231–240 of 322 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I much prefer facing backwards, because I know in the rare case of crash that I am going to be much safer. This is also true of aircraft and cars and buses and coaches. Sadly, most people do feel uncomfortable facing backwards and so the risky forwards-facing seating is used.
I really don’t think that kind of risk mitigation is of much utility.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the price of a self driving car will be very high, and the price of a taxi/rental service (which will no longer have a driver) will go down, making a taxi/rental much more attractive monetarily than it is at present. To your arguments: - storing necessities - this is probably the strongest argument that will have to be worked around - cleanliness - is this currently a problem with taxis and rental cars? I hav…
About cleanliness, taxis and rental cars are clean because there is someone there to clean it between each customer. That doesn't work for carsharing, where cars go directly from a customer to the next. My experience with these systems is that you don't find anything really dirty in the cars, but you tend to find empty bottles and things like that in them. Not a deal breaker if you just want to get somewhere, but not…
One of the few pleasures of modern world is now slowly being removed! :-D I guess I will treasure my memories of driving Lamborghini Murcielago over 200mph forever and will tell my grandchildren there was a time when you actually could drive a car yourself! And to those that argue young people don't want to own the car - it's mostly about not wanting to spend your life commuting, hunting parking spots or in traffic j…
in the self driving future, there will be a place for off road trucks and fast cars on race tracks. We probably won't let those type of vehicles on the main roads.
When you look at how Google computes the fastest route in their maps/online navigation, they basically have some precomputed grid of "main" traffic centers, and they route all local traffic to the nearest of those centers. The main centers have pre-computed distances/times/routes between each other, so they can be stored in a distributed hashmap, and the lookup of the fastest route takes nanoseconds. The remaining "local" part is then computed on the fly.
I am curious if a similar algorithm will be used in our self-driving future - you'd have local part of the route where you'll board a self-driving car and that will lead you to one of those "main" centers where a super-fast transport will move you to another "main" center, either by having you to board an express-train like device, or putting the whole car or just its interior there. What do you think? I think Chinese can probably experiment with such approach in one of their experimental cities ;-)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lets be clear here. The aim here is to let you sit back, browse the web, and click on Google ads.
this meme of everything google has to relate back to ads is wrong and needs to be retired. They already have non-ad revenues above $1B/year. They are clearly investing in non-ad businesses across the board.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> young people already opt to not own cars. Really? Any study on this matter?
Yes. This has been discussed on the Internet quite a bit. Not sure if exact reason has been determined. I'm not young but I sold my car years ago because it's expensive, inconvenient, and seldom used where I now live on the US east coast. Here's one article, you can Google hundreds more. http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/5-reasons-young-people-are...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is a car parked on a street really an imposition on you?
It is (indirectly) to me. I often visit the US, and I'm always amazed that I can't seem to go anywhere walking. The distances to go anywhere are huge. It seems to be that way because cities in the US where designed / build with cars in mind. In Europe cities were obviously not build with cars in mind, and as a result I enjoy here a much higher density of amenities (and suffer much worse driving conditions / parking t…
Huh, why would you think that? I'm not sure there's a major city in the U.S. that wasn't already a major city pre-car. And cities weren't redesigned post-car, that's why a lot of them have road problems. U.S. cities are spread out because of suburbanization. It's only going to increase as the workforce becomes more remote-based.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. Public transport will still be cheaper, so it will still have its place. And I think we'll see small charging spaces that autonomous vehicles can use every block or so. Plus parking for these vehicles will be dense and save loads of space - it is obscene how much of our space is dedicated to parking. I think we'll also see something in between a typical commuting vehicle and a bus. If 10 people in a specific area…
A bus is possible, but if this was a viable business, it should exist already. The only difference is the cost of the driver, so the automated bus might save passengers $5/day. Is that $5/day extra cost keeping this business non-existent at the moment? I'm a little skeptical. Keep in mind your taxi service is cheap because it's on the road all the time. A taxi might make $250/day, and pay the driver half of that cost…
You're already seeing the much-maligned google (and other tech companies) buses in SF and area, so they're just-about-viable for some cases. I've seen a similar business model for hotel-airport shuttle services, and these kind of vehicles are everywhere in denser cities (Hong Kong, Firenze).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> young people already opt to not own cars. Really? Any study on this matter?
Yes. This has been discussed on the Internet quite a bit. Not sure if exact reason has been determined. I'm not young but I sold my car years ago because it's expensive, inconvenient, and seldom used where I now live on the US east coast. Here's one article, you can Google hundreds more. http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/5-reasons-young-people-are...
Seldom used? Even New York City has lots of cars.
I think people are assuming everyone else is just like them.
As for universal car-sharing, it starts with the idea that "cars are idle 90% of the time" and ignores the fact that 80% of people want to use them at the same time: on their morning and evening commutes.
Given that they're capped at 25 mph, these are legally "low-speed vehicles", not cars, which means they're way less regulated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-speed_vehicle
I think when cars themselves came about, speeds of 10mph were considered breakneck and dangerous. I remember reading an old crash report where the author claimed that the driver must have been going at least 10mph and thought it was lucky nobody was hurt. I guess to gain the trust of the public and politicians, self-driving cars must go through a similar process. I have met people who have said self-driving cars will…
I feel as though they really havent embraced the driverless concept with their prototype. Why have seats that are fixed and facing forward? What about a couch? Why is there a dash? The people in the video are essentially watching the car drive itself, when they could be doing anything else. There are probably a multitude of reasons why the things above are the way they are. However, the prototype seems like just anot…
I think we can thank Apple for that.