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

A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

jalopnik.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 205 posts

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#101

Post by Falkon1313 »

amarshall wrote: post #10
kjksf wrote: post #3

Here's what this research tells me: demand for transportation is much higher than the current use of transportation. Current use is limited by cost and convenience. Self-driving car is likely to fix both so it'll lead to more use of transportation. This is a good thing. We're currently deprived and if things go well, we'll get more of what we want. The congestion problem is mostly overblown. First, maybe with rare ex…

Driverless private cars (which the article is about) and driverless taxis aren’t the same thing. The former does nothing to solve the traffic density or vehicle size problem. Even focusing on driverless taxis, Uber and Lyft have offered for some time options for nicer cars, larger cars, and nicer larger cars, so presumably there’s a market for taxis to still be a status symbol, unlike you state. Finally, your economi…

The uber/lyft/limo large cars vs standard cabs/cars are usually used for a trip when there are more passengers or cargo. With private cars, the larger ones are bought when there might ever be a trip with more passengers or cargo, even if 99% of the time they just have a single occupant.

Also normal cars spend most of their time parked. Driverless taxis wouldn't need to.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#102

Post by CydeWeys »

erik_seaberg wrote: post #94
CydeWeys wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The congestion problem is mostly overblown. It's really not. Congestion is a huge problem already, and increasing the current road utilization by 83% will bring entire cities to a standstill for the entirety of waking hours. > I just eyeballed but ~80% cars were single person. Yes, and in the AV future the majority of cars on the road will have zero occupants, so things will get much, much worse as far as how many…

The number of people who need to commute during rush hour can't increase 83%. Maybe some transit commuters will switch to cars, but maybe some car commuters will finally be able to switch to transit if these make the first and last mile feasible. And 83% was the first and only week. Maybe the number doesn't stay that high once indulging in the novelty wears off.

You're forgetting the unoccupied trips. There will be unoccupied trips running errands even at rush hour, because why not, you're not sitting in traffic, just your car.

Also you seem to be thinking more of the robotaxis model, but the article is talking about the more likely future of everyone continuing to own their own car, only now it can drive. If cars are driving back empty after a commute then rush hour will have roughly twice the traffic.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#103

Post by chadcmulligan »

tda wrote: post #98
chadcmulligan wrote: post #75

I used chauffeured cars yesterday, I just shared them with other people. I went to the beach, and had no real plan, I thought I'll go here, clicked on my app and it told me where to go, usually walk a couple of hundred metres. I spent the day travelling and walking around cost about $20 and travelled a couple of hundred kilometres. I took my laptop and worked in between scenic spots. I was thinking about this yesterd…

If you think about it vehicles on asphalt/tyres (not buses as we know them) are superior to vehicles on tracks/steel wheels in every way (except rolling resistance). Vehicle to vehicle dista CE on the road can be as little as a few seconds, where on train tracks it is usually one to several minutes. Deadweight per passenger is in the range of 5-10x more for trainers vs buses. If a train breaks down, everything is blo…

Good points, personally I just like trains :-), and they are more comfortable - but probably the history as you say.

They have busways in my local city (Brisbane, Australia) and special bus roads which remove the congestion problem https://translink.com.au/travel-with-us/bus-train-ferry-tram... and they are also built to be more comfortable to travel on. So yes Buses can be made better if they are designed to be. They're also introducing super buses https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/new-sup... maybe I live in a public transport hot spot - who knew.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#104

Post by cookie_monsta »

kjksf wrote: post #3

Here's what this research tells me: demand for transportation is much higher than the current use of transportation. Current use is limited by cost and convenience. Self-driving car is likely to fix both so it'll lead to more use of transportation. This is a good thing. We're currently deprived and if things go well, we'll get more of what we want. The congestion problem is mostly overblown. First, maybe with rare ex…

> the traffic is only bad during rush hour

This would be ok if the rush hour actually lasted 60 minutes. In my city (pop ~6M) it goes from somewhere between 7-10am and 4-7pm with a little spike around lunchtime.

