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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

#331

Post by baud147258 »

jimmaswell wrote: post #199

It's so disappointing to see people going on tirades against these things for no good reason other than seemingly to fit in with the trendy new "anti-techbro" luddite mindset. Automatic delivery robots and e-scooters are awesome. The future is awesome and we're living it and these people just want to be downers about it.

e-scooters driven at full speed by (drunk) teenagers aren't that awesome when you have to share the same narrow sidewalks. Don't have anything against them when they're on the roads/bike lanes if available, though

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

#332

Post by rosndo »

watwut wrote: post #249
rosndo wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why right wing? I’m rather left leaning, even by European standards. I’m not some crazy antivaxxer either, plenty of those on both sides. Nevertheless the pandemic responses by various governments I have to interact with have done much to deepen my distrust of them and the society around me. Various governments have deployed drastic measures such as lockdowns in an effort to control the pandemic, but they’ve released…

Because this was heavily partisan issue. It is just absurd to claim it was not.

Bad government decisionmaking should very much be a common issue.

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

#333

Post by atleta »

gzer0 wrote: post #300
KennyBlanken wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No? There are numerous clips where Telsas in "full self driving" mode pull the equivalent maneuver of a teenager going "OH SHIT I WANT TO GO THERE" and veering very violently. The phantom braking problem is likely just one of the many symptoms of Musk's insistence on relying on optical systems instead of more expensive sensors.

Expense was part of the equation initially, however, through economies of scale, we eventually would have been able to reach a feasible price point. Cost has nothing to do with why Tesla is pursuing an optical-only system. To get rid of the dependency on the radar sensor for autopilot, we generated over 10 billion labels across two and a half million clips. To do this we had to scale our offline neural networks and o…

So what's the point then? You said it's not expenses and then you explain how you think it caused you extra trouble/work/development effort. But what's the reason?

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

#334

Post by amelius »

js2 wrote: post #284
bourgoin wrote: post #69

A couple of years ago, I was attacked by a Kiwi bot near a UC campus. This is my story. The bot and I were moving towards each other on a sidewalk, and when I came close it stopped, as they do when sensing an object in front of them. But there was an awkward moment as I tried to go around it and it repeatedly jerked forward an inch as its motor kicked on and off. Maybe I was walking around the very edge of its radius…

I’ve had this happen with actual humans. A human is coming toward me on a path. I zig. They zig. I zag. They zag. We walk into each other. It must be some kind of human path finding bug. :-)

You avoid this by using visual cues. E.g. strongly looking into the direction that you want to go. I suppose that most people learn this at an early age. And these robots should too.

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

#335

Post by Symbiote »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #272
kube-system wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't imagine that would help. Most of these scooter companies already do some sort of education regarding traffic laws... but when was the last time you saw a person on a scooter, stopped at a red light, wearing a helmet? The only way it'll be fixed is if someone actually enforces compliance.

I haven’t, one of these things knocked me out unconscious while I was waiting for green light to cross the road. It came from the side, hit me, I landed in the middle of the street. Happened right in front of the central station in Antwerpen. Just imagine how confused you are waking up laying in the middle of the road while a paramedic smacks you in the face and asks you if you know what your name is. I’m going to sp…

If it helps, you can point Antwerp's politicians to Copenhagen, where rental scooters have been banned from starting or ending journeys in the city centre.

https://www.eltis.org/in-brief/news/e-scooters-allowed-back-...

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

#336

Post by Symbiote »

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’…

If Copenhagen's experience is normal, then ample bicycle (etc) parking won't change the parking behaviour of rental scooter users. They will still dump them on the sidewalk (or in the bike lane) the instant their journey has finished. They'll also ride two or three on one scooter, without any awareness or regard for cyclists in the bike lane or pedestrians crossing the road.

I strongly suspect the companies encouraged their staff to put them in slightly annoying places as advertisements -- if you trip over a scooter, you've noticed the brand!

Copenhagen ended up banning them from the city centre.

https://www.eltis.org/in-brief/news/e-scooters-allowed-back-...

(Copenhagen already has pedestrian and bicycle space, so the scooter companies weren't bringing anything there -- only taking that space away. Many other cities are so bad, the scooter companies are probably still a positive influence even with the terrible riders.)

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

#337

Post by rosndo »

Robotbeat wrote: post #145
kijin wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Designated parking spaces are a good idea, but they should be paid for by companies that make a profit by renting out scooters. Not taxpayers. Public funding might be justified if the majority of scooters were owned by individual citizens with the right to vote on city affairs. Most rideshare companies, on the other hand, will simply siphon off public subsidies as additional profit to be taxed (or not) somewhere else…

Wait, why NOT have a public good paid by taxpayers ? Just have a progressive taxation system. A system where private companies effectively own these little spots would stifle innovation and competition (ie the big players would be the only ones with a chance of succeeding) as well as individual freedom.

Crazy that this gets downvoted. smh HN

Parking spaces dedicated to scooters are vastly better than parking spaces dedicated to privately owner cars. A scooter parking spot will serve vastly more people than a car parking space.

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

#338

Post by atleta »

_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…

I have similar feelings. Though I don't hate the scooters per se. I'm pretty upset with the idiots who leave them right in the middle of the side walks AND the companies that don't do anything about it. They could pretty easily penalize the users for leaving these in the wrong place if they wanted to.

Now I actually don't understand at all why they don't do it. On the surface, you can say that they don't give a shit about non-users, they just care about their customers and they are afraid of scaring them away. However, where I live (Budapest, Hungary) these have already been banned from the centermost district of the city. The district, the area most frequented by tourists. As it was predictable.

Also, the city mayor came up with a regulation so that they'll designate several hundred e-scooter parking lots throughout the inner city and leaving these anywhere but those places will results in the company being fined. Which is a smart and friendly move, because there will be indeed lots of lots :) . But it's still a lot worse than if the e-scooter companies have solved it for themselves because then you'd still be able to leave them almost anywhere.

Actually I see two king of annoying parking habits. The first one is the completely reckless, when they literally leave it in the middle of the walking path of everyone. I sometimes even think that it's deliberate. Like wanting to show off or something. "I'll just leave it here in the middle, so that everyone can see it." Quite often right in the front of zebra crossings.

The other one is more like sheer stupidity. When they do park it besides a wall, but they do it as if it was a car. So 45 degrees, with front wheel to the wall. But that doesn't make much sense, because you want it to be out of the way (which almost always means parallel to the wall, preferably leaning towards the wall and not leaning away from the wall).

This is all pretty sad because e-scooters, while I think they are dangerous to ride, are pretty cool and efficient vehicles. And being able to pick up one on the street, though more expensive than owning one, very convenient for the occasional user. (I mostly ride a bike though, and pre-covid I used to use a kick scooter + public transport.)

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

#339

Post by kingcharles »

mtVessel wrote: post #275
politelemon wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The helpfulness will, I hope, be remembered, and work in our favour when these robots have a greater stranglehold over general economic activities and we become further dependent and subservient to them. Sadly I've not heard of any kind of central database of robot assisting samaritans.

That's right. The theory of Roko's basilisk[1] does not specify which one will evolve into our next (glorious!) overlord, so best to be nice to all of them. [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/rokos-basilisk

I FOR ONE WELCOME OUR NEW RO... shit, is that the time?
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