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San Francisco may soon get 24/7 driverless cabs. City leaders are fuming

washingtonpost.com

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Re: San Francisco may soon get 24/7 driverless cabs. City leaders are fuming

#71

Post by spaceman_2020 »

BaculumMeumEst wrote: post #44
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you take all human driven cars off the road, you’re not going to get nearly the efficiency and safety you describe. I, for one, don’t want to live in a world where my ability to go anywhere is decided by Google and Uber. Big Tech has way, way too much power already. Please don’t give them any more of it.

> I, for one, don’t want to live in a world where my ability to go anywhere is decided by Google and Uber. Great news! If you join the tens of thousands of people who die from driving related deaths every year in the US, you won’t have to.

As a society, you have to make a decision between perfect freedom and perfect tyranny. Its never a clear cut choice and the reality is always somewhere in between.

But surely I can’t be the only one concerned about companies that already own my digital lives now also encroaching upon my physical life?

Re: San Francisco may soon get 24/7 driverless cabs. City leaders are fuming

#72

Post by minwcnt5 »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #29
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you suggest people do when the weather isn’t quite as nice? Where I live, it gets so brutally hot and humid in the summer that people literally collapse and die if they do anything much outdoors.

San Francisco is not like that though. that's the whole point of the article. They could also take transit.

SF despite being dense and having high transit ridership for a US city is still fairly car oriented. If the endpoints of your trip are not near Muni/BART station it's going to take twice as long on transit. And the hills can make the walking part difficult for people who are elderly, disabled, or need to transport items.

Re: San Francisco may soon get 24/7 driverless cabs. City leaders are fuming

#73

Post by jimlongton »

MostlyStable wrote: post #15

It's entirely possible that this tech isn't yet ready for an expansion, but this article does a shit job of demonstrating that. The alternative is not perfect drivers. The alternative is real human drivers who make all kinds of mistakes every day. I completely believe that these incidents are real, but without comparison to the actual alternative, it's useless information.

> The alternative is real human drivers who make all kinds of mistakes every day.

From a European perspective I would say that in a city the real alternative is a functioning public transport system. Trams, light rail etc are infinitely safer and far cheaper than any form of car based system.

Re: San Francisco may soon get 24/7 driverless cabs. City leaders are fuming

#74

Post by minwcnt5 »

fairity wrote: post #46

I took one of these in Phoenix, and realized how easy it would be to rob/kidnap/assault someone in a SDC. If you simply surround the car on all four sides, the car will refuse to move. All it would take is 4 thugs to surround the vehicle and you would have to give up all your belongings. In the current world, you’d just run one of them over but that’s not an option in SDC’s. This combined with the fact that the cars…

There are probably much less risky targets to rob/kidnap than someone who's inside a metal box of cameras that's monitored by remote operators able to dispatch police.

Re: San Francisco may soon get 24/7 driverless cabs. City leaders are fuming

#75

Post by whazor »

skepticATX wrote: post #23
jseliger wrote: post #5

I think this is just complacency and a bias towards how things are; imagine a world in which biking is safe, pedestrians are safe, and huge amounts of the city don't have to be devoted to parking. That's what 24/7 driverless cars can enable.

Why will self driving cars enable this though? It seems to me that an equally plausible outcome is that we move even further towards cities built solely around the car.

It would be easier to make a street car free. As driverless cabs dont need parking and can use daily updated maps. There would be very little resistance if a street gets converted to a small park. People would have to walk 5 min further to pick up a cab.

Re: San Francisco may soon get 24/7 driverless cabs. City leaders are fuming

#76

Post by minwcnt5 »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #54
mlyle wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Revoke their drivers license. Impound the vehicles. > Im not against driverless cars, but I am against unbalanced treatment of road users, legal persons and natural alike. OK, well, ... surely we need to have some kind of not-exactly-equal treatment. If I commit 4 traffic offenses in a year, I'll get a suspended license. If Google commits 4 traffic offenses in a year across, say, 5,000 cars and 50,000 vehicle hours…

Why not? It's the same code across all the cars... it's as if you had a clone factory making clones of driver you.

Under this logic, twins would share the same drivers license. :)

Re: San Francisco may soon get 24/7 driverless cabs. City leaders are fuming

#77

Post by ChatGTP »

fairity wrote: post #57
ChatGTP wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would I be purchasing it from Google ? Android Car (tm)?

Google or someone they partner with will likely be an option. Another will be Cruise or whoever they partner with. Or, Tesla.

Not sure that really makes much difference, it will be like buying an android phone. Full of tracking and spyware.

Re: San Francisco may soon get 24/7 driverless cabs. City leaders are fuming

#78

Post by fxtentacle »

skepticATX wrote: post #23
jseliger wrote: post #5

I think this is just complacency and a bias towards how things are; imagine a world in which biking is safe, pedestrians are safe, and huge amounts of the city don't have to be devoted to parking. That's what 24/7 driverless cars can enable.

Why will self driving cars enable this though? It seems to me that an equally plausible outcome is that we move even further towards cities built solely around the car.

Driverless cars can come pick you up, which means you don't care if they park further away from your house, because you don't have to walk that distance.

Also, every parked car is one that isn't being used. So if there is lots of parked cars, that means you would need a lot fewer driverless cabs to replace them.

Re: San Francisco may soon get 24/7 driverless cabs. City leaders are fuming

#79

Post by fxtentacle »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #68
fairity wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I, for one, don’t want to live in a world where my ability to go anywhere is decided by Google and Uber. Seems like a red herring. I think it’s safe to assume that you will be able to own your own SDC, and the faster Google gets this tech scaled, the sooner you can affordably purchase one.

Will the SDC not get any updates over the internet? What Google decides to lock me out? Or show me unskippable ads before starting the car? I don’t think the self driving car cheerleaders have thought this out.

If there's no law to prevent it, "traditional" cars will also soon come with unskippable ads. At least, that's the way how "traditional" TV manufacturers went. And if there is a law against it, Google or VW isn't a meaningful distinction anymore.
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