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We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

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Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#361

Post by Mawr »

mrshadowgoose wrote: post #154
polalavik wrote: post #17

Earlier 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.

A lot of people want to go directly from point A to B in the comfort of a car. You can't just brush that desire away just because you personally don't value it. And regardless of how America should have built up rail/bus infrastructure over the last century, the reality is that they didn't, and a lot of its cities are already setup to immediately benefit from large self-driving fleets of cars. There's still a lot of…

Okay, what's the timescale for self-driving cars? That's right, it's unknown but most likely decades away.

Meanwhile, you could sit down and work out a public transport infra plan using current tech with exact timelines today. Oh and it's proven to work too.

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#362

Post by Mawr »

huytersd wrote: post #263
mrastro wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we (North America) had more walkable streets a lot of these problems would be solved: grocery stores are easier to place in population centers a short distance with less car and more foot traffic and you can rent a car for occasional "off-road" recreational driving. In terms of transportation and city design, the US could learn a lot from Europe if it weren't so addicted to cars. It's better for the environment, m…

Again you’re talking about dense population centers. Americans for the most part don’t want to live like that. They want stand alone houses with large yards in the suburbs. Those are not densely populated enough to make walking to all the businesses you need feasible. Rental cars are a pain in the butt. Spend an hour getting one. You need someone to come with you to drive the vehicle you arrived in back or pay for ex…

As for rentals, car sharing exists too, it's fast and easy: https://youtu.be/OObwqreAJ48?t=44

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#363

Post by Mawr »

nradov wrote: post #326
idontwantthis wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a walkable environment you don’t go to Costco because you don’t need to cram two weeks of shopping into one gigantic trip that takes a long time. You can walk to stores for things you need when you need them. The “grocery bag problem” is a problem caused by cars.

I don't have time to go shopping so frequently.

You wouldn't "go shopping", you'd just stop by the grocery store that's along the sidewalk/cycle path to your workplace.

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#364

Post by Mawr »

huytersd wrote: post #42
polalavik wrote: post #17

Earlier 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.

Public transit is no good. I don’t want to walk to a station and then share the space with other people. I don’t want to lug grocery bags around. I want to make pit stops. I want to go off road. I want to live in the suburbs or semi rural areas so I can have a lot of land.

> Public transit is no good.

It's easy and convenient:

• https://youtu.be/SDXB0CY2tSQ?t=43

• https://youtu.be/muPcHs-E4qc?t=65

> I don’t want to walk to a station and then share the space with other people. I don’t want to lug grocery bags around.

Alright, use a bicycle then. I hear ebikes are pretty good these days. Or use a micro car if you must: https://youtu.be/B9ly7JjqEb0?t=101.

> I want to make pit stops.

A bicycle is better than a car for this.

> I want to go off road.

Bicycle again, but if you really wanna use a car the few times a year you may wanna go off road, go ahead.

> Want to live in the suburbs or semi rural areas so I can have a lot of land.

By all means, go ahead. Just as long as you pay in full for all the negative externalities you inflict on everyone else by doing so.

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#365

Post by tuatoru »

npunt wrote: post #188
tuatoru wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reads like utterly history-blind fantasy. You need to explain why all the other times and ways we have tried what you propose did not work, and what will be different this time. Start, perhaps, with "The Tyranny of Structurelessness".

Sorry can you be more specific? Humans have lived on and off in community structures throughout history, we evolved as social creatures in these structures. We're proximally further away from these structures in the present time, which has brought up the issues I mentioned. Among other things, a means of allowing proximity to be less of a factor allows us to explore different sized dwellings due to a greater area of…

You talk about creating communities out of preferences, which makes them communities of interest, not traditional communities of kinship and enforced proximity.

The Tyranny of Structurelessness is directly relevant to communities of interest. Hippy communes. Co-housing projects. Cults both secular and religious. Idealistic people who don't understand what is actually necessary. We've been here before, many times. Read up on the 1960s and 70s. We don't live very differently now to then, and self-driving cars won't change that for at least a hundred years.

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#366

Post by Mawr »

mikeshi42 wrote: post #182
polalavik wrote: post #17

Earlier 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.

I was curious about this from the purely monetary perspective - building good public transit is unfortunately very expensive here in the US and probably even more so in California, but how expensive is it relative to self driving cars? Supposedly Google has spent $1.1bn between 2009 and 2015 [0], and Waymo has raised $5.5bn in outside funding, supposedly last valuing it at around $30bn. Cruise is apparently on track…

You're comparing the cost of only self driving tech vs the cost of the entire rail infrastructure.

• Underground parking for 600 cars? 35 million euro - https://youtu.be/mXLqrMljdfU?t=690

• Rebuilding a highway? Half of the transportation budget gone - https://youtu.be/SfZYB-rnejk?t=479

• Adding just one more lane bro to a freeway? $2.2 billion - https://youtu.be/uxykI30fS54?t=840

Take into account the money saved from scaling back car infrastructure:

• lower obvious direct building and maintenance costs

• reduced healthcare spending - increased activity levels [1], lower local pollution [2]

• lower stress thanks to reduced noise levels

• less of a need to spend money on counteracting the negative effects of climate change

• freeing up a significant chunk of the valuable ~30% of space in cities taken up by oversized roads and parking lots -> more housing, denser cities -> less travel needed -> lower costs

Sum all that up and then tell me self-driving is cheaper than rail.

