Earlier quoted context omitted.
Over a million people die annually from traffic accidents.
Kinda circular logic though
Dunno. Cars are killing people so make them smart so they don't. The other option of having no cars isn't happening.
We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets
351–360 of 395 posts
Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
Out of all the tech problems to solve, driverless cars or driverless taxis has always baffled me. It’s a very complex thing to solve with a zillion edge cases. And for what net gain? What incredible inconvenience are we trying to solve? Lack of good public transit? Let’s solve that instead. Millions of cars driverless or not are not a great solution to anything.
It’s blown my mind too. We would rather simulate consciousness than put down some tracks.
It’s not feasible to run tracks down every street and dirt road. Each switch is a point of mechanical failure that requires a little intelligence to operate safely. And people and animals would still get run over.
Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does, just not on the internet. There's no stakes here (the internet) for it to matter if you swear or not. Your attitude on the internet won't result in any meaningful feedback, by default. Someone has to be watching from a more strict environment for it to matter what you say on the internet. It needs to affect your job, or your wife needs to read your posts, or a moderator needs to clamp down on you. The commun…
This is a great diverging discussion about the "censorship" and the commenting style in public forums. Let me add something: when I was writing the original comment that started all this, I wanted it to be funny, catchy, snarky, and karma-point-worthy. So, I decided to put a swear word as a stylistic choice. Then, to add some extra to the short comment, I decided to poke fun at the whole FCC bleeping regulation. Here…
Well it's pretty clear I injected my own world view onto your comment and enjoyed it.
The FCC bleeping regulation doesn't really interest me, it's mild irritant in media..
It's slowly becoming obvious to me that the English-speaking cultures (UK, US, AUS, CAN, ect) are sculpted to interpret the same content in their own cultural view and it all somehow works even though we're constantly talking past/parrallel to each other.
Watching an American historian's reaction to philomena cunk peice, showed me how much he enjoys the literal-ness of her straight faced jokes, the same jokes I see as boldly satirical comments made for chuckles. And it somehow works for both cultures.
With that in mind, communicating anything worthwhile over internet comments is obviously orders of magnitude harder because of the cultural barriers. And the cracks between worldviews run deep.. and are starting to show.. I don't really know how to comment to other cultures accurately anymore.
Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a reasonable timeframe and level of investment Compared to the time-frame and investments on which alternatives? It might take 40 years for self driving cars to improve and have enough deployments to significantly reduce the number of accidents, but at least there is a path there and it will happen at some point. Getting americans to use public transit, requires not only investment in public transit: it requires a…
Death rates have already been trending downward for decades[0] There are a whole host of technologies that exist and have been invented to improve safety, that fall short of full self driving. From vehicle design, to improved road designs, and changes is laws (drunk driving being a major example). Self driving advocates treat it like the messiah that must save us, but there is plenty that can be done to continue to m…
That's the wrong graph to look at.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/27/us/pedestrian-deaths-2022...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/27/upshot/road-deaths-pedest...
Now compare with the Netherlands: https://youtu.be/5aNtsWvNYKE?t=36
Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
WMATA sucks. a car is extremely useful in the dmv. too many service interruptions, doesn't work late night, underfunded, homeless, getting robbed by youth
I used to live in DC and took the DC Metro countless times. I never had or saw problems with crime, though perhaps it was because I was usually in northern Virginia and not the southeast part of DC. However, the level of service is not great; it takes too long between trains, it's really terrible later at night, and it just doesn't go that many places, so you need a car if your source or destination isn't close to th…
I assume NoVA is fine, but parts of DC/PG county are rougher at night walking to and from stops.
