291–300 of 556 posts
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Dont pretend like its normal to go through the hassle and expense of car rental just to do a routine activity
Are you thinking of full on rental like Enterprise or car sharing like Zipcar? Zipcar is pretty dang easy and it's what car-free people think when you absolutely need a car for a trip.
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You can absolutely bike in the cold, and in the rain, and even in light snow. Also, public transit & busses can get you further without even the dreaded prospect of burning a calorie. Removing free rental of public space to park your private vehicle is something I _do_ endorse though!
After commuting by bike for a number of years the only weather than I found sensible to avoid was very strong winds - I got blown off my bike onto the side of a lorry once, fortunately I was OK but I did get a scare!
It's easy to make polarized judgements, like "AI driving can only follow lanes or drive on wide broad sunny streets". I recently watched a lecture where a guy from Waymo talked and demoed some situations, check out the 3 seconds or so in the timestamp in this video which made me re-evaluate that pessimism a bit: https://youtu.be/Q0nGo2-y0xY?t=865 Sure it's still nowhere near the general understanding necessary for co…
This is why airplane auto-pilots disengage when they detect failing sensors, giving humans enough time to take over. Unfortunately in the case of cars, there is not enough time to hand over to a human.
I don't understand why there is so much focus on automobiles instead of just about everything else. In every other instance - airplanes, boats, long-haul trucking - the problem in significantly less complex to solve. The only tangible reason I see for such disproportionate focus is some sense of false futurism; aka, driver-less cars have become the 'flying cars' of our times.
If we expect driverless cars to be further delayed and we continue building our cities to encourage micromobility (bikes, electric scooters, segregated lanes, car free streets, etc.) then at which point does the value of the driverless car become moot because we no longer drive? Does this sound unlikely? Consider European cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam which have encouraged cycling over the last two decades and…
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We all have cars because cars are incredibly useful; Got 4 young kids and you need to get groceries for the week? This only work that way because that's how your life is structured, not that it is a law of nature. If you live near a grocery store, you wouldn't have to buy enough grocery to last you a week. You can just buy what you need.
If you've got 4 kids all under 4yo, you're kind of screwed no matter what vehicle you drive. For biking, you'd probably be looking at a Bakfiets with electric assist plus a trailer. Presuming we've sufficiently eliminated car traffic and the roads are safe for kids, it's also likely that at least one of those kids can bike themselves to the store with you.
I don't get why we can't create a "full self driving suitable zone", with standarized road paint, signs, beacons, traffic lights which broadcast their state on a suitable standar, and maybe a car to car communication mesh. Start small with something like the mortantown prt, even in segregated lanes, and grow from there. I can't see a way to have full self driving capabilities, without helping the vehicles with some c…
We've done this already. It's called "railroad tracks" and the self-driving cars on it are called "trains".
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If you don't need to drive why would you buy a driverless car? I don’t anticipate many people will ever buy a driverless car. The whole concept of buying a car is kind of ridiculous. You pay for it then you continue paying for registration, insurance, maintenance, park, etc all while it sits idle 90% of the time. Driverless cars allow you to be picked up at your front door and dropped off exactly at the spot wherever…
Many people's cars are idle at the same time and in use at the same time. Just because everyone's car is idle 90% of the time doesn't mean that we can replace the fleet with a driverless fleet that is 1/10th the size.
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Taxis are expensive because they require a human to drive them. Hence the reason the SDC could change that dynamic. A shared car that does not require an expensive human to drive it. Another model are shared cars, like dockless scooters and bikes. They are reasonably popular in the Netherlands for example. But they still require quite a bit of planning to ensure the car is available, and they are not always "in front…
> Taxis are expensive because they require a human to drive them. Hence the reason the SDC could change that dynamic. A shared car that does not require an expensive human to drive it. Human driver's only account for 50% - 55% of a cab's cost. https://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-taxis-can-tell... https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-breakdown-of-where-taxi-fa...
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Large aircraft are basically self-driving these days. Pilots can choose to do almost nothing at all from takoff to landing. However, the failure modes are all mostly catastrophic so pilots remain under the assumption that they can slightly increase the survivability rate when the automation fails. Modern drone systems are also have elements of this kind of automation and can fly complex flight paths and station keep…
Long-haul trucking would be a great use-case. Even if you need humans for local pilot guidance, you can queue them up to a "cell phone lot" and courier the last-mile drivers in between shifts of going back & forth. It would also mean drivers would be based more locally to points of loading, rather than having to be constantly on the road away from home.
Which would probably make it much easier to hire drivers, too. Lately, long-haul trucking has had a hard time recruiting people into the profession, because the pay isn't that great and the lifestyle completely destroys any relationship you have. Local trucking doesn't have this problem: a driver can drive for the day and be home for dinner.