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The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

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Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#431

Post by pinaceae »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #301
pinaceae wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sure, but this why ownership as a concept is actually quite nice - i can decide right now to do something with my car. i don't need to plan ahead. i am not dependent on anybody else. i gladly pay for that luxury.

Yes, and surely some people (particularly in less dense suburbs and rural areas) will continue to own cars. They will just be self-driving cars, because manually operated cars will be illegal.

everything always needs to be illegal. ban this, ban that. not exactly a libertarian, but man, is there no other way in your little world?

what if i enjoy driving a car? what about motorcycles? you want to ban them too? oldtimers, just for spite? sugar drinks? sweets? alcohol? drugs?

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#432

Post by gsnedders »

cake wrote: post #65
bertil wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a cyclist, I was shocked to see the cyclist change his mind like that —unless he was a tester too, that’s how you get bumped– but I really hope Google Cars learn that most cyclists actually don’t signal their turn that well. Cars don’t bother either, and the last frame show how most non-car drivers get killed: don’t notice what passing just being, shift in gear, swerve and… bang. Seeing how Google taught its car t…

It really looks like the cyclist is a tester. I agree, most cyclist don't signal at all, sometimes they will just subtly point with their finger. Not the best idea to rely on the cyclist's signals.

> Not the best idea to rely on the cyclist's signals.

Not the best idea to rely on car's signals, either, given how frequently they're incorrectly used (or not at all). Not really any different to the cyclists case.

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#433

Post by aetherson »

prawn wrote: post #362
aetherson wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this to be true, we have to assume that, during rush hour, at least 90% of all cars are parked and unused. 90%? That's a hell of a lot, dude. It's certainly true that most cars spend most of their time being parked and unused. But they tend to do so during times of day when there is very low demand. The vast majority of cars are unused at 4am (and, indeed, at 2pm), certainly. But even if every car that was on the…

Surge pricing equivalents will motivate people to adjust/stagger their working hours. I already arrive early and leave late to avoid peak hour. Pod-based transport would also make public transport easier and closer to a door-to-door experience.

Or maybe surge pricing equivalents will motivate people to buy their own cars. If the advantage of a car-sharing scheme is cost savings, and then you start charging more, what's the advantage again?

In any case, I don't think that that's a feasible option for the majority of jobs.

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#434

Post by drzaiusapelord »

gensym wrote: post #375
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my concern. If we treat cyclists as the sacred cow of the roads, they'll more or less have the root password to my car and be able to dictate where it stops and for how long. I find cyclists to be much more disingenuous and reckless than any driver, at least here in Chicago where they'll put up next to your car on the right, on the shoulder to make a dangerous and illegal right, and pound on the side of your…

Haha, I knew as soon as I saw that you think respecting people's lives is treating them as "sacred cows" that you must be a Chicago driver.

Safety goes both ways. If your going to act like an entitled snot who takes chances with your life because you can't be bothered to follow the rules of the road and respect cars, other cyclists, and pedestrians then you kinda deserve what happens to you. Heaven forbid we all play by the rules.

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#435

Post by mikeash »

shabble wrote: post #413
mikeash wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a zero sum game. All else being equal, larger cars for everyone results in more safety for everyone. Imagine two extremes. 1) You smack into another person at 70MPH while you're both in a cardboard box. Don't ask me how you got a cardboard box up to that speed, but you probably do not survive. 2) You manage to get a Maersk E class up to 70MPH and crash it into another Maersk E class. Assuming you're not at t…

> * Don't ask me how you got a cardboard box up to that speed, but you probably do not survive. 2) You manage to get a Maersk E class up to 70MPH and crash it into another Maersk E class* I'd be more impressed if you got the Maersk up to 70mph, since it's 100k horsepower engines can manage less than half that. And I suspect the collision would be pretty terrifying, given it would be dumping a kinetic energy load of 8…

Also don't ask why I expressed wonder at a 70MPH cardboard box but not a 70MPH cargo ship....

Anyway, the kinetic energy involved in the ship collision would indeed be gigantic, but the mass available to absorb it is similarly gigantic. The energy will be going into the structure rather than into your fragile human body. It will take many seconds just to complete the collision. Compare this to the tiny fraction of a second available to decelerate the meatbags from 70MPH to 0MPH in a car collision at that speed.

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#436

Post by mikeash »

jrockway wrote: post #381
jfoster wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they'll just get replaced. Amazon and Google do seem keen to get into that space.