it's possible to rely on it, but there are a lot services outages that will mess you up
Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re not the only one. It seems to me we should be trying to get rid of cars in favour of mass transport or two-wheel personal transport. Having personal transport in the form of cars makes little sense in cities where space is at a premium. Where I live, to get across the city on public transport takes 40 minutes and a bus change. I can cycle it in 20. Replacing human-driven cars with driverless cars is going to m…
Ah this is first comment on HN I see that ever acknowledged two-wheel personal transport. In Asian countries which have even denser community and worse infrastructure, it's practically the miracle answer. I'm actually a bit surprised when I discover that western countries just, doesn't use it at all, or if they do it's the big variant that's almost as space-filling as a car anyway. It's the densest we can pack people…
Check out the Netherlands:
• https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8?t=895
• https://youtu.be/SDXB0CY2tSQ?t=305
• https://youtu.be/ZsrVP7p33Ng?t=605
• https://youtu.be/SDXB0CY2tSQ?t=807
• https://youtu.be/VWDFgzAjr1k?t=664s
• https://youtu.be/bMJaMy-0ChA?t=268
• https://youtu.be/uxykI30fS54?t=448
Freiburg, Germany is nice as well: https://youtu.be/6Vil5KC7Bl0?t=827
Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
“What incredible inconvenience are we trying to solve?” 40,000 deaths in the United States every year. Hundreds of thousands of costly accidents We can’t get great transportation even in the New York City area. We have 0 miles of high-speed rail, while China built 25,000 it’s great that you want to start building some mass transit, but it’ll take a century if we start now. Let’s start by having trains take you to the…
There are over 30 US cities with trains to the airport. Another half dozen on the way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airport_rail_link_syst... US also has almost 350 miles of high speed rail, not 0. The Northeast is where it’s all concentrated with Acela being the fastest. If you live in a major city in the States it’s often way easier and faster to take rail. In Seattle for instance you can beat a driver to…
That Wikipedia list is missing chicago. If you happen to live near the blue line you can ride it all the way into ohare.
San Francisco is already connected via Bart and caltrain can take you to the Bart station before the airport, so you have to transfer. Just like at Oakland where you have to transfer to a tram that links the airport to Bart.
San Jose being connected by train is an egregious bending of the truth. The truth is there is no train to San Jose Airport. There is just a bus.
Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
Out of all the tech problems to solve, driverless cars or driverless taxis has always baffled me. It’s a very complex thing to solve with a zillion edge cases. And for what net gain? What incredible inconvenience are we trying to solve? Lack of good public transit? Let’s solve that instead. Millions of cars driverless or not are not a great solution to anything.
Did you know that car ownership in the Netherlands has steadily increased over the years? Despite known for its small size, flat terrain, biking and public transport friendly policies? - [1] Flexibility, comfort and convenience are car’s benefits, and people value that. Despite the disadvantages of higher cost or the burden of parking. The article highlights the older people group, which is only getting larger. I can…
Self-driving is a distraction from the fundamentally unsustainable car-centric world we've built. Would it be nice to have? Sure. Will it solve the underlying problems? No.
All countries should be moving towards what the Netherlands is doing. Yeah, the 588 cars/1000 people [1] isn't ideal, but it sure beats the 908/1000 of the US.
Also, I think car ownership may not be the right metric to look at, most journeys are probably made by the young - commuting, etc. I wonder what the stats look like when adjusted for miles driven, considering car ownership in the NL for the 18-29 age bracket is low and slowly dropping.
Hmm: https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2021/22/nearly-8-in-10-drivers...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_...
Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
Death rates have already been trending downward for decades[0] There are a whole host of technologies that exist and have been invented to improve safety, that fall short of full self driving. From vehicle design, to improved road designs, and changes is laws (drunk driving being a major example). Self driving advocates treat it like the messiah that must save us, but there is plenty that can be done to continue to m…
That's the wrong graph to look at. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/27/us/pedestrian-deaths-2022... https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/27/upshot/road-deaths-pedest... Now compare with the Netherlands: https://youtu.be/5aNtsWvNYKE?t=36
While I agree with the thrust of your statement, the point I was making with the graph was that we have been making driving safer over the last several decades. Self driving isn’t some panacea that we must hold our breath for to make improvements.
Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
Out of all the tech problems to solve, driverless cars or driverless taxis has always baffled me. It’s a very complex thing to solve with a zillion edge cases. And for what net gain? What incredible inconvenience are we trying to solve? Lack of good public transit? Let’s solve that instead. Millions of cars driverless or not are not a great solution to anything.
You've got a lot of answers already but ... wow... Allow me to say first of all that I agree we should have denser cities/towns, better public transport to get around, and we should all use it more. But some stats (no citation, these are rattling around in my memory, feel free to fact check). 90% of cars are not utilised 90% of the time. That is insane wastage for energy intensively manufactured, expensive pieces of…
There's no need to imagine, what you're describing already exists in Europe. We already know how to do this with today's tech, no need to wait for anything.
It's as simple as public transport + bicycles + dense mixed use zoning.
> Then imagine cars halve in size and drive bumper to bumper and twice the speed.
You're describing trains/trams.