511–520 of 556 posts
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People don’t always know what they want. Before Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone how many people knew they wanted a smart phone?
Anybody who had a palm pilot with a cellular radio strapped to the back :).
I don't understand why there is so much focus on automobiles instead of just about everything else. In every other instance - airplanes, boats, long-haul trucking - the problem in significantly less complex to solve. The only tangible reason I see for such disproportionate focus is some sense of false futurism; aka, driver-less cars have become the 'flying cars' of our times.
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.
The reason is a combination of two factors:
(1) Transit will probably always need buses. Rail and subway are great at certain specific things (very dense areas), but they are expensive to build and have trouble achieving good coverage of an entire city.
(2) Buses tend to be big and hold ~50 passengers. Why? Mostly, I believe, because bus drivers have to be paid a salary. You're pushed into choosing large vehicles to try to amortize that cost across more passengers.
What if you could take away that constraint by eliminating the bus driver? Some of those 50-passenger buses could each be replaced with (say) three 16-passenger buses. You'd have a choice. You'd no longer be forced to try to consolidate by reducing the number of routes or the frequency on the routes. Both of these things (long walk to a stop, long wait for a bus) are major reasons why many people don't like riding the bus.
And if you can make transit more convenient for people, you can get more of a critical mass of people using it.
Self-driving got taken over by the "fake it til you make it" crowd. Uber, Cruise (go find Cruise's original demo video and marketing claims), Tesla, etc. Only Google/Waymo approached it as a hard problem, and only Waymo has something that's deployed, even in a limited way, without a "safety driver". Somebody will probably make it work, but it may come from some boring old company like Ford or Continental or Fujitsu.…
Einride got driverless trucks running on a public road: https://insideevs.com/news/350293/autonomous-einride-t-pod-p...
https://lasvegassun.com/news/2018/apr/05/how-does-downtowns-...
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I would say no harm, but rather confusing to people that do not know big O, and useless to those who do.
Can you explain how it's wrong? Obviously, normally you want things to scale more slowly rather than faster, but other than applying to a different thing than usual, it seems accurate to me -- human drivers improve at a constant rate regardless of how many there are, and self-driving cars improve linearly with their number.
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> all while it sits idle 90% of the time. Thought experiment: Most of your clothes sit idle 90% of the time.
Most of your clothes sit idle 90% of the time. I have a cup full of pennies in my closet that sit idle all the time too and I don't care... cause they're pennies. Similarly, the average car cost over $35,000 in 2018. That's a sizable expense for most people. Clothes in comparison, not so much.
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If you have to rent a car to go hiking, you aren't going to hike very often.
Depends how painful you make it to rent a car. If you're talking about a traditional auto rental where there is a half hour of filling out paperwork and doing checks with obtuse and baffling fees and gas options and everything then yes, that's an impediment. A future where you have an Uber-like app where you summon an autonomous car that takes you to your destination for a nominal fee then who needs to own a car?
People which have items in their car that cannot be taken into the places they have to go, such as workplaces. Many people might not have that problem, but it is a problem.
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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.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/05/25/early-d...
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My practical experience with system failures is that they tend to not be evenly spread out in any kind of predictable pattern. Instead they tend to be acute and concentrated at a few points.
I agree that my assumption that failures will be evenly spread out is too optimistic. But on the other hand, if failures are concentrated on a few points, they should be that much easier to detect and correct.
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Just like 346 people flying Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines became unwilling parts of a "technical solution". No thanks.
Unless you think we should stop having computers in planes, what are you proposing as a solution to that? More to the point, what does it have to do with systemic risk or reducing it by staggering updates?
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> 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…
> I believe the number one cause of death for Americans under the age of 30 is traffic accidents. And it's possible that the number one cause of shortened lifespan for older Americans is also cars, by virtue of encouraging (perhaps enforcing, if they've sufficiently influenced your town's urban planning) a sedentary lifestyle, and all the health risks associated with one. I also wouldn't be surprised if they contribu…
One common reason people give for not biking is that they're afraid someone driving a car will kill them. Self-driving cars should reduce that risk.
Of course, they also should make commuting by car cheaper and more relaxing/less of a waste of time, so you're likely correct, but there is that competing force that may increase cycling rates.