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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

#81

Post by spaceman_2020 »

standardUser wrote: post #35
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.

That is what government regulations are for. No one freaks about about Amtrak suddenly deciding who can and can't ride their trains.

True, but the self-driving cars argument has always been that if all cars on the road are replaced by self-driving cars, you will have no road deaths.

Which pretty much means that in this future, you will have no choice but to use a self-driving car. Which gives disproportionate power to automobile/SDC companies.

If the only motorized way to move from point A to B was Amtrak, I would be worried about the power Amtrak has over my physical movement too.

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

#82

Post by computing »

The SF dilemma:

- can’t own a car because expensive, no parking, will get broken into

- can’t use a bike because roads are dangerous for bikers and bike will get stolen if parked outside

- can’t use uber/lyft because expensive, companies abuse drivers

- can’t use public transport, because it doesn’t cover enough of the city, timetable unpredictable, can be dangerous or unpleasant

- can’t use self-driving cars, because they occasionally interfere with public services, are run by big tech

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

#83

Post by supermatt »

mlyle wrote: post #42
supermatt wrote: post #26

They should simply be held to the same standard as any other road user. Whoever is ultimately responsible for these cars should also be responsible for the traffic offenses. Prosecute them. 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.

> 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? Full-time professional drivers are subject to the same rules as casual drivers. They should program them not to perform traffic offenses.

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

#84

Post by lisasays »

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.

That's what 24/7 driverless cars can enable

If the prospect of this happening was somehow grounded in reality, that is.

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

#85

Post by _ea1k »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #16
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.

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.

TBH, that's a fallacy. You don't have to get rid of literally every human driver to get vastly better safety for VRUs.

Just reducing it to only the people who choose to drive will make a big difference.

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

#86

Post by _ea1k »

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.

Nothing will stop someone from building a SDC that doesn't have the ability to be locked out like that.

The tech to do this is getting easier each year.

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

#87

Post by sundaeofshock »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #67
gWPVhyxPHqvk wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a place not suitable for human life.

Well, hundreds of millions of people already live here.

Not for much longer. In the 20 - 30 years, those areas will become uninhabitable.

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

#88

Post by mlyle »

supermatt wrote: post #83
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? Full-time professional drivers are subject to the same rules as casual drivers. They should program them not to perform traffic offenses.

Because perfection probably isn't attainable. Exceeding human performance by a large margin should be good enough. There is no reason to compare a fleet driving 500,000 hours (or much more) in a year to one person driving 300 hours in a year.

A single professional driver cannot drive hundreds of thousands of hours in a year.

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

#89

Post by galeso »

mlyle wrote: post #58
jkelleyrtp wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seemingly Paris has done a great job over the past 2-3 years.

Paris has done great in climbing up to a bit more than 15% of daily trips by bike. My point is: even the bicycle capitals of the world (Amsterdam, etc) have equal car and bike trips per day, and it's taken a long time to get there.

IMHO, San Francisco's Telegraph Hill neighborhood with it's 31.5% grade will take longer than Paris to become bike friendly.

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

#90

Post by galeso »

mlyle wrote: post #59
jonas21 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it sure looks like self-driving cars are still a fair bit worse on the second. How so? We hear about the self-driving car incidents because they're required to write up reports whenever something happens (and it also makes for a good news story). That's not the case with human drivers.

We're generating a whole lot more videos and fire department complaints about Cruise vehicles doing bad things at emergency scenes than you'd expect for such a small number of vehicles. It's also the least structured portion with the least clear rules than any other part of the driving task, so it stands to reason it would be worse.

In 2022 there was about one formal complaint per week. Hopefully, there has been a reduction in 2023.

My solution, would be to have free or low-cost self-driving (to keep the cost down) buses and ban cars including taxis. That should move a lot of people and clear out the streets.

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