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A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

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Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#81

Post by megablast »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #75

I used chauffeured cars yesterday, I just shared them with other people. I went to the beach, and had no real plan, I thought I'll go here, clicked on my app and it told me where to go, usually walk a couple of hundred metres. I spent the day travelling and walking around cost about $20 and travelled a couple of hundred kilometres. I took my laptop and worked in between scenic spots. I was thinking about this yesterd…

> One of the real problems with cars is that the cost of highways and roads isn't factored into the travel, it comes from the bucket of government, whereas trains and trams have to include the cost of the rails.

Lots of costs aren't factored into cars.

Cars in the USA kill 40,000 people every year and seriously injure or disable over 4 million. No one really cares about the deaths, unless it happens to someone you know, and then they still keep driving. But that has a huge financial cost as well. Think of all the extra hospitals, equipment, staff, vehicles required to look after those people.

Then the pollution they cause is not costed, and that also kills people and makes them sicker.

And that is just the start.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#82

Post by JustSomeNobody »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #75

I used chauffeured cars yesterday, I just shared them with other people. I went to the beach, and had no real plan, I thought I'll go here, clicked on my app and it told me where to go, usually walk a couple of hundred metres. I spent the day travelling and walking around cost about $20 and travelled a couple of hundred kilometres. I took my laptop and worked in between scenic spots. I was thinking about this yesterd…

> ...if buses were made to be a little bit nicer - something like tour coaches then car usage would go down.

This and if I didn’t have to stand outside in dangerous Florida thunderstorms.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#83

Post by akadruid1 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #13
jacquesm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a complete nobrainer. Right now the bulk of the cars are single occupant. That's because it is the occupants going places, not the cars. As soon as self-driving cars are a reality it will be the cars going places that get added to all the other traffic already there.

Once AVs become commonplace it's entirely possible that the majority of the cars on the road will have zero occupants, either because they're running errands or doing the deadhead leg of an occupied trip. It's absurd to think that transit buses containing dozens of riders are going to be held up behind zero -occupancy vehicles. The roads are going to get much much worse.

There are some rays of sunshine hidden in there though. Transit buses are awful and expensive because they must pack the maximum riders per driver to economical and politically viable. With zero-emission self driving vehicles they will be obsolete because you can redesign buses around passenger convenience and comfort, and you can make each journey much cheaper than the privately owned vehicles can manage. Think self-driving Uber Pool / Lyft Line, but the journey cost is 1/10th of the cost of driving your own vehicle. And you can give occupied vehicles priority over unoccupied ones in software.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#84

Post by spodek »

> During just the single week people had chauffeurs for his study, he saw people already getting comfortable with their AV future. When the study ended, people begged him to keep the chauffeur longer and wondered how they could possibly go back to running their own errands again.

This entitlement happened with flying. Try to suggest people fly less and they call it impossible.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#85

Post by randcraw »

IMHO, this study suffers from two big blunders.

First, nobody is proposing that AV use will ever be FREE. Why didn't they charge a fee for every trip? Making a new service free when the current service costs money is a poor way to assess how the novelty will change car use.

A better study design would have estimated the cost per mile of future AV use, then charged participants accordingly.

Second, no AV comes with a human who can run errands for you, like enter a grocery and push a cart around buying goods. At most, future AVs will only drive up and wait for a preordered purchase to be loaded aboard.

If the study's AVs included any service more than moving passengers around, it crossed well outside the foreseeable use for AVs, especially short term. It's at least as likely that companies like Amazon will offer the same delivery service much more efficiently at lower cost to the customer.

It sounds like the virtual AVs in this study delivered more than real AVs ever will.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#86

Post by chadcmulligan »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #82
chadcmulligan wrote: post #75

I used chauffeured cars yesterday, I just shared them with other people. I went to the beach, and had no real plan, I thought I'll go here, clicked on my app and it told me where to go, usually walk a couple of hundred metres. I spent the day travelling and walking around cost about $20 and travelled a couple of hundred kilometres. I took my laptop and worked in between scenic spots. I was thinking about this yesterd…

> ...if buses were made to be a little bit nicer - something like tour coaches then car usage would go down. This and if I didn’t have to stand outside in dangerous Florida thunderstorms.

Yes nice bus shelters too. I can't help but feel if a fraction of the energy currently devoted to cars was focused on public transport then all the problems from cars would go away.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#87

Post by sooheon »

kjksf wrote: post #59
jfk13 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...it'll lead to more use of transportation. > This is a good thing. Why? Wouldn't it be better if we could reduce our dependence on (mechanised) transportation overall?

Because in all of human history humans have shown zero interest in depriving themselves of things they want. I want transportation. You want transportation. Everyone wants transportation. You, me and everyone else wants to go to the beach, get food delivered, get 1 day shipping from Amazon, eat bananas grown in Chile, drink coffee harvested in Africa, drink wine grown in France, go to a baseball game or visit relativ…

> Because in all of human history humans have shown zero interest in depriving themselves of things they want.

Any malignant cancer shows zero interest in moderating its growth, until its host dies.

I agree with your description of reality, but I think fundamentally we need to price in ecological and medical externalities before I can be quite as optimistic as you are.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#88

Post by ctdonath »

megablast wrote: post #81
chadcmulligan wrote: post #75

I used chauffeured cars yesterday, I just shared them with other people. I went to the beach, and had no real plan, I thought I'll go here, clicked on my app and it told me where to go, usually walk a couple of hundred metres. I spent the day travelling and walking around cost about $20 and travelled a couple of hundred kilometres. I took my laptop and worked in between scenic spots. I was thinking about this yesterd…

> One of the real problems with cars is that the cost of highways and roads isn't factored into the travel, it comes from the bucket of government, whereas trains and trams have to include the cost of the rails. Lots of costs aren't factored into cars. Cars in the USA kill 40,000 people every year and seriously injure or disable over 4 million. No one really cares about the deaths, unless it happens to someone you kn…

Anyone is welcome to move to a low-pollution low-vehicle area and live a no-car life. There's a whole lotta such space in the US.

Yes, cars cause "unfactored costs". They also improve life, making the lives of hundreds of millions possible & prolonged. You can't complain about the costs without comparing the savings.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#89

Post by wbl »

randcraw wrote: post #85

IMHO, this study suffers from two big blunders. First, nobody is proposing that AV use will ever be FREE. Why didn't they charge a fee for every trip? Making a new service free when the current service costs money is a poor way to assess how the novelty will change car use. A better study design would have estimated the cost per mile of future AV use, then charged participants accordingly. Second, no AV comes with a…

Do you pay Ford for every trip?

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#90

Post by chadcmulligan »

ctdonath wrote: post #88
megablast wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the real problems with cars is that the cost of highways and roads isn't factored into the travel, it comes from the bucket of government, whereas trains and trams have to include the cost of the rails. Lots of costs aren't factored into cars. Cars in the USA kill 40,000 people every year and seriously injure or disable over 4 million. No one really cares about the deaths, unless it happens to someone you kn…

Anyone is welcome to move to a low-pollution low-vehicle area and live a no-car life. There's a whole lotta such space in the US. Yes, cars cause "unfactored costs". They also improve life, making the lives of hundreds of millions possible & prolonged. You can't complain about the costs without comparing the savings.

> making the lives of hundreds of millions possible & prolonged

How so?

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