London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS
tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com
London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS
1–10 of 110 posts
Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS
#2Reading the article, I can't help but think that a GTA/CrazyTaxi street-accurate video game based on this test would be amazing.
Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS
#3Infamous would be a much better description than legendary.
Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS
#4Check out the run calling halfway down the article (Matt McCabe “calls-over” a long run)
Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS
#5GPS routing is awful compared to a person who knows their way around a city.
Uber drivers in hilly cities like San Francisco never, ever think to avoid climbing right up and down the steepest hills - the algorithms don't tell them not to, there's no traffic and it's not a low speed limit, it just sucks for other reasons.
I had a driver last week who had never heard of Valencia St, and then misunderstood the GPS voice and accidently got on the freeway, getting us stuck in cross-bay traffic for 20 minutes just trying to get to the next exit. Of course I rated that ride 5 stars, because I'm not actually a psychopath ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/08/14/what-ar... )
It's going to be a long, long time before we put anything approaching the depth of information that years of experience brings into our algorithmic routing systems. And startups are structurally disincentivized from trying to, anyway.
Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS
#6GPS routing is awful compared to a person who knows their way around a city. Uber drivers in hilly cities like San Francisco never, ever think to avoid climbing right up and down the steepest hills - the algorithms don't tell them not to, there's no traffic and it's not a low speed limit , it just sucks for other reasons. I had a driver last week who had never heard of Valencia St, and then misunderstood the GPS voic…
That's really interesting. I wonder if there's scope and technology for a collaborative constraint-based solver that finds more effective routing for cities.
Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS
#7I would take a London taxi for the same reason that I'd read a paper book, for the experience, not for the result. The Knowledge is such a wonderful anachronism, and I hope that it can co-exist in some form with new services such as Uber and Lyft, but outside of protectionism I can't see any reason why it should - technology is nearly good enough now to replace it, and in some cases probably better. If it does continue to exist I can't imagine that market for people with the Knowledge will be enough to support the number of London taxi's that are on the streets now.
Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS
#8Reading the article, I can't help but think that a GTA/CrazyTaxi street-accurate video game based on this test would be amazing.
You could probably sell it to the Knowledge Boys & Girls cramming for the test - they wouldn't have to log so many hours on the road putting wear & tear on their rented vehicles trying to cram for the test. They can run around for as long as they can stay awake without ever leaving the comfort of their home. Plug it into something like Occulus rift or some VR environment... and if they hit traffic, they can kill that mission and start again, finding a better route instead of in being stuck in the very tiresome reality of sitting in traffic for 40 minutes by taking a wrong turn.
Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS
#9GPS routing is awful compared to a person who knows their way around a city. Uber drivers in hilly cities like San Francisco never, ever think to avoid climbing right up and down the steepest hills - the algorithms don't tell them not to, there's no traffic and it's not a low speed limit , it just sucks for other reasons. I had a driver last week who had never heard of Valencia St, and then misunderstood the GPS voic…
Well I drive around London a lot during the day time (inside CC zone) and Google Maps is pretty damn good on Android.
I did a few years in taxis but owning a car that is CC exempt is cheaper including parking in NCP holes. Part of the reason its cheaper is after some experience driving around the city, you realise that at least half the taxi drivers are taking the piss.
"the knowledge" is imminently replaceable by technology and is merely a party trick IMHO.
Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS
#10Several times I had London cabbies stop the fare meter when I showed them (the same) short cut near where I lived.
"No, don't go to the lights, turn down this lane!". All of them had their brains explode that there was a better way that saved about 200 meters and 30 seconds of travel.
I'm not sure if there's an (unwritten?) rule that you get the rest of the fare for free if they're taking you a long way, but there was no resentment from them. All of them were incredulous there was a better way to do it.
(Just looked at Streetview. There's nothing special about that lane that should make it a big secret. I guess it must have been No Entry/One Way/something and changed recently before my journeys.)