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Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

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Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#121

Post by curiousllama »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #89
elteto wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Your delivery is delayed, our robot was electrocuted by another robot from a competing delivery company. You are important to us and we are working hard to get your delivery to you ASAP.”

Food delivery battle royale; you order a pizza, five competing companies send out their delivery robots. Only the winner gets paid.

"um, excuse me, what is this $300 charge for a 'high-explosive flamethrower attachment'"?

"Oh, I'm sorry, that should be included with your premium delivery-battle subscription. We'll remove that charge right away"

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#122

Post by cmmeur01 »

thepasswordis wrote: post #55
_fullpint wrote: post #13

Absolutely hate these scooters from an ADA prospective. My neighborhood is a mostly quiet one near the center of a large city, where there are a lot of mothers who push their kids in strollers, older folks with canes, and some people even in wheelchairs. On the weekends -- sometimes the weekdays as well depending on the time of the year -- the city gets flooded with both tourists, and suburbanites who want to go to a…

> Usually when I see this, I just knock the things over and push them out of the way. So you make the problem worse ? Why don’t you take 2 minutes and push them to the side of the sidewalk if you care so much about ADA access? You can fix the problem you are encountering, and the people you want to protect CANT. You are choosing to make the problem worse for them? Why? I live in a major downtown full of these scooter…

It also said “and out of the way”.

How is getting them out of the way, on their side or not, worsening the situation?

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#123

Post by burlesona »

_fullpint wrote: post #13

Absolutely hate these scooters from an ADA prospective. My neighborhood is a mostly quiet one near the center of a large city, where there are a lot of mothers who push their kids in strollers, older folks with canes, and some people even in wheelchairs. On the weekends -- sometimes the weekdays as well depending on the time of the year -- the city gets flooded with both tourists, and suburbanites who want to go to a…

You should stop seeing scooters as the enemy. Scooter companies represent a lot of money that wants more space for pedestrians, bikes, and of course scooters in the city. They are a potential massive ally with deep pockets to push back against the car lobby. The battle here is not to fight over who has the right to be on the 10% of the street we call the sidewalk, it’s to take back some of the 90% of the street that’s reserved for cars so that everyone else has room.

Sure we can and should do better with providing bike and scooter parking… as an example one easy solution is to convert 1-2 on-street car parking spaces per block to bike and scooter parking. There’s enormous value in having big corporate allies in such a fight.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#124

Post by gwbas1c »

thepasswordis wrote: post #55
_fullpint wrote: post #13

Absolutely hate these scooters from an ADA prospective. My neighborhood is a mostly quiet one near the center of a large city, where there are a lot of mothers who push their kids in strollers, older folks with canes, and some people even in wheelchairs. On the weekends -- sometimes the weekdays as well depending on the time of the year -- the city gets flooded with both tourists, and suburbanites who want to go to a…

> Usually when I see this, I just knock the things over and push them out of the way. So you make the problem worse ? Why don’t you take 2 minutes and push them to the side of the sidewalk if you care so much about ADA access? You can fix the problem you are encountering, and the people you want to protect CANT. You are choosing to make the problem worse for them? Why? I live in a major downtown full of these scooter…

> Why don’t you take 2 minutes

Wow, if a 3-4 minute walk involves 10 scooters that's now almost a 25-minute walk.

It's not the OP's job to clean up after everyone else.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#125

Post by watwut »

benglish11 wrote: post #104
watwut wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your claim is that it is all right wing people becoming anti-social in unrelated areas?

You think only right wing people didn’t like being forcibly locked down?

I think that this was heavily partisan issue. So, yes, the "unfairly imprisoned in their homes by the rest of society" would have severe right wing bias. Just like anti masking and anti vaccine attitudes are currently heavily biased by partisan politics.

OP could have stated it in more neutral terms, but chosen not to.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#126

Post by dtech »

nikanj wrote: post #112
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The county should act; assign parking spaces for these things, fine the companies if they find any outside of the designated spaces. The companies can sort it out with their customers. We are seeing the same thing with electric scooters and bikes (and they get torched sometimes), they get parked anywhere and the county's on board with it because it's "green". This was NOT as much of a problem with rental bikes in e.g…

We gave about 95% of the street for cars+parking cars, and are now frustrated that the sidewalks aren’t wide enough for mixed use. There would be no issues with fitting the bikes and the scooters, if the middle of the street was also freely available

The Netherlands has the best worldwide biking infrastructure and decent walking infrastructure, and these things are a blight here too.

They're just parked and discarded wherever because the users don't care and there aren't logical places for them, contrary to people's own property.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#127

Post by chidog12 »

I worked for this specific company, a couple years ago, as a robot handler and operator.

In situations like this it is possible for an operator to manually organize the robots.

Before I left we were making great strides to allow 1 operator to be able to keep tabs on up to 5 robots at a time in certain neighborhoods.

Campuses, which are fully and thoroughly mapped, can probably have 1, maybe 2 operators at a time. Just watching and interjecting when issue arises.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#128

Post by nkrisc »

duxup wrote: post #46
nkrisc wrote: post #26

I understand this person is making a judgement on the state of mind of others, so it may not at all be accurate with regards to the people actually clearing the scooters, but I found this interesting nonetheless, that the author assumes this: > I just observed a couple of students clearing a path out of pity for the robots. I understand why people might feel pity for robots. People become attached to all sorts of ina…

I think the we're all sympathetic to the idea that one person's carelessness creates an impossible problem for someone else. >Don't donate free labor to corporations. That's absurd, someone takes two seconds to move an object so someone else can get their food on time. That's just being a good human rather that sweating about "free labor to corporations" first.

In the moment, perhaps it is the right thing to do after all. I won't argue that. But if corporations are allowed to externalize the costs of their service failures onto the goodwill of the public, that's a dark path to go down.

But your point about it taking two seconds to help someone get their food is correct, but it's also why they'll be able to get away with it.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#129

Post by trainsarebetter »

burlesona wrote: post #123
_fullpint wrote: post #13

Absolutely hate these scooters from an ADA prospective. My neighborhood is a mostly quiet one near the center of a large city, where there are a lot of mothers who push their kids in strollers, older folks with canes, and some people even in wheelchairs. On the weekends -- sometimes the weekdays as well depending on the time of the year -- the city gets flooded with both tourists, and suburbanites who want to go to a…

You should stop seeing scooters as the enemy. Scooter companies represent a lot of money that wants more space for pedestrians, bikes, and of course scooters in the city. They are a potential massive ally with deep pockets to push back against the car lobby. The battle here is not to fight over who has the right to be on the 10% of the street we call the sidewalk, it’s to take back some of the 90% of the street that’…

This. end the stroads!

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#130

Post by AJ007 »

_fullpint wrote: post #13

Absolutely hate these scooters from an ADA prospective. My neighborhood is a mostly quiet one near the center of a large city, where there are a lot of mothers who push their kids in strollers, older folks with canes, and some people even in wheelchairs. On the weekends -- sometimes the weekdays as well depending on the time of the year -- the city gets flooded with both tourists, and suburbanites who want to go to a…

The other big problem is the trucks that drive around constantly loading/unloading the scooters. Often they park on the sidewalk, fully blocking anyone from getting through. One time I saw a driver back in to a woman was as trying to cross the street with a baby carriage.

Unfortunate side effect of the past capital incineration years. If it doesn’t make sense to have unlocked bike-share, it definitely doesn’t make sense to do it with electric scooters.

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