Having lived for some time in Beijing, where a "black cab" is a slang term for an unmetered private cab or metered cabs running with the meter off, reading the part of the article detailing "black cab advocacy" and "black cab protests" turned into more of a mental challenge than I would like to admit.
London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS
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Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS
#12GPS 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…
It is a trivial problem. Track how anyone with a smartphone and your app on it moves around the city. Aggregate which paths they choose and which turn out to be faster / better. Then propose those paths to other users asking for routing instructions.
I work on a software for routing deliveries (https://www.fleetnavi.com), and although we don't have this functionality built into the platform yet, it's the first thing to do when we get volume.
Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS
#13Here in Brooklyn car services seem to have lost the ability to navigate the city in just a few years. You used to be able to call a car service, have a car show up in 5 minutes, and they'd get there with just the cross streets.
Now most often the first question is "what's the address so I can put it into my GPS", even with metered cabs. I've been yelled at for asking to take routes that the GPS doesn't suggest, even though I know at 3pm on a Tuesday we shouldn't be on the BQE. Or there's construction on Flatbush and we should go around it.
I don't think we need a test quite like London's, but basic knowledge of neighborhoods and major intersections should be required. At least until we get those self driving cars that can optimize routes in real time.
Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS
#14GPS 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…
You're making the common mistake of disregarding disruptive innovation[0] at its early stages. Just because it starts out as only of low quality[1] doesn't mean that it will stay that way, or for long.
0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation 1: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Disruptiv...
Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS
#15GPS 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…
It is a trivial problem. Track how anyone with a smartphone and your app on it moves around the city. Aggregate which paths they choose and which turn out to be faster / better. Then propose those paths to other users asking for routing instructions. I work on a software for routing deliveries ( https://www.fleetnavi.com ), and although we don't have this functionality built into the platform yet, it's the first thin…
Waze claims to do something like and it produces the most retardedly slow routes ever. I just hate it when someone uses Waze on my Lyft because I just know I'll take 10 minutes more.
I don't think it's as trivial because there are lots of things to consider. Some drivers are just SLOW and it will have nothing to do with traffic. Maybe all slow/terrible drivers use your app so all the route speed information is completely based on specific patterns set by your app.
Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS
#16GPS 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…
It is a trivial problem. Track how anyone with a smartphone and your app on it moves around the city. Aggregate which paths they choose and which turn out to be faster / better. Then propose those paths to other users asking for routing instructions. I work on a software for routing deliveries ( https://www.fleetnavi.com ), and although we don't have this functionality built into the platform yet, it's the first thin…
Tracking, aggregating and analyzing thousands of users with slightly varied destinations, focuses (less traffic, faster, scenic), and signals is not exactly what I'd consider trivial...
Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS
#17Several 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 wa…
It is honour. Have had free trips because they didn't know a street in eg Swiss Cottage. It encourages repeat business.
Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS
#18GPS 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…
> GPS routing is awful compared to a person who knows their way around a city.
Strongly disagreed. GPS has traffic information, a human driver does not.
Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS
#19GPS 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…
It is a trivial problem. Track how anyone with a smartphone and your app on it moves around the city. Aggregate which paths they choose and which turn out to be faster / better. Then propose those paths to other users asking for routing instructions. I work on a software for routing deliveries ( https://www.fleetnavi.com ), and although we don't have this functionality built into the platform yet, it's the first thin…
And now all your "fast" routes become slow because all your users are attempting to use them...
This is hardly a trivial problem. It might be trivial to deal with a simplified mathematical model of it, but throw people into the mix and it suddenly gets very complicated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexivity_%28social_theory%29
Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS
#20GPS 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…
> GPS routing is awful compared to a person who knows their way around a city. Strongly disagreed. GPS has traffic information, a human driver does not.
A human that drives the same roads everyday most definitely does have traffic information.