Also why the airlines go bankrupt approximately once per career. The gross revenue per flight is the same as time increases, but pay raises for seniority decrease the profit as the workforce ages. (Not making a value judgement here. Airline pilots have a tough job and do it well, and deserve to be well-paid. But the industry is not as nice as me.)

It's not like they're forced to pay their workers more as they age. The ones with unions may be forced to do so by their contract, but non-union airlines are hardly immune from bankruptcy. Airlines go bankrupt because it's a cut-throat business with extreme competition, which drives profits to zero.

An airline customer will switch carriers for as little as a $5 savings on the cost of a multi-hundred-dollar ticket. There is essentially zero customer loyalty. If you can't convince customers to pay more, and all possible cost-cutting measures have already been implemented, then you have no room.

In an ideal world, a business could survive forever in an environment like that. In the real world, business is variable, and with no margin, you can't build any resiliency. A couple of bad years is enough to screw you.

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#437

Post by gensym »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #434
gensym wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, I knew as soon as I saw that you think respecting people's lives is treating them as "sacred cows" that you must be a Chicago driver.

Safety goes both ways. If your going to act like an entitled snot who takes chances with your life because you can't be bothered to follow the rules of the road and respect cars, other cyclists, and pedestrians then you kinda deserve what happens to you. Heaven forbid we all play by the rules.

Nope. Even entitled snots don't deserve to be killed when it can be avoided. Not going to debate that point.

Passing on the right by cyclists is legal in Chicago, BTW, when done so with care (the law was clarified last year). It's not clear if that's the behavior you're referring to.

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#438

Post by dalke »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #427
Morgawr wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a huge difference between a kid playing a prank to a few cars on the road and a malicious hacker willing to take control of a portion of the street indefinitely. Imagine for example some hacker programming all the cars in the proximity of a bank to grind to a halt and cause congestion so his team can go rob said bank and have the police delayed because of the inconvenience. Yes, it sounds like the plot for a…

Today you can do this as well, just take (rent) a car or two, stop them in the middle of the road and get out. Things like this happen and will happen, it's what we have to deal with when the enemy actors are sentient beings. They will find workarounds.

Accountability is much easier with physical objects like cars.

The car has a VIN. The VIN is tied to a owner, which is the rental car company. The car company requires that renters present a license, which is tied to the renter's name, address, etc. The car company likely also requires a credit card, which has additional clues about who the enemy actors are.

These can be circumvented, but it's not easy.

I think a better example is of enemy actors who drop large cinder blocks on the road. This is much less traceable, and occurs sometimes as part of carjacking.

Still, I meant to compare with people who currently use traffic signal preemption devices. While illegal, it's harder to detect and prosecute than, say, people who run red lights.

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#439

Post by drzaiusapelord »

gensym wrote: post #437
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safety goes both ways. If your going to act like an entitled snot who takes chances with your life because you can't be bothered to follow the rules of the road and respect cars, other cyclists, and pedestrians then you kinda deserve what happens to you. Heaven forbid we all play by the rules.

Nope. Even entitled snots don't deserve to be killed when it can be avoided. Not going to debate that point. Passing on the right by cyclists is legal in Chicago, BTW, when done so with care (the law was clarified last year). It's not clear if that's the behavior you're referring to.

Not killed, but fined. We need to regulate bikes like we do cars and monetize bike violations. Oh I can hear the critical mass whining from here. Pedestrians should also consider bikes on the sidewalk a form of assault and it should be a criminal violation. If I can't drive on the sidewalk then you can't ride on it.

/Guy who cycles and drives in Chicago.

Re: The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving

#440

Post by jaffeee »

chillingeffect wrote: post #256
TheEzEzz wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There must be at least 50 million residential garages in the US alone. If we automate all cars and switch to a Cars-as-a-Service model that is 50 million large rooms suddenly available. That's a lot of reclaimed real estate. Edit: If the average garage is 250 sq ft (pretty small), average cost of real estate is $100/sq ft (pretty low), then this is a $1.25 trillion windfall. Not bad for a small side-effect of autonom…

Way to only see everything with rose-colored glasses. Has it even occurred to you there might be any possible cons to your scenario? First of all, the lot the cars come from is going to require real estate, so subtract that from your windfall. Where will they be at night or other low-use times? Second, subtract the additional resources in gas/electricity it takes to get to my house from god-knows-where it came from.…

Theres already an abundance of parking real estate, there's no need to make more. Look into the predictive analytics used by Uber or Citibike to see how wait times can be minimized. When freed from the redundancy of having to use an overbuilt one-size-fits all for everything, the energy savings will more than make up for a car having to drive two or three blocks from the parking lot to the pick up zone. Shit, I could go on.
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