[1]: "If every Londoner walked or cycled for 20 minutes a day we would prevent 1 in 6 early deaths and save the NHS 1.7bn pounds in treatment costs over the next 25 years." ( http://content.tfl.gov.uk/segregated-cycling-infrastructure-...)

[2]: "Each year air pollution causes thousands of Londoners to die prematurely and is associated with an increased risk of Londoners developing life-changing illnesses like cancer, lung disease, dementia and asthma. [...] So far, the ULEZ has contributed to over 1 million hospital admissions averted by 2050." (https://www.london.gov.uk/programmes-strategies/environment-...)

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#367

Post by Mawr »

mistercheph wrote: post #307
ajross wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a reasonable argument. The point isn't "The robot is good because you can imagine a human making the same mistake", it's "We wouldn't think this accident was notable at all if it were a human driver, so we at least recognize we're holding the robot to a higher standard". The truth is that virtually every traffic accident can be prevented on some level by every vehicle involved. People (you included, I assu…

You're right, Waymo and Cruise and Venture Cap are on a moral crusade to prevent driving fatalities, this isn't about high margin robotaxis and delusional hopes of accidentally creating AGI with a CV NN. And I agree with you, what the cruise vehicle did in this case, a human would totally do exactly the same thing. I mean humans are fucking neanderthals, have you ever seen one behind the fucking wheel of a car? They…

> I personally know that every time I let my tesla go FSD, I'm only intervening every 90 seconds because of the unreasonably high standards I hold it to. Self driving cars only need to make the right decision like ~80% of the time. That's good enough, it's better than most human drivers.

That's only good enough if the type of the wrong decisions it makes is the same as the ones a human would make. Otherwise the car will seem unpredictable to human drivers and therefore dangerous.

A few baffling Tesla FSD examples:

• Misleading turn signals: https://youtu.be/2VWyaAzwMT0?t=702, https://youtu.be/2VWyaAzwMT0?t=723

• Failure to yield: https://youtu.be/2VWyaAzwMT0?t=1180

• Randomly stopping: https://youtu.be/2VWyaAzwMT0?t=1215

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#368

Post by lazide »

nvy wrote: post #350
lazide wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They take it, but are they comfortable doing so? Or just have no better alternatives? Most women I knew in those cities preferred riding with friends or a boyfriend, some even took taxis to avoid the metros at night if they couldn’t. But that was also a crapshoot, because some taxi drivers are even worse and then you definitely won’t have anyone else around. Most moved out of the cities entirely when they got kids fo…

You're not going to convince me that the pickup truck hellscape in the US is superior.

When did I ever argue that?

I’m just calling bullshit on the public transit is perfect fairytale. Which is common here.

Both have pros and cons, and depending on who you are and what you’re doing, the balance will shift to different places.

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#369

Post by Mawr »

mistercheph wrote: post #218
sp332 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are lucrative in the sense that they divert energy from trains and other public transportation infrastructure, keeping demand for cars high.

Why try to engineer effective solutions to transport that have known benefits and costs when we have can burn billions of dollars in the hopes that someday in the glorious future, everything will be the same but you can check instagram while in the driver's seat?

Oh, but you already can check instagram while driving, people do it all the time :)

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#370

Post by huytersd »

Mawr wrote: post #364
huytersd wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public transit is no good. I don’t want to walk to a station and then share the space with other people. I don’t want to lug grocery bags around. I want to make pit stops. I want to go off road. I want to live in the suburbs or semi rural areas so I can have a lot of land.

> Public transit is no good. It's easy and convenient: • https://youtu.be/SDXB0CY2tSQ?t=43 • https://youtu.be/muPcHs-E4qc?t=65 > I don’t want to walk to a station and then share the space with other people. I don’t want to lug grocery bags around. Alright, use a bicycle then. I hear ebikes are pretty good these days. Or use a micro car if you must: https://youtu.be/B9ly7JjqEb0?t=101 . > I want to make pit stops. A bi…

A bicycle is trash (fun to ride, not that useful). What are you going to carry on your bike? Five bags? That’s not even going to get your family through 3 days. I don’t want to go 5 miles away, I want to go 200. With bikes and walking, your world is small. Electric cars powered by renewable energy get rid of most of the negative externalities. For those that remain, that’s too bad because just like eating meat I’m not going to stop doing it because that’s what makes me happy. I’m only living as humanity has always done, people in dense urban centers are the anomaly when viewed historically. I probably more than make up for any remaining externalities by growing my own meat and eggs and partially growing my own vegetables. That’s probably thousands of miles of transportation emissions saved.
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