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London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com

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Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#31

Post by mtalantikite »

danielweber wrote: post #27
mtalantikite wrote: post #13

Here 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…

My (limited) experience in Brooklyn is that taxis don't know addresses, they know cross-streets.

Yes, that's generally true with all of NYC, we always give cross streets as reference. I'd never expect anyone to know just based on address number.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#32

Post by Avitas »

slingerofwheat wrote: post #15
ntoshev wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 comple…

That is odd in my experience. Perhaps it has to do with my locale.

I am in a major metropolis and I drive throughout the city, suburbs and adjacent cities regularly. I know the area and I have been driving for decades.

I have been using Waze for about a year now. The navigation routes it selects appear to be very good. They appear to be based on relevant factors too. I can only guess what variables they include in their calculation, such as weighted capacity, current traffic speed, etc. of the relevant route elements.

My experience with Waze is the opposite of yours.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#33

Post by gknoy »

solistice wrote: post #22
balabaster wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The main problem I see with that is detail and the age of your data. Drawing from experience trying to memorize a journey through the city of Bale, which whilst less large than London is quite winding and certainly suffers from the same compounding of historical and modern buildings. Going through my route, spots where i stopped to take in more details are very much more tangible in my mind. The wide park circled by…

Does the test check the best way, or only knowledge of finding Some route? I could see someone learning the city topology with VR, and then using experience to learn congestion patterns.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#34

Post by [deleted] »

jes5199 wrote: post #5

GPS 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…

[deleted]

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#35

Post by [deleted] »

w1ntermute wrote: post #14
jes5199 wrote: post #5

GPS 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...

[deleted]

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#37

Post by mikeash »

pimlottc wrote: post #28
dkopi wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San Francisco's hills are a very localized issue. Most cities are pretty flat. London included. Of course it's just a matter of time until GPS programs integrate topographical awareness, and give you the ability to avoid steep climbs. Its also just a matter of time until cars provide visual aids for navigation, and not just the voice on a GPS device.

I think you're being a bit dismissive. Hills are just one example - every city has its local issues, be they hills, rivers, different laws, traffic patterns...

Rivers are irrelevant to a GPS. Rivers only matter to a car to the extent that they determine the road layout, and GPSs know the road layout. They're also pretty good about laws, although there is still some trickiness about things like left-turn prohibitions that are only in effect at certain times. It's getting better all the time, though. Their traffic data is in my experience better than human estimation at this point, since they can route based on actual current conditions rather than extrapolations from past experience.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#38

Post by wyager »

jes5199 wrote: post #5

GPS 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…

>Of course I rated that ride 5 stars, because I'm not actually a psychopath

You are doing everyone except the driver a disservice. By failing to give low ratings to bad drivers, you are precluding good drivers from entering the market (because the bad ones will never get phased out, and they will saturate the market). You are also preventing consumers from making a well-informed decision, which limits the effectiveness of market mechanisms.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#39

Post by barrkel »

balabaster wrote: post #8
IvyMike wrote: post #2

Reading 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…

They're normally on scooters. Stuck in traffic is a very rare occurrence for someone on a scooter.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#40

Post by baddox »

guelo wrote: post #20
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I've been in San Francisco for 3 years, and I still check traffic information every weekend. Community events, which are fairly common, can make the difference between "traffic will be fine" and "don't dare leave your apartment."

Perhaps less anecdotally, local traffic is a major staple of local news radio and TV, which probably means it's important even for locals.

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