The self-driving car is a red herring • Hacker News Board

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#211

Post by apeescape » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

d_burfoot wrote: post #179

sirsar wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LA has an order of magnitude more population than is required for functioning public transit. But you're right they don't have the density. The key is to realize the cars themselves killed density . Parking lots, parking spaces, and extra lanes all conspire to push humans and human spaces further apart. This then makes walking less feasible, cars more required, and more space required to accommodate those cars in a f…

> The key is to realize the cars themselves killed density. People have very naive explanations of why the US is so bad at density and urbanism. Canada and Australia, which are very similar to the US, have very dense cities like Montreal, Toronto, and Melbourne. Do they not have cars in Canada and Australia? If you want to find the real reason why all other developed countries have dense cities with good public trans…

My (simplified) understanding is that it's more about the ideals. Back in the day, part of the American dream was to live in a semi-secluded suburban neighborhood and own 2+ cars per family. Only the poor and young people were expected to live in city centers. Therefore, the affluent citizens spread out, and cities evolved to cater to their needs, i.e., support private cars and the road system at the cost of not properly funding public transportation. In European cities the ideal was the opposite, and it was thought that only peasants would stay secluded and all the affluent people should live in the cities, which in turn should have great public transportation for practical reasons. I'd imagine that ideal extended to Canadian and Australian cities as well.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#212

Post by shadowgovt » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

goodcanadian wrote: post #144

shadowgovt wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have, but general adoption of Linux-lineage OS's is focused in the mobile tech space. Desktop adoption is still exceedingly low. Statscounter shows Linux installs about on par with ChromeOS installs [ https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide ]. Both are beaten out by the "Unknown" category; there are literally more people running we-can't-tell-what OS than a Linux-derivative OS. I think these…

. . . are still behind the curve on the "Can I buy Photoshop off the shelf at Best Buy and run it on my computer" curve. Or I can use GIMP for free. You are correct that Linux on the desktop is not mainstream and that is largely down to network effects, but I don't understand the next logical step in the argument. How does that make Linux on the desktop "not ready" or "incomplete?" In my opinion (and I recognise that…

> Or I can use GIMP for free.

But again, that's the problem to solve. You can use GIMP for free; most people can't. It's a space-alien UI relative to the Photoshop they know. And while I love GIMP and think it's a fine drop-in replacement for 90% of use-cases, it's still not good enough to fly (not fast enough, not robust enough, not the same size of plugin ecosystem) for the 10% that are using Photoshop in high-volume professional work settings. Businesses love cheap, and if GIMP could be substituted, they'd have already forced substitution on their art-houses.

You can even probably get Photoshop running on your box with the right cocktail of emulators and libraries. Most people can't.

The problem of picking up software from any brick-and-mortar store, taking it home, and running it on my Linux machine has no good solutions. Alternatives that you and I know work just aren't palatable for the average user. The average user still can't.

I'm not sure this is, practically, a solvable problem; I'm just identifying that it is the problem for adoption of Linux on desktop outside of the wonks like us that are willing to learn a lot of computer stuff off the beaten path.

Modern desktop Linux is great, but it's a whole commerce-adoption model away from being part of the beaten path.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#213

Post by twic » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

aantix wrote: post #189

Kaze404 wrote: post #81

I have a feeling I'll be down voted to hell for this, but self driving cars always felt like going the complete wrong direction for me. Aside from small personal satisfaction to the few that will be able to afford them, how is revolving our infrastructure and culture around them any better than simply investing in public transportation by making it a more feasible option for people? I'm not in the US, and while the p…

The city that I live in is very spread out. The idea of hopping from a subway to a bus to another bus just to get to a doctor's appointment sounds awful. And if I had to take 4 young kids along with me for the trip, double awful. For the denser cities - my wife and I lived in SF for close to five years. As our family grew, and the city space grew more populous, parking spots were really rare. Getting to a pediatric a…

Your city is very spread out because everyone has a car. This is why this is such a difficult problem - transport networks, whether road or rail - are a fundamental part of the anatomy of a city. You can't simply take a city which grew up around driving and replace that with taking the train, any more that you can transplant a crab's exoskeleton into a rabbit.

Nonetheless, our cities must eventually become crabs. So we need to have a plan for how we're going to make that transformation gradually, as the cities grow and evolve.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#214

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #201

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A small number of people like Robert Moses wielded enormous power over how our civil infrastructure was built in the post war period. Moses was famously opposed to public transit, going so far as to deliberately build bridges with overhead clearance too low for buses on routes to one of his beach developments. During this period the federal dept of transportation was offering to pay 90% of urban freeway projects. The…

People wanted to live in the suburbs. It was definitely promoted by government and business leaders, but it was also desired organically by people. It may not seem obvious now, but prior to the suburbs, a lot of people lived in ragged tenement buildings that were in bad shape. The suburbs were a boon to the economy, to standard of living, to incomes, etc. I found a great video from a filmmaker on this subject: How Th…

> It may not seem obvious now, but prior to the suburbs, a lot of people lived in ragged tenement buildings that were in bad shape.

A lot of people still do. The people that could afford to move to the suburbs were also people that could afford to move out of tenements in the city, too, generally.

OTOH, it allowed them to be farther from (and outside shared facilities like schools, etc., with) the tenements and the people stuck living in them. (Which, due to economics and outright, overt discrimination in both lending and things like restrictive real estate covenant, especially meant non-Whites.)

