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Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

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Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

be careful what you wish for, you are giving up your freedom to movement in the name of security. you might make the argument that you can hail a cab. that's more expensive than owning your own car and with self driving cabs you will lose your privacy when you use them. any movement between 2 points will always be recorded with at least video and as you are moving, someone else other than you can pinpoint your exact…

We do not have a freedom to movement _by motor vehicle_ in the US. It is a privilege licensed by the State and regularly revoked through due process or expiry. While your concern about mobility and privacy are valid, I would contend that public safety is what it’s to be weighed against. Some people really are better riders than drivers.

We do not have a "right", in practice, we have some degree of practical freedom.

Of course people who really don't like that freedom will play up the privilige vs right angle as they see fit to advance their goals.

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#572

I live in one of the areas they are actively testing/training in. Their cars consistently behave better and more safely than most human drivers that I’m forced to share the road with. As semi-autonomous and autonomous cars become the norm, I would adore to see obtaining a drivers license ratchet up in difficulty in order to remove dangerous human drivers from the road.

> would adore to see obtaining a drivers license ratchet up in difficulty in order to remove dangerous human drivers from the road A Manhattan driver’s license addendum might be the way to do it. Keep a low bar for where one might need a car. But to enter Manhattan, you need to be autonomous or specially licensed.

That's gonna be great when other states start doing it and it becomes an absurd maze of predatory fees, reciprocity and political footballs.

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the state obviously has photo evidence. So you need to show that either the photo was taken in error, that it misidentified your vehicle or that you weren't the legal owner at the time.

That's absolutely hilarious. They take a photo of something approximating your vehicle that shows your plate number, toss it in a mail system that loses more than 0.5% of the class of mail used, then according to another poster in NY they impound your car after all this. Anyplace with the slightest adherence to the rule of law requires the state to positively identify an actual person, not a vehicle owned by a person…

A couple things wrong here:

1. Camera-issued tickets are not moving violations

2. Your car will not be impounded for failure to pay (maybe unless you have many, many unpaid tickets)

If the photo is bad, you can dispute it! That isn't presumption of guilt, it's the legal system working exactly as intended: one side presents their evidence, and the other side has a chance to respond.

Even if USPS loses 0.5% of mail (I am skeptical; that seems crazy high) the state sends at least three notices, so the chances of you missing every notice of your infraction is something like one in a million.

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#574
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Semi-related, but just once in my life, I want to hear a mayoral candidate say: “I endorse broken windows theory, but for drivers. You honk when there’s no emergency, block the box, roll through a stop sign — buddy that’s a ticket. Do it enough and we’ll impound your car.” Who knows, maybe we’ll start taking our cues from our polite new robot driver friends…

This always astounds me about cities who have a reputation for people breaking certain traffic laws. In St. Louis, people run red lights for 5+ seconds after it turns red, and no one seems to care to solve it, but if they'd just station police at some worst-offender lights for a couple months to write tickets, people would catch on pretty quickly that it's not worth the risk. I have similar thoughts on people using t…

What the actual rules are matter far less than that traffic is predictable. Like in Boston it's typical for a few cars to get into the intersection to take a left, traffic goes around them in both directions and only on the change to red to they go. Not technically legal but normal. 4-way stops where nobody stops and everyone times their roll unless there's a reason to. Also not technically legal but normal. Nobody with an opinion worth caring about complains about these things. Blowing lights many seconds after they've changed is still wild IMO.

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#575
post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say that. I said they'd panic and throw their vehicle into reverse. Cars/trucks can take the hit, motorcycles/bicycles not so much.

Huge skepticism that bicycles and motorcycles were getting backed into in any appreciable quantities.

How many people you willing to put in the hospital to prevent people from technically running reds on the yellow-red transition?

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in my country they removed the cameras in the second largest city after a trial period. It took too much effort to filter out police colleagues running a red (in police or civilian vehicles).

Ah that is easy here. 1) civilian vehicles never get leeway 2) we know the license plates of all police cars so we just filter it. Or actually only do so when they use proper permission to run a light

Simpler

Plate lookup returns state/municipal as the owner -> ticket gets discarded.

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#578
post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because motorists don’t fund all road upkeep, cyclists who consume those very same roads are entitled to pay none of it? What exactly is your point? For the record, I support closing that gap, in addition to taxing the odometer on electric vehicles which don’t contribute to gas tax revenue but use roadways like other motorists.

> Because motorists don’t fund all road upkeep, cyclists who consume those very same roads are entitled to pay none of it? I don't think you understood what you wrote. Non-motorists subsidize motorists. Feel free to look up the % of funding for roads that gas tax or w/e accounts for in your country. Also look up the fourth power law, that'll tell you how much tax a cyclist should pay compared to a driver in terms of…

More than half of the US doesn’t pay income taxes. Your point about non-motorists subsidizing motorists is nonsensical in this context. At least some of the taxes motorists pay are directly used for road maintenance.

Roads deteriorate whether they’re used or not. If cyclists want to use them, they should pay to maintain them. I don’t know why you find this idea so controversial. Adjust the fees commensurate with their weight if you want, but by definition those fees should not be zero.

Roads are obviously expensive, hence why it is repulsive that cyclists pay nothing to build or maintain them, but actively increase the danger on them and degrade the efficiency of using them.

Pollution? In what world do cyclists not require fuel to operate? Cyclists use the most expensive fuel possible to operate: consumable calories. We burn fuel to operate machinery to produce food, then transport it to stores and then transport it home, cook it, and then use only a portion of the available calories to operate a bicycle because the human body isn’t 100% efficient.

You’re delusional if you somehow think cycling is good for the environment.

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think taxes on gasoline are for? You’re absolutely right, roadways are insanely expensive. That’s why it’s infuriating to see entire lanes expropriated for cyclists.

> What do you think taxes on gasoline are for? Paying for our highways circa 1993 [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_Sta...

You realize states levy taxes on gas too, right? And that those taxes are remitted to city governments to build and maintain infrastructure?

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's absolutely hilarious. They take a photo of something approximating your vehicle that shows your plate number, toss it in a mail system that loses more than 0.5% of the class of mail used, then according to another poster in NY they impound your car after all this. Anyplace with the slightest adherence to the rule of law requires the state to positively identify an actual person, not a vehicle owned by a person…

A couple things wrong here: 1. Camera-issued tickets are not moving violations 2. Your car will not be impounded for failure to pay (maybe unless you have many, many unpaid tickets) If the photo is bad, you can dispute it! That isn't presumption of guilt, it's the legal system working exactly as intended: one side presents their evidence, and the other side has a chance to respond. Even if USPS loses 0.5% of mail (I…

Only by the most ridiculous fiction is running a red light or speeding not a moving violation. They've intentionally pretended like it's not to get around the due process involved.
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