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Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

thelastdriverlicenseholder.com

431–440 of 514 posts

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope we continue to wise up If a core goal is really to make thoroughfares safer and reduce traveler injuries/fatalities, we seem to be ignoring or discounting some pretty obvious options, like minimizing car traffic This vision where we all get around in low-passenger-count autonomous robot cages on existing roadways is just one possible future but we seem to fixate on it. At the end of the day the car is a tool b…

Completely agree, there are lots of things that can be done to reduce car related fatalities, like reducing car usage, lowering the maximum speed, designing better roads (that encourage lower speeds), improve road signage, more stoplights, better pedestrian crossing and protection, reducing distances between useful places. In parts of the city I live in it has become very uncomfortable to drive a car, there are just…

"there is really no evidence". It's not a statistical question, we can deduce it. For example, autonomous cars don't drink and drive.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#432
post #16

> Le dernier titulaire d’un permis de conduire est déjà né X Doubt

plot twist : in 20 years the only car anybody drives is the Citroen Ami which doesn't require a driving license in France since it's technically a "quadricycle" and not a "car".

[deleted]

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None or few of those options are particularly accessible (EDIT: for people who cannot walk/cycle long distances). Public transportation often is quite inaccessible while still claiming to be accessible (like the London Underground and the New York Subway). Central management of driverless cars could solve the problem in a more inclusive fashion and isn't just more of the same idea. We should still reduce the size of…

>> None or few of those options are particularly accessible. At the moment, neither are self-driving cars sufficiently capable to replace human drivers. We're chasing a future tech dream when we already have technology that can solve the problems we are facing right now. Edit: What do you mean by "accessible"? The London underground and generally public transport in the UK works very well. Speaking after having lived…

I can tell you've never tried to use the Underground with a wheelchair, tho if you're questioning what accessible means in that context—because it's really bad. cars are very accessible for those with mobility disabilities & for many others.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This standstill is bad, but it seems perfectly safe.

I suppose I could've clarified, I'm not necessarily looking at it from the perspective of the safety of people in the vehicles. Right now it's just a small fleet of driverless taxis. Doesn't this demonstrate the potential for it to be, say, every single Honda in the city? Why even limit it to a city? A single manufacturer's critical infrastructure has some kind of fault (malice, shit code, hardware failure - dealer's…

OK, those are actually interesting thoughts on new dangers introduced by self driving cars.

I hadn't really thought about new single points of failure vulnerabilities as an aspect of this before.

I'm still a big SDC fan, the pros are so massively bigger than the cons, but you've given me a new con to be aware of.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#435

I am just wondering how many people have to die before it finally dawns on on us that the current approach is idiotic. The supposed smart cars can't even talk to each-other directly 'without internet' to warn of a car pileup! They can't report to city traffic control about their condition. We should be innovating in infrastructure instead - create standardised computer readable infrared road markings, equip each traf…

Sounds like a lot of infra and related spend via taxes or muni debt for a tech outcome that’s a privacy and autonomy nightmare.

Build some trains, build some bike lanes, and leave the people alone who don’t want their transportation and the downstream reasons people use it taken over by tech.

Governance by a central cybernetic super computer and all the cybernetic hypothesis coming true. Good lord.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#436

I am just wondering how many people have to die before it finally dawns on on us that the current approach is idiotic. The supposed smart cars can't even talk to each-other directly 'without internet' to warn of a car pileup! They can't report to city traffic control about their condition. We should be innovating in infrastructure instead - create standardised computer readable infrared road markings, equip each traf…

This seems to be the dominant opinion is here, that is, to approach this problem as we approached civil aviation and flying commercial planes.

To respond in a sentence: first, you have no proof that "investing in infrastructure" would actually yield working autonomous cars. Second, there are no proof either that the current approaches are doomed to fail.

To respond in details: everything that you propose doesn't seem to be able to solve the main challenges that self-driving cars are facing. These challenges are all about edge-cases, and responding safely to changing conditions and misbehaviors from other agents. The response cannot be "let's add a ton of fragile electronics in all of the infrastructure" because this: will cost a ton of money to build and maintain, will break in weird ways over time and lead to cascading failures, and most importantly: it's dubious that it would even work at all.

The final comment about VCs is weird: a lot of actors in this field are not VC backed startups.

My opinion is: Tesla might have a working model that outperform human drivers in 10 years (50% confidence)

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rails are too restrictive for real life? I'm not sure what you are trying to say here... Rails are widely used for real life around the globe. In many, many places rails significantly out perform cars to the point that people choose not to own cars.

Yes point A to B on extremely selective routes or if you only want to go to/between towns/cities your whole life.

Lol, look at a map of Tokyo and Japan's rail network. Or Switzerland, or the Netherlands, or Hong Kong, or honestly nearly anywhere that actually builds rails.

You can do just fine on rails.

Sure, if you want to get into the rural mountains you might need to rent a car. But like, for most people rail will do you just fine.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#438

If you thought drivers on the road are bad now, this is is a sneak peek of the dystopian future where other drivers on the road drive like they are a support ticket for Facebook or Google. If your situation isn’t covered by the preprogrammed logic, you’re out of luck with nobody to talk to. Self driving vehicles belong on rails.

Rails are too restrictive for real life. I trust a self driving fleet to respond immediately to an emergency by stopping. Maybe causing a disruption but very little loss of life or property.

Makes you wonder how Europe, NYC, Boston, and (a lot of others) manage with their real life concerns and public transportation system.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#439
post #341
post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Harsh reply for a perfectly valid argument. I'm all for pushing public transport, but in most places of the world it is still more convenient to drive a car for 20 minutes than to walk 5 minutes, jump in a bus for 5 minutes, wait for 10 minutes at a station, jump in a train for 15 minutes, walk 5 minutes, even if you have to drive yourself. And remember we were talking about self-driving cars here.

Also, when you change trams/buses along the way, any delay by a vehicle in the middle of the chain gets compounded instead of just being added to the time of your arrival, since it makes you miss subsequent vehicles. With a car, if you leave 5 minutes later than you should, you should arrive 5 minutes late, not 30. And public transport is so unreliable, the delays are pretty much guaranteed for every trip, so you need to add huge time buffers to all of them if you want to be on time.

Re: Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco

#440

I am just wondering how many people have to die before it finally dawns on on us that the current approach is idiotic. The supposed smart cars can't even talk to each-other directly 'without internet' to warn of a car pileup! They can't report to city traffic control about their condition. We should be innovating in infrastructure instead - create standardised computer readable infrared road markings, equip each traf…

Sounds like a lot of infra and related spend via taxes or muni debt for a tech outcome that’s a privacy and autonomy nightmare. Build some trains, build some bike lanes, and leave the people alone who don’t want their transportation and the downstream reasons people use it taken over by tech. Governance by a central cybernetic super computer and all the cybernetic hypothesis coming true. Good lord.

>Sounds like a lot of infra and related spend via taxes or muni debt for a tech outcome that’s a privacy and autonomy nightmare.

That unfortunately puts it right in line with every other tech-heavy thing taxpayers have have to pony up for this century.

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