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

Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

671–680 of 792 posts

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#671

Post by bretthoerner »

rrr_oh_man wrote: post #643
bretthoerner wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said both "tram" and "neighbourhood" so I'm assuming you aren't in the US. I truly mean no offense, but it's hard to express how spread out even the most metropolitan areas are in the US. Sure, NYC is one thing. But check out the ~10th largest city, Austin, where Waymo and other autonomous vehicles are (I think) in their largest deployment. Just on a map, or by density numbers, or whatever metric you want. I'm in…

> I have 3 kids and if I could snap my fingers and swap them for Tesla Robotaxis (Waymos are better and safer!) I would in a second. Uh, what?

Oh, lol. My Tesla Robotaxi children. I meant swap human drivers.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#672

Post by 1970-01-01 »

oblio wrote: post #619
1970-01-01 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>all of the resources that are going into autonomous cars was instead going into proper public transit infrastructure. They need not be separated. This is the entire point of the Cybercab and the Cybervan: Get self-driving cars, vans, etc. with the one job of moving people around. They only park to recharge or repair.

Demand is based on time of day/week/month/year. Where do all those cars needed during peak demand go? They're going to be parked somewhere and it's not going to be in the middle of nowhere, because that's an awful customer experience.

The same place as existing taxis and busses? Busses are a worse customer experience than a 10 minute wait.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#673

Post by inglor_cz »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #567
sofixa wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And an even bigger thing would be providing viable alternatives to driving, which would reduce the amount of cars on the roads, and help with those driving unsafely (because they're tired, not good drivers, "had a couple of drinks", etc).

Correct, part of safer street and road design is supporting transit, biking, and walking. That said, it's essentially impossible to get rid of cars entirely, and you can see that just by looking at countries or even regions that have good transit and notice that they still have tons of cars. Even Singapore has lots of cars, and the entire country is a super-dense city-state! So it's definitely worthwhile to develop s…

Public transit would also benefit from self-driving, as bus drivers and their salaries are a major limiting factor to how many lines you can run.

Bus drivers are a limited and very moveable workforce, and if you have huge economic differences in your common market, poorer cities won't find enough drivers to sustain their own systems.

An example: there is helluva lot Bulgarian and Romanian drivers in Western Europe, and there is no way that Sofia or Bucharest, cities with half the GDP per capita, can afford to pay them competitive salaries.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#674

Post by inglor_cz »

Fricken wrote: post #312
EA-3167 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The famously small conurbations and the reality that Finns and Norwegians only are able to bike part of the year . They have cars and public transit for the rest. I'd add that these discussions tend to handwave the reality of safety when you're on an open platform movie at high speeds, the reality that not all people are physically able, and a lot of others issues that the vocal "cars are the devil" folks don't engag…

Scandanavians have been getting around without cars for millenia. Nobody had even heard of a car until just over a century ago. Car dependent infrastructure is definitely not helpful for the physically disabled, as well as those too young, too old, and too poor to drive a car. This and a lot of other issues that the vocal and active "cars aren't the devil" crowd don't engage seriously with. It's getting really old, a…

Same with electricity, dentistry, antibiotics...

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#675

Post by mchinen »

giantg2 wrote: post #234

Better driver education and higher test standards would save lives too. So would banning alcohol. None of these solutions, including automated cars, will be mandated any time soon. It's not enough to have data, you also have to have societal buy-in. Interesting that Waymo chooses to compare accident rates with the average driver vs the rideshare drivers their cars replace. The numbers wouldn't look as impressive beca…

Aren't the route restrictions that this data was collected on a large confounder? They are specifically placed to avoid difficult or dangerous areas. For example in the bay area only recently were they allowed to go on the freeway, and only in certain areas.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#676

Post by littlecorner »

ericmay wrote: post #452

The safest car is the one that is parked. I’m not anti-car but in terms of safety we should focus more on getting people using bus/rail/bike/walk especially for daily needs. It’s more cost effective too. Autonomous cars are cool and will be great for reducing crashes, but it’s an additive solution, not a subtractive one.

This will work for a few cities like New York or San Francisco but not for rural communities and won't be efficient for smaller cities or towns that are spread out. At least not without sacrificing independency and speed, which we're constantly trying to escape from

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#677

Post by webern777 »

sosborn wrote: post #467
uv-depression wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, most places other than the US do. Good public transit is a far, far better solution than better cars. Elsewhere in the thread people are talking about ways of convincing drunk people to get their cars to drive them, and don't seem to realize the fact that people drive to go drink is terrifying! At this point it's deeply set in US "common sense" (to the point where in many places, bars have mandatory parking min…

There's no practical reason we can't have good public transit AND better cars.

It is a nice bumper sticker slogan but public transportation operates at a loss almost universally.

It is really a problem with liberal democracy. Everyone has different values, everyone thinks their subjective values are the morally correct values and being so everyone should pitch in and help pay for the subjective values because they are morally correct. To not is "immoral".

This circular logic is half the posts on this forum if not talking about software.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#678

Post by Zambyte »

win311fwg wrote: post #600
Zambyte wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now do China.

Technically a large landmass, but essentially nothing happens in the western half. For the sake of travel it is a relatively small country. Whereas NY->LA is the route the USA would need to most service if it were to get serious about such a thing. The short-run corridors are already reasonably well serviced. Trouble is most people doing the NY->LA run are going to choose flight instead.

People would absolutely choose trains over flying if we actually had modern train infrastructure. NY to LA would be about 11 hours at 250 MPH. That's 100 MPH slower than the fastest passenger train, but seems like a reasonable estimate for an average speed including stops. The difference between chilling on public transit for 8 hours and chilling on public transit for 11 hours is not that big of a deal for most people. Driving is essentially not an option for most people for this trip too.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#679

Post by Robotbeat »

toasty228 wrote: post #189
devilsdata wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your point that busses aren't profitable? Why do they need to be? I am sure if you did the math, having the occasional empty bus does not hold a candle to the amount of dead mass being dragged along in single-occupant cars. The wear-and-tear on the road from the sheer volume of cars alone makes them cost more to us as a society than busses. So regardless of density and passenger volume, busses are incredible.

> Is your point that busses aren't profitable? Why do they need to be? Because late stage capitalism brain rot doesn't allow for nuanced things such as "public services". They'd rather have everyone spend 50k on a car and Xk per year on insurance and maintenance than $100 of their taxes going to public infrastructure

Things require resources regardless of “capitalism” or some other system.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#680

Post by OroPla »

drob518 wrote: post #653
giantg2 wrote: post #234

Better driver education and higher test standards would save lives too. So would banning alcohol. None of these solutions, including automated cars, will be mandated any time soon. It's not enough to have data, you also have to have societal buy-in. Interesting that Waymo chooses to compare accident rates with the average driver vs the rideshare drivers their cars replace. The numbers wouldn't look as impressive beca…

> If we want adoption, we would need it be placed in individual vehicles and it should look at removing driver liability. Liability is the biggest issue holding back widespread adoption, IMO. The tech is pretty good already. Yet accidents are still going to happen. The question is m who pays when they do? The “driver”? The taxi operator? The car manufacturer? It’s all unclear at best right now.

Who pays when a natural occurring rock slide totals your car? There are already situations where no one can be held liable.
Post reply on HN