Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cruise’s Robot Car Outages Are Jamming Up San Francisco

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 88 posts

Re: Cruise’s Robot Car Outages Are Jamming Up San Francisco

#21

Post by CamperBob2 »

salmonfamine wrote: post #8

Self-driving cars are a solution for a problem that has already been solved. Build trains. But of course, this doesn't benefit automakers, requires a move towards high-density housing that NIMBY's and certain classes of investors oppose, so instead we'll create an entirely new class of problems by allowing these companies to unleash their insufficient technology on public roads.

Ah, yes, fixed rail. Great for locking assumptions about population and labor distribution over the next 50-100 years into multi-billion dollar financial commitments that have to be made today. And unmatched when it comes to moving people from one place where they don't want to be to another place where they don't want to be.

Re: Cruise’s Robot Car Outages Are Jamming Up San Francisco

#23

Post by tmcw »

DoneWithAllThat wrote: post #9
salmonfamine wrote: post #8

Self-driving cars are a solution for a problem that has already been solved. Build trains. But of course, this doesn't benefit automakers, requires a move towards high-density housing that NIMBY's and certain classes of investors oppose, so instead we'll create an entirely new class of problems by allowing these companies to unleash their insufficient technology on public roads.

Explain how trains solve the last mile problem? The thing that roads already solve?

Sure, so I’m from a tiny town in New Jersey. I was used to having to drive 30 minutes to the train station as a kid, and there are no buses there, so car ownership is mandatory.

Took a long time to realize that next to one of the buildings in town was a train station. And twenty years ago there were buses, too.

Anyway, solve the last mile by funding transit and rebuilding trains. We had them before, we should have them again.

Re: Cruise’s Robot Car Outages Are Jamming Up San Francisco

#24

Post by salmonfamine »

aetherson wrote: post #16
salmonfamine wrote: post #8

Self-driving cars are a solution for a problem that has already been solved. Build trains. But of course, this doesn't benefit automakers, requires a move towards high-density housing that NIMBY's and certain classes of investors oppose, so instead we'll create an entirely new class of problems by allowing these companies to unleash their insufficient technology on public roads.

I am willing to bet that if self-driving cars come along, they will see strong sales/rental/deployment, however they end up working in Europe, or Japan, or wherever else you have in mind as some place that has "already solved this problem."

That only raises more questions. People will buy them, of course. People buy cigarettes, heroin, and NFT's. Will they actually meet high enough safety standards in these places? Will they reduce commute times?

In other words, are they actually going to deliver the long-haul, end-all-be-all transit solution that many of its proponents imagine they will? Or is it just a nice-to-have feature that will make driving a little safer and a little easier for some people? And if so, is that value really worth the incredible amount of effort that's gone into making it a reality?

Re: Cruise’s Robot Car Outages Are Jamming Up San Francisco

#25

Post by salmonfamine »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #21
salmonfamine wrote: post #8

Self-driving cars are a solution for a problem that has already been solved. Build trains. But of course, this doesn't benefit automakers, requires a move towards high-density housing that NIMBY's and certain classes of investors oppose, so instead we'll create an entirely new class of problems by allowing these companies to unleash their insufficient technology on public roads.

Ah, yes, fixed rail. Great for locking assumptions about population and labor distribution over the next 50-100 years into multi-billion dollar financial commitments that have to be made today. And unmatched when it comes to moving people from one place where they don't want to be to another place where they don't want to be.

As opposed to highways, which magically have none of these problems.

Re: Cruise’s Robot Car Outages Are Jamming Up San Francisco

#26

Post by ROTMetro »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #21
salmonfamine wrote: post #8

Self-driving cars are a solution for a problem that has already been solved. Build trains. But of course, this doesn't benefit automakers, requires a move towards high-density housing that NIMBY's and certain classes of investors oppose, so instead we'll create an entirely new class of problems by allowing these companies to unleash their insufficient technology on public roads.

Ah, yes, fixed rail. Great for locking assumptions about population and labor distribution over the next 50-100 years into multi-billion dollar financial commitments that have to be made today. And unmatched when it comes to moving people from one place where they don't want to be to another place where they don't want to be.

It does seem sort of iffy from this article (though I have not researched if the article is just FUD yet) https://eurasiantimes.com/a-whopping-900b-debt-chinas-once-p...

Re: Cruise’s Robot Car Outages Are Jamming Up San Francisco

#28

Post by squarefoot »

rnk wrote: post #15
salmonfamine wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walk. EDIT: or just drive, as you do now.

so we build giant parking lots at our metro train stations? We need different transportation. The us is terrible at building needed train infra. But just like in Europe, you need different solutions at diff levels.

No need for giant parking lots at trains stations, just rethink the whole thing so that for traveling bigger distances the driver climbs on the train without leaving the car, not unlike what we already do with ferries.

Re: Cruise’s Robot Car Outages Are Jamming Up San Francisco

#29

Post by mertd »

tmcw wrote: post #23
DoneWithAllThat wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain how trains solve the last mile problem? The thing that roads already solve?

Sure, so I’m from a tiny town in New Jersey. I was used to having to drive 30 minutes to the train station as a kid, and there are no buses there, so car ownership is mandatory. Took a long time to realize that next to one of the buildings in town was a train station. And twenty years ago there were buses, too. Anyway, solve the last mile by funding transit and rebuilding trains. We had them before, we should have th…

Zoning needs to change as well. Exclusionary zoning has resulted in very weird town layouts in the US. Make small errands (coffee, dining, convenience items) reachable by walking and the rest reachable by transit.

Re: Cruise’s Robot Car Outages Are Jamming Up San Francisco

#30

Post by ROTMetro »

37ef_ced3 wrote: post #3

From a customer's perspective, it isn't clear that a hardware/software taxi driver is in any way better than a human taxi driver, particularly with (human) driver assist preventing collisions and all the other warnings provided by a modern car. In both cases someone else is driving for the customer. With a human driver (plus driver assist braking and collision warnings) you have the most flexible, sophisticated intel…

Don't forget hygiene. Robot taxis are going to be much grosser because you won't have a human watching to make sure the person in the back seat isn't spilling coffee/having sex (with self or others)/throwing up/hawking luggies (sorry I'm from the 80s, what's the right term?). Though I am sure we will all also at some point grab one whose previous occupant didn't quite make it to the hospital in time for the childbirth :)
Post reply on HN