snows. Like Amsterdam and Copenhagen? > The good thing about the driverless cars is that they solve the parking problems in the cities. They solve the search for parking by humans. But if you want to get the cars out of the city while they aren't used, you practically double the traffic and emissions.

No, not like Amsterdam. I love Amsterdam, but I'm so tired of it being used as an example of how we should all be on bikes. It has a very temperate climate. The weather in most of the US isn't as mild and cool as Amsterdam.

There are cites in the US with great weather, for example San Diego, Santa Barbara, all of Marine and Sonoma Counties in CA have great weather (sadly it is having wild fire problems right now). I agree that we could be biking in those places more.

The US as a whole has climate all over the place, from polar (N. Alaska) to tropical (S. Florida) to a desert. The coldest it has ever been in the Netherlands is -27 °C, but the continental US has gotten down to -57 °C (Alaska has reached -62 °C). The hottest it has ever been in Amsterdam is +41 °C while the US has reached +57 °C.

It's true that these are crazy extremes and we can't decide on public policy based solely on rare events, but there are big cities all over the US where it is too cold to bike. Consider:

Average Weather: days at or below temperature:

    City (population)   -18 °C    0 °C  
    -----------------   ------   -----
    Amsterdam   (821 K)   none    none

    Minneapolis (422 K)    23      148
    Chicago    (2716 K)     7      122
    Denver      (620 K)     7      157
    Milwaukee   (595 K)     7      126
    Detroit     (673 K)     4      115
    Indianapolis(872 K)     4      104
    Rochester   (208 K)     4      129
    Buffalo     (259 K)     3      124
    Cleveland   (386 K)     3      104
    Hartford    (123 K)     3      125

It also gets too hot to bike in the US:

Average Weather: days at or above 38 °C:

    City   (population)      38 °C
    -------------------      -----
    Amsterdam   (821 K)       none

    Phoenix       (1626 K)     107
    Las Vegas      (642 K)      70
    Riverside      (328 K)      24
    Dallas        (1341 K)      17
    Austin         (951 K)      16
    Sacramento     (502 K)      11
    Oklahoma City  (644 K)      11
    San Antonio   (1493 K)       8
    Salt Lake City (201 K)       5
    Houston       (2313 K)       4
    Kansas City    (489 K)       3

Some very hardy people do bike in the cold. See [1], the worlds longest winter ultra-marathon (running, biking or skiing 1000km, the last 500 miles without support!!!) It might be the hardest race in the world. (There are not very many other races where contestants have had to be evacuated by helicopter because they were being stalked by a pack of wolves.)

[1] https://www.iditarodtrailinvitational.com

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#347

Post by lkbm » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 4:50 PM UTC

bogle wrote: post #133

If we expect driverless cars to be further delayed and we continue building our cities to encourage micromobility (bikes, electric scooters, segregated lanes, car free streets, etc.) then at which point does the value of the driverless car become moot because we no longer drive? Does this sound unlikely? Consider European cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam which have encouraged cycling over the last two decades and…

> Also, why would I prefer a driverless taxi if an electric car with a human driver costs no more?

I believe the number one cause of death for Americans under the age of 30 is traffic accidents.[0] It's around 40,000 deaths per year (in the US alone).

Cars are getting safer, but humans aren't getting better drivers. Individuals humans will get better with experience, but experienced drivers cycle out and new drivers cycle in.

A 16-year-old doesn't get to inherit the experience of the 70-year-old they're replacing. A new self-driving car does inherit the experience of older self-driving cars. They also learn from each other in a way humans can't.

Human drivers also improve at a rate of O(1). Self-driving cars can share their experience perfectly, so they improve at a rate of O(n). I get a day of driving experience per day. Each one of a million self-driving cars on the road will acquire a million days of driving experience. They won't drive traffic accidents down to zero in a week, but in a few years, if we were to deploy them en masse, they could.

[0] Can't actually find CDC data about this anymore. "Accidents" is definitely still #1, but they no longer break out traffic accidents. I know in the past, that was #1. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/LCWK1_2015.pdf

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#348

Post by catalogia » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 4:51 PM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #243

rayiner wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are way more comfortable and more convenient than public transit. Working Parisians who take transit spend 113 minutes a day commuting: https://www.thelocal.fr/20160418/parisians-spend-23-days-a-y... DC, where most people drive, averages about 70 minutes. Commuters in Dallas, where everyone drives, spend just 54 minutes a day commuting: https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Hou...

Speaking from personal experience here, my commute time tolerance is roughly double if I'm commuting by transit versus driving. In other words, a 60 minute trip by transit is roughly as painful as a 30 minute drive. Other people I've talked to have also expressed similar feelings.

Agreed. I'm not some sort of high powered investment banker who measures minutes wasted in thousands of dollars. I'm just a normal guy, trying to take it easy. I'm not in any huge rush to get anywhere if it's not a hospital, and I'd rather "waste" a few minutes getting driven around town by somebody else in somebody else's vehicle than assume the responsibility and risk of driving myself around.

Sometimes transit or walking simply isn't an option, and in those cases I drive. But given the choice, transit might take a bit longer but it's much lower stress. If a kid jumps out in front of the bus and gets run over, that would ruin my day but not my life. If the same happens when I'm driving a car, that's life altering.

There are lower-stake considerations too: the money I spend on bus fares would doubtlessly otherwise be spend on parking; or I would need to schedule enough time to hunt for free parking which just adds more uncertainty and risk to my day.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#349

Post by rootusrootus » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 4:51 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #304

hodgesrm wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another drawback is that it's taking focus away from mass transit, at least in the US. Decent mass transit ameliorates such a wide range of issues in cities it's hard to understand why we don't put more effort into making it work.

Mass transit doesn't really work in US suburbs because everything is just too spread out; it's not economical, nor logistically effective, to build subways to subdivisions. But even in built-up cities, Americans cling to their cars just like they cling to guns and religion. Look at all the uproar in Manhattan, NYC, where they're taking away street parking and putting in protected cycling lanes. People are upset at th…

Americans like cars so much because they're incredibly useful. And public transit sucks, which is sort of a chicken-and-egg problem. We don't want to invest in something which is unpleasant to use, so it remains unpleasant to use. In my city, we have the additional problem that the local transit agency only wants to spend money on light rail, which is just a smaller version of the "nobody builds subways to subdivisions" problem. I'd be more likely to use mass transit if the bus was clean, comfortable, and came a lot more often than once an hour.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#350

Post by rootusrootus » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 4:53 PM UTC

_ea1k wrote: post #318

rhino369 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the fundamental issue Musk has is that his cars can’t drive safer than even a below average driver. Oh wow, it can stay in a lane and match speed! So can every car manufacturer. They’ve got a level 2+ system and cars won’t be safer until level 4.

> I think the fundamental issue Musk has is that his cars can’t drive safer than even a below average driver. Agreed. > Oh wow, it can stay in a lane and match speed! So can every car manufacturer. They’ve got a level 2+ system and cars won’t be safer until level 4. I don't find this to be true at all. ProPilot is terrible compared to AutoPilot and many of the other manufacturers have the same limitations (or worse).

> ProPilot is terrible compared to AutoPilot

This is frightening. I strictly limit where I will let AutoPilot operate because it is not at all relaxing unless you're on the open road with light traffic. If this is the state of the art, FSD is decades away.