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Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

thelastdriverlicenseholder.com

231–240 of 514 posts

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but to get away from that you need gradual steps Given that you bring up the space program in the same post I'll stick with the metaphor and point out that you can't go to the moon by climbing up trees, or as Russ Ackoff said, doing the wrong thing right is worse than doing the right thing wrong, because making the wrong thing more efficient just makes things worse. If you want fully automated, efficient transport t…

>If you want fully automated, efficient transport this technology already exists, it's train and subway systems You still need cars for going from point A to the train station and from the other train station to point B.

I use my skateboard for that. Fits between my legs on the train and under the desk at work.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#232
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we only have bags full of groceries because zoning prohibits grocery stores being near where people live in most place. So you need a car and since its a pain, you migt as well stock up on as much as you can while you're at it. If it were, you'd probably just go on a 10 minute walk and pickup enough for two days of food.

That's fine for young childless people. For families with multiple children it's a huge hassle to have to have to shop like that. Growing kids eat a lot. And when you buy heavy items like watermelon or milk or whole frozen chickens it's just not easy to carry. Much easier to drive a big car to a big box store and stock up on everything needed for a week.

I know plenty of fairly affluent families with multiple children in European cities who never bothered buying a car. By the time the children were eating a lot, they were carrying part of the groceries. Starting around 10 or so, the parents would just give them some money and have them do some of the smaller daily groceries (bread, milk, fruit) on their own, walking or cycling.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Public transportation could take the form of government-owned fleets of self-driving electric cars It absolutely could not, here simply is not enough space for all those cars. A heavy rail metro line can carry up to 60 thousand passengers per hour per direction, which is the equivalent of a 30 lane highway.

Who says the self driving vehicles won’t be articulated buses?

Every company currently trying to sell a self driving car

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It couldn't possibly be GPS, right? Networks are unreliable, the cars must be able to reach a safe state if the network drops out. They appear to have stopped in the road. If these cars can't safely navigate their way to the side of the road using local sensors, they are wildly, hilariously unsuited for autonomous operation. > at least a dozen autonomous Chevrolet Bolts from GM Cruise Automation were spotted blocking…

> If these cars can't safely navigate their way to the side of the road using local sensors, they are wildly, hilariously unsuited for autonomous operation. You are a lot more confident than me that this isn't the case.

Or I could be pessimistic about GPS -- these things are, albeit in limited numbers, on the road and actually being used by customers, right? I guess I'm surprised GPS is so reliable that this isn't a widespread, constant issue, if this is the normal "I lost GPS" behavior.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#235
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes the market is not worth existing if it harms the planet. And most cities were actually designed for streetcar lines in the U.S., that includes all the big ones in California too. We just need to reengage that, and do simple things like give the existing bus networks signal preemption and their own lanes. Plus considering most car trips are under 5 miles and california has good weather, it makes no sense why…

Streetcars would be an amazing God send to LA. Would love to have them back.

Honestly the bus network in LA is great as far as US cities are concerned. Great coverage, but hampered by sharing the grade with cars and waiting at red lights. All it would take is a can of paint for a bus lane and the same signal preemption enjoyed by police cars looking to run a red. No new technology is required or great investment beyond that.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#236
post #34
post #10

all of this time and money wasted on driverless cars has been a complete failure. companies and cities should be investing their time into improving public transportation and designing our cities to be more walkable and make alternate modes of transportation more feasible. the US culture of using a car for everyday transportation is fucking insane, wasteful, and contributes to the rising cost of living across the US…

> $80 Billion Has Been Spent on Self-Driving Cars With Nothing to Show for It. [0] That's a lot of money sure, but what could that get you if it was spent on infrastructure? That couldn't even pay for a 500 mile high speed rail from LA to San Fransisco which is now going to cost at least $110 billion [1]. [0] https://www.treehugger.com/praise-dumb-transportation-self-d... [1] https://www.constructiondive.com/news/cal…

On the other hand you are comparing the costs of tangible fully built out infrastructure to what at this point has been marginally scaled up robotics class exercises

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Public transportation could take the form of government-owned fleets of self-driving electric cars It absolutely could not, here simply is not enough space for all those cars. A heavy rail metro line can carry up to 60 thousand passengers per hour per direction, which is the equivalent of a 30 lane highway.

> A heavy rail metro line can carry up to 60 thousand passengers per hour per direction, which is the equivalent of a 30 lane highway. Where did this stat come from? Caltrain fits about 650 and couldn’t possibly run once per 45 seconds to achieve that.

I got it from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passengers_per_hour_per_direct...

Heavy rail metro refers to a system like the NYC subway, whereas Caltrain would be classified as suburban rail.

A typical NYC subway train has 10 cars with room for 100 passengers each, so to achieve 60k p/h/d would require 60 second headways. This is shorter than the 90 second headways achieved in practice, though theoretically possible with automatic train control and platform screen doors. For a more realistic example, the cars have a crush loading of around 150 passengers, which means 60k p/h/d is possible with 90 second headways.

Suburban rail actually has a higher theoretical capacity than heavy rail metro, but this is achieved with very large trains rather than high frequency. Caltrain's new Stadler KISS EMUs will have a capacity of around 200 passengers and will operate in 7 car trains and 10 minute headways, so they will only achieve 8.4k p/h/d initially. However if we assume 300 passenger crush loading and 10 car trains, it could theoretically achieve 60k p/h/d with more reasonable 180 second headways.

Now running trains at crush load routinely doesn't make for a great passenger experience, but keep in mind that we are assuming a dual track railroad here. If you are willing to spare the extra 2 highway lanes' worth of right of way, you can lay quad track and run twice as many trains. Many NYC subway lines were built quad tracked so that express trains could pass locals, and Caltrain's ROW is more than wide enough to accommodate retrofitting another pair of tracks.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could have the same fear with all these satellites being shot up into space. Couldn't they all start raining down on earth with some poor calculations or coding mistakes in the course-correction software? I don't know enough about this stuff to know if this is a realistic thing or just the premise of a bad sci-fi movie.

1 - they burn in atmosphere 2 - each satellite is under observation by a team 3 - how many satellites do you think are there actually? Not that many, unlike the driverless cars we are setting up nowadays 4 - Earth is actually big. Satellite pouring down all at once and you'll have maximum like 100 casualties - worse case scenario if 1). doesn't happen. Cars OTOH are in busy cities. One battery to explode and can easi…

> One battery to explode and can easily do 100 casualties

That’s definitely not true. A 66KWh battery is not a tactical nuke

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#239
post #13
post #8

People may get annoyed at cruise for this, but imo it’s still not as bad as the constant blocking of bike lanes and stopping in the middle of the road by human ride share drivers.

I am more annoyed at this country's car centric transportation culture than the ride share drivers blocking the bike lane. taxis do this all the time before "ride sharing" was a thing.

[deleted]

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#240
post #174

It's amazing how driverless taxies are a reality now . It shows how there is progress being made as much as there is talk about stagnation.

I rode in one recently. It was pretty smooth. An interesting thing: the car slowed to a stop in the middle of the street, and I couldn't immediately tell why. There was a row of parked cars on the roadside, and a person was walking around one of them to open her trunk. I guess the car was able to spot her in the dark and opted to pause. So we were stopped there. The woman threw her hands up as if to say, "whatcha loo…

Now let's imagine the same scene but with the car stopping right next to thugs breaking into another car :-D
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