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#215

Post by kanox » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

kindatrue wrote: post #89

Kaze404 wrote: post #81

I have a feeling I'll be down voted to hell for this, but self driving cars always felt like going the complete wrong direction for me. Aside from small personal satisfaction to the few that will be able to afford them, how is revolving our infrastructure and culture around them any better than simply investing in public transportation by making it a more feasible option for people? I'm not in the US, and while the p…

There's also what's known as the "geometry" problem - 1 self driving car takes up as much space as 1 human driven car. Part of the problem is the general incompetency and mismanagement of US public transit construction -- the costs are insane, even when compared to "socialist" "high-cost" union-heavy Europe. This was a great read on why we get so little for our money: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-y…

> There's also what's known as the "geometry" problem - 1 self driving car takes up as much space as 1 human driven car.

Human-driver cars consume parking spaces at the destination, self-driving cars don't have this limitation. They park themselves away from high-traffic areas or they could ferry other people around.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#216

Post by bwanab » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

Kaze404 wrote: post #81

I have a feeling I'll be down voted to hell for this, but self driving cars always felt like going the complete wrong direction for me. Aside from small personal satisfaction to the few that will be able to afford them, how is revolving our infrastructure and culture around them any better than simply investing in public transportation by making it a more feasible option for people? I'm not in the US, and while the p…

I take the subway everywhere in my city in the US. I don’t expect it to be perfect and I’m not disappointed.

I’m also very happy to let my car drive for long boring stretches on long trips. I find I arrive at my destination much more relaxed. And yes, I keep my hands on the wheel and eyes watching around me. The car does the stupid stuff like keeping the car in the middle of the land and watching for other cars all around.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#217

Post by shadowgovt » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

Fricken wrote: post #155

shadowgovt wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One SDC takes up slightly less space when we factor in the necessary buffer around human-driven vehicles to account for human reaction times and safety perception. A fleet of SDCs snaking down a road can "tuck in" tighter to each other because computer reaction times are better (especially if they're networked and sharing decisionmaking signals). Of course, it's still not as space-efficient as a bus. But the bus infr…

If autonomous vehicles werebto ever become cheap and reliable, I fear induced demand could have a much larger effect on traffic volumes than the role it plays in traffic now when vehicles rely on human occupants. As people find more creative use cases for autonomous vehicles, the roads would fill up with ghost cars performing any number of progressively more trivial tasks until traffic returns to equilibrium.

Quite possible.

The constraining factor on SDC commonality in the short-to-medium term will be maintenance. These cars require dedicated service (which is why they'll likely start as replacements for taxis, not privately-owned; people will have to be hot-rodders to want to do all the work necessary to keep the sensors clean and tuned).

There may be a threshold in the future where the sensors are hyper-rugged or self-maintaining, but it's a little ways off. The maintenance burden will keep the ghost cars down in the short- to medium-term.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#218

Post by bluedino » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

Grimm1 wrote: post #153

I know people love public transport because of the supposed larger benefit to society but having ridden NYC public transport for over 7 years now I absolutely loath it. The experience is horrible almost every day. Between being crammed in the cars, the mentally unstable accosting you, the lack of cleanliness and the occasional assault I'm simply not willing to deal with that continuously. I put up with it because it…

>> Between being crammed in the cars, the mentally unstable accosting you, the lack of cleanliness and the occasional assault

Three of the four of those are things you don't hear people complaining about with the transit system in Japan because of the culture differences in the USA.

How can that be fixed, here?

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#219

Post by an_opabinia » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #196

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fundamental prerequisite for functional mass transit is a high population density. That's why it works in NYC and doesn't work in Los Angeles. But that means it's not just a matter of building mass transit. First you have to build taller buildings. And even then there are going to be places where it's just not happening. It doesn't matter how you change the zoning, nobody is going to build skyscrapers in Pine Blu…

Running a bus isn't that expensive. Running one every 15 minutes around a small town in a loop isn't that expensive. I don't think there's anything fundamental about density. Its about ridership and funding. Even LA could have functional mass transit if it had the will to fund 15-minute busses on a grid all day. A 25 cent tax on gas would do it. If even 2 people average rode each bus, it'd break even on traffic densi…

Listen you’re totally right.

But even if car people lived somewhere with the best public transport in the world, they would drive.

It’s not about technology or even reality. This conversation is a lot like trying to tell private health insurance users about single payer systems. Or private school users about federalized education. Or telling people with 4 children or 0 children how to live in a world where a thing like the sedan is designed for people with 2 children.

It is telling rich people you know better and also they are wrong, which is not an emotion you’re permitted to send.

Re: The self-driving car is a red herring

#220

Post by shadowgovt » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

clairity wrote: post #190

shadowgovt wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of self-driving is likely to replace taxi service, not make its way to private ownership. The advantages of individual vehicles for motion around a city are diminished wait times and arbitrary point-to-point linkage. One is not constrained to traveling only on the public transit arteries plus foot-travel distance. (The tradeoff of fossil fuel consumption is huge and should not be ignored, however).

electric kick scooters (and bikes) make foot-travel distance less relevant in many places, extending the serviceable radius around a station from 1/3 mile to 2-3 miles. we just need to turn street parking into dedicated bike/scooter lanes to make it safe enough for more people to choose this option.

Possibly. Americans seem real reluctant to hop on a bike, and I don't think it's just for safety reasons. Big chunks of the US are too cold to want to be outside that much, a lot of the year.

But more dedicated bike infrastructure would be a huge help in general.