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S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

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Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#421

Post by Aeolun »

housemusicfan wrote: post #388
Aurornis wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A 60lb e-bike can also transport a 200 lb person whilst using far less resources (both to make the vehicle and to operate it) and space. E-bikes are great for the situations, climates, and people who can use them. E-bikes are not a substitute for the majority of people’s transportation needs. I think the young, healthy people who live in moderate climates with good weather, short commutes, and little need to haul a…

They're also ignoring that they smell terrible when arriving to the office. Nothing like showing up to work all sweaty and stinking all day because you're a "cyclist", somehow their coworkers are meant to tolerate this abhorrent behavior. Downvote all you want; it violates the unwritten social contract you accept when working in a shared office with fellow humans. Furthermore, the spandex looks silly and is worthy of…

Most people cycle in their normal clothes at a sedate pace. They no more arrive sweaty at the office than someone that walked.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#422

Post by thaeli »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #254
cashsterling wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why the other reply to this post got downvoted to hell. THe person has a point. Fully autonomous cars are cool... don't get me wrong. But electric cars and autonomous electric/gas cars are probably not the right solution to our person transport needs. using energy to move a 4000 lb vehicle to transport one or two 200 lb humans is not energy-efficient... most of the energy is spent just moving the vehicle…

E-bikes are a non-started due to theft problems. If you think coning of a robo-taxi is bad, have a few prowlers coming by every hour looking for a bike to poach, it is much worse for the e-bike crowd. If you are going with taxis/ubers/personal transit anyways, I think autonomous makes a lot of sense. They basically allow you to optimize your road bandwidth if taken to an extreme level (which I'm sure more authoritari…

Unless we're ever ready to start treating bike thieves like horse thieves, that's unlikely to ever change. And I doubt we'll ever have the political will to do that, or even a kinder gentler version of it.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#423

Post by ChatGTP »

dekhn wrote: post #115

"Skyrocket" is a word people use when they don't have the data to support their claim, but want to make it sound as extreme as possible. When I hear "skyrocket" I think "several orders of magnitude in a very short time". But the source of the quote with skyrocket, basically admits that they didn't have any quantitative evidence to support a massive change in incidents. Remember: reality is banal. Things are far bette…

Unless you provide counter evidence, you're also just making baseless claims too?

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#424

Post by dumpsterdiver »

bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #411
Aurornis wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A 60lb e-bike can also transport a 200 lb person whilst using far less resources (both to make the vehicle and to operate it) and space. E-bikes are great for the situations, climates, and people who can use them. E-bikes are not a substitute for the majority of people’s transportation needs. I think the young, healthy people who live in moderate climates with good weather, short commutes, and little need to haul a…

People’s transportation needs have been built around the existence of the car. The actual needs — commuting, running errands, visiting friends — can be accomplished just as easily on an e bike, if only we built cities without cars in mind.

> People’s transportation needs have been built around the existence of the car.

That's kind of like saying that the needs of the people who traversed the Oregon Trail were built around wagons. The wagon didn't come first. First came the need to transport goods.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#425

Post by kodah »

bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #411
Aurornis wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A 60lb e-bike can also transport a 200 lb person whilst using far less resources (both to make the vehicle and to operate it) and space. E-bikes are great for the situations, climates, and people who can use them. E-bikes are not a substitute for the majority of people’s transportation needs. I think the young, healthy people who live in moderate climates with good weather, short commutes, and little need to haul a…

People’s transportation needs have been built around the existence of the car. The actual needs — commuting, running errands, visiting friends — can be accomplished just as easily on an e bike, if only we built cities without cars in mind.