I don't work downtown and have the luxury of scheduling most of my driving as I please, so I nearly always opt for around 8pm. Being that my city is playing catch up trying to ease rush hour congestion, I often find myself alone on 4 lane arterials.

I am literally King of the Road.

Robotaxis aren't going to fix this, nor, sadly is throwing any other type of monetisable product at it. What we need to do is decentralise where people work away from downtowns, stagger work and school starting times so that the entire city isn't running around trying to hit the same 30 minute window and set up incentives for companies to accommodate remote workers.

Anything else smells to me like the auto industry trying to sell more cars and the infrastructure industry trying to sell more roads. They're free to do that, but under the guise of easing congestion? No.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#105

Post by CydeWeys »

akadruid1 wrote: post #83
CydeWeys wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once AVs become commonplace it's entirely possible that the majority of the cars on the road will have zero occupants, either because they're running errands or doing the deadhead leg of an occupied trip. It's absurd to think that transit buses containing dozens of riders are going to be held up behind zero -occupancy vehicles. The roads are going to get much much worse.

There are some rays of sunshine hidden in there though. Transit buses are awful and expensive because they must pack the maximum riders per driver to economical and politically viable. With zero-emission self driving vehicles they will be obsolete because you can redesign buses around passenger convenience and comfort, and you can make each journey much cheaper than the privately owned vehicles can manage. Think self…

> Transit buses are awful and expensive because they must pack the maximum riders per driver to economical and politically viable.

Source? Buses actually work very well in many places (and are much more economical and efficient than cars). The simplest way to make buses work well is to give them their own lanes; there's no reason a vehicle holding dozens of people should be held up behind single-occupancy vehicles.

Buses are the best blend of resource efficiency and cost efficiency in transportation, full stop. And that's today, no additional inventions necessary.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#106

Post by mandeepj »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #75

I used chauffeured cars yesterday, I just shared them with other people. I went to the beach, and had no real plan, I thought I'll go here, clicked on my app and it told me where to go, usually walk a couple of hundred metres. I spent the day travelling and walking around cost about $20 and travelled a couple of hundred kilometres. I took my laptop and worked in between scenic spots. I was thinking about this yesterd…

> because trains don't throw you around when they turn corners

Trains are way bigger jerks than buses. They definitely throw you back when you they start after stopping at a station or stop sign. And, they definitely throw you back at turns. So, double whammy.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#107

Post by WillPostForFood »

We are going to give you this great, free, novel thing, You can use it as much as you want, but for just 1 week. It’s a surprise people actually took advantage of this limited time free opportunity and used it a lot? No kidding. It is a garbage study, of course that’s the outcome.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#108

Post by diego »

The weakest part about the conclusions in this study is the assumption that regulation does not change. If the limitation of driving disappears and the roads become a tragedy of the commons, then regulation will have to step in to limit how much people drive. We already do this with tolls, car pool lanes, taxes, etc.

You can't take it as a given that our society will not seek to reorganize itself around the new paradigm. It's like someone in 1990 saying "once content is on the internet piracy will be out control and nobody will make money with content ever again, check out this experiment we did."

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#109

Post by Mirioron »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #99
ctdonath wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone is welcome to move to a low-pollution low-vehicle area and live a no-car life. There's a whole lotta such space in the US. Yes, cars cause "unfactored costs". They also improve life, making the lives of hundreds of millions possible & prolonged. You can't complain about the costs without comparing the savings.

> Anyone is welcome to move to a low-pollution low-vehicle area and live a no-car life. There's a whole lotta such space in the US. No there isn't. In fact, I can't think of a single one. Living in rural areas means being super dependent on cars. The center of major cities are less car dependent, but still there's plenty of cars around in every city in the US. There's nowhere in the US like Amsterdam or Copenhagen or…

>Living in rural areas means being super dependent on cars.

You say that because you're unwilling to give up the comforts that car use provides. Do you think that people elsewhere didn't have to give up anything when they decided against car use? You might think that it's fine to mandate bikes, buses and walking instead of cars, but pretty much everybody would rather have a car during a cold winter.

Post reply on HN