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S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

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Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#581
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so the complaint rate per mile is roughly constant Sure, if the complaint rate per mile is constant, but the number of driverless cars increases exponentially, then yeah we might expect the number of complaints to increase exponentially. That doesn't mean this isn't a problem. they say it's "incomplete" Okay, so maybe there are more problems than are represented in the chart, but that doesn't seem to paint any pretti…

By that definition, it is expected to skyrocket. That's like saying people who trip and fall while browsing instsagram shorts is skyrocketing.

.... and once that problem starts injuring as many people as driverless cars, then we might start looking at it as a public policy issue.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#582
post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They work for the majority of people of all ages who live in cities where the infrastructure has been properly built to accommodate bikes. Most people rarely need to haul anything and can use carshare when they do. I've demoed a multistory house down to the bricks and re-built it from the outside in without a car. Hired someone to haul off a dumpster several times. For major materials deliveries, like beams or window…

I have been driving my children to daycare for past 3 years. I will be driving my children to daycare for at least 3 more years. Bicycle is not a viable replacement for this use case, sorry. My situation is far from unique, raising children is quite universal human experience.

Worked fine for me in my bicycle-friendly city.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#584
post #279
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've commented elsewhere I don't think the chart is informative (and listed several good reasons why). But all you're describing is a 300% increase, not several orders of magnitude increase. If you look at Google's QPS chart (maintained in crayon by the original engineers!) you will see that they frequently had to rescale the chart by factors of ten because their growth rate in the early days was exponential. The cha…

"Skyrocketing" is not a well-defined term. Nowhere is exponential growth required to qualify. A 300% increase in a month on this sort of metric would absolutely qualify as skyrocketing to me.

It's really bizarre how the dominant discussion here is based on some people seeing a huge increase in incidents and trying to debate that "skyrocketing" is the wrong word.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#585
post #115

"Skyrocket" is a word people use when they don't have the data to support their claim, but want to make it sound as extreme as possible. When I hear "skyrocket" I think "several orders of magnitude in a very short time". But the source of the quote with skyrocket, basically admits that they didn't have any quantitative evidence to support a massive change in incidents. Remember: reality is banal. Things are far bette…

I'm suspicous of your motives for this comment. The article reports a ~30x increase: 3 incidents in April 2022, and 91 incidents in April 2023.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#586
post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They work for the majority of people of all ages who live in cities where the infrastructure has been properly built to accommodate bikes. Most people rarely need to haul anything and can use carshare when they do. I've demoed a multistory house down to the bricks and re-built it from the outside in without a car. Hired someone to haul off a dumpster several times. For major materials deliveries, like beams or window…

I have been driving my children to daycare for past 3 years. I will be driving my children to daycare for at least 3 more years. Bicycle is not a viable replacement for this use case, sorry. My situation is far from unique, raising children is quite universal human experience.

> I have been driving my children to daycare for past 3 years. I will be driving my children to daycare for at least 3 more years. Bicycle is not a viable replacement for this use case, sorry.

In countries like the Netherlands, urban areas in Germany or anywhere else that has a public infrastructure not exclusively focused on cars (aka, the services required for daily life not being mega-sized and requiring a car to get there, but small and distributed) it is a perfectly viable option. Hell I 'member walking to kindergarten. On my own, in the outskirts of Munich. I had never been driven to school by car.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per mile incident rate is a measure only the companies care about. Why wouldn't the city care about an increase in the total number of traffic incidents? Especially when the self-driving cars are not displacing human drivers, so at the end of the day the roads are getting less safe.

>Per mile incident rate is a measure only the companies care about This is a very frustrating sentence to read. If the per mile incident rate of driverless cars is 1 and the per mile incident rate for normal cars is 2. What happens when you do a 1:1 replacement of all normal cars with driveless cars? The number of incidences halves. i.e the total number of traffic incidences halves .

You assume that a driverless mile replaces a human driven mile. I'm not sure that's a reasonable assumption. (I'd assume people would drive more miles if they don't need to worry about parking or paying for a human driver)

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#588
post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per mile incident rate is a measure only the companies care about. Why wouldn't the city care about an increase in the total number of traffic incidents? Especially when the self-driving cars are not displacing human drivers, so at the end of the day the roads are getting less safe.

>Especially when the self-driving cars are not displacing human drivers, so at the end of the day the roads are getting less safe. what makes you think that? "Driverless taxis" imply they're being used to transport passengers. A robotaxi taking a fare means that there isn't a human taxi taking the same fare, so human drivers are essentially being displaced.

Robotaxis are cheaper than human taxis (in the long run), don't need to take breaks, etc. There's no reason to assume that taxi rides would remain flat if cost falls and availability increases.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely right. To situate in terms of recent events, there have been three stages of trying to delay / influence the California CPUC robotaxi expansion approval vote: 1. Tried a politician scare campaign. Failed because it was too transparent it was an attempted distraction from their terrible public safety record. 2. Tried coning and disabling the vehicles. Failed because it was too transparently astroturfed, leg…

I don't know why the other reply to this post got downvoted to hell. THe person has a point. Fully autonomous cars are cool... don't get me wrong. But electric cars and autonomous electric/gas cars are probably not the right solution to our person transport needs. using energy to move a 4000 lb vehicle to transport one or two 200 lb humans is not energy-efficient... most of the energy is spent just moving the vehicle…

That 60lb ebike is useless in winter and during bad weather.

Public transport doesn't go everywhere.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A 60lb e-bike can also transport a 200 lb person whilst using far less resources (both to make the vehicle and to operate it) and space. E-bikes are great for the situations, climates, and people who can use them. E-bikes are not a substitute for the majority of people’s transportation needs. I think the young, healthy people who live in moderate climates with good weather, short commutes, and little need to haul a…

They work for the majority of people of all ages who live in cities where the infrastructure has been properly built to accommodate bikes. Most people rarely need to haul anything and can use carshare when they do. I've demoed a multistory house down to the bricks and re-built it from the outside in without a car. Hired someone to haul off a dumpster several times. For major materials deliveries, like beams or window…

I have always, and will always own a Pickup truck. do i need that truck function every day no, not at all

but as an example recently my Air Conditioning went out, the part to replace it was on back order so I was going to be with out AC in VERY hot weather for about a week..

Well I got in my truck, drove down to the local hardware store, bought a couple of portable AC Units and huled them back. I did this on a weekend where no truck rentals were an option, and I did not have to wait for deliver etc.

Over the years there have been TONS to situations where having a truck at my ready disposal to use has really saved me lots of anguish, and inconvenience.

So in short, could I survive with just an ebike, or something sure. However I have no desire to live that style of life, and would find that to be MUCH MUCH less enjoyable, and to be of lower quality of life then if I just continue to drive my Truck instead.

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