This is a silly oft-repeated notion. The city of Portland had maintained bikes alongside cars for decades and was the most bike friendly city in the country - still primarily built for cars because of the snow we get up here. That only ended when we expanded buses and trains alongside getting rid of our cities traffic division.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#426

Post by projectileboy »

Aurornis wrote: post #234
cashsterling wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why the other reply to this post got downvoted to hell. THe person has a point. Fully autonomous cars are cool... don't get me wrong. But electric cars and autonomous electric/gas cars are probably not the right solution to our person transport needs. using energy to move a 4000 lb vehicle to transport one or two 200 lb humans is not energy-efficient... most of the energy is spent just moving the vehicle…

> A 60lb e-bike can also transport a 200 lb person whilst using far less resources (both to make the vehicle and to operate it) and space. E-bikes are great for the situations, climates, and people who can use them. E-bikes are not a substitute for the majority of people’s transportation needs. I think the young, healthy people who live in moderate climates with good weather, short commutes, and little need to haul a…

Go ahead and downvote me all to hell, but the comments in this thread from bike enthusiasts sound like Trump apologists - they are alike in their adamant refusal to acknowledge reality. Do you think any amount or quality of bike infrastructure is going to make most people willing to bike in harsh winter climates? And no, Copenhagen nor Amsterdam have harsh winter climates. Look, I too think it’s crazy that we’ve built our society around cars, but saying that everyone should ride e bikes year round is such an ageist, ableist load of horse shit that I don’t know why I’m even surprised to see it on HN.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#427

Post by lacrimacida »

I’ll get really pissed if i get run over by a robotaxy (and if I survive of course) but who gets the blame? And is this being equivalent to being harmed by robots? What the hell have we done and what the hell are we searching for, we already have people who could, need and should be doing those jobs. Most likely technology will get there but it better be tested and retested for decades before being widely adopted.

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#428

Post by reaperducer »

bshipp wrote: post #397
reaperducer wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm debating about renewing my truck license for this reason. If it's taking this long for automobiles to be approved and accepted, it'll be 30 years before trucking is automated. Trucks and cars are different. They've been running automated big rigs between Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and El Paso for a few years now.

I hadn't heard that, but a cursory Google search indicates that Kodiak is building one of these systems. https://kodiak.ai/ Given the significant weight and danger of death for other drivers, it'll be years until legislators allow their "safety drivers" to be eliminated from the equation. This makes the AI system more akin to enhanced cruise control than robotic trucking.

It's been in the newspapers down there quite a bit. Mostly Houston and San Antonio.

Here's one article about Volvo:

"Companies such as IKEA, UPS and FedEx have begun using autonomous trucks to make long haul trips across Texas, most often along I-45 between Dallas and Houston. In 2017, the U.S. Department of Transportation designated Texas as one of that nation's 10 proving grounds for autonomous vehicle testing. And Texas lawmakers have encouraged autonomous-vehicle development by making sure traffic laws do not encumber the companies." https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/retail/article/vol...

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#429

Post by bitsage »

projectileboy wrote: post #426
Aurornis wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A 60lb e-bike can also transport a 200 lb person whilst using far less resources (both to make the vehicle and to operate it) and space. E-bikes are great for the situations, climates, and people who can use them. E-bikes are not a substitute for the majority of people’s transportation needs. I think the young, healthy people who live in moderate climates with good weather, short commutes, and little need to haul a…

Go ahead and downvote me all to hell, but the comments in this thread from bike enthusiasts sound like Trump apologists - they are alike in their adamant refusal to acknowledge reality. Do you think any amount or quality of bike infrastructure is going to make most people willing to bike in harsh winter climates? And no, Copenhagen nor Amsterdam have harsh winter climates. Look, I too think it’s crazy that we’ve buil…

Widespread bike adoption, especially in the US, is idealistic, but it’s still more realistic than self driving cars being able to solve our transportation woes anytime soon

Re: S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’

#430

Post by codeka »

mediumdeviation wrote: post #217
dekhn wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a rocket blasting off, it's a rocket failing to reach orbit by barely clearing the launch platform. More importantly: that chart isn't normalized by miles driven. As the companies have been ramping up, you'd expect (under a random model) that incidents would go up. It could also be explained by greater knowledge of SDCs, increased news coverage, and more awareness of how to report incidents. More important…

Per mile incident rate is a measure only the companies care about. Why wouldn't the city care about an increase in the total number of traffic incidents? Especially when the self-driving cars are not displacing human drivers, so at the end of the day the roads are getting less safe.

If you care about absolute numbers, then you need to compare it against human-caused incidents too. If there's 100,000 human-caused incidents then AVs going from 3 -> 300 isn't even a blip.
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