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Yes, but that much money could be used to feed, clothe, and take care of a lot of people. Why can't they instead spend 1B on buses, which would serve more peop

Yes, but that much money could be used to feed, clothe, and take care of a lot of people. Why can't they instead spend 1B on buses, which would serve more people than support for driverless cars, and 3B on the homeless?

user9982 11y ago
Because that's not how funding works. This is research money, you can't just move money around willy nilly.
enraged_camel 11y ago
>>Yes, but that much money could be used to feed, clothe, and take care of a lot of people. You could make this argument for literally anything that isn't feeding, clothing or taking care of people, which means it is a silly argument.
- horsecaptin 11y ago
  Not a silly argument at all. Every time we say, "lets spend $x on y", it is fair to question whether that money can be used to feed and clothe... or defend.. or fix the infrastructure, etc.
  - euyyn 11y ago
    > whether that money can be used to... Of course it can, there's no reason it couldn't. That doesn't make it a proper challenge. One would be "instead of $4B, $X should be invested on this, because of such and such". X == 0 without details is a big red flag.
zuron7 11y ago
Because if the govt. gave the underprivileged all the money, they wouldn't have any incentive to work hard.
benjiweber 11y ago
Self driving cars have the potential to solve the leading cause of death amongst young people, and save a significant percentage of GDP http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs358/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs358/en/ Seems worth investing in?
- cgio 11y ago
  Valid from this perspective. There is also the negative impact to GDP from increase in unemployment, which might be inescapable though.
- purpled_haze 11y ago
  You are assuming perfection. Have you considered that these cars may cause more deaths? What if a solar flare affected GPS and caused all of the navigation systems to injure or kill almost everyone driving at the same time? While that may be only a remote possibility, there are a myriad of other problems navigation systems may run into that they are unprepared for.
  - euyyn 11y ago
    > that they are unprepared for Certainly the people working on this are clowns that know nothing about safety countermeasures, and don't care about their whole industry going belly up if major accidents happened.
    - smsm42 11y ago
      The same clowns that run software industry and regularly allow major security incidents costing millions of dollars to happen. It's not like nobody knows making a backdoor in a major networking software is not the best practice. It's just that people are people, and they are imperfect. I'm sure people that make those cars are as imperfect as the rest of us, no more, no less.
      - euyyn 11y ago
        It's acknowledging the imperfection of people what makes software an engineering field instead of a hard science. It's not news to anybody. Continuous testing, code reviews, defense in depth, etc. are practiced to deal with that. The engineers that design cars (the "hardware") are as imperfect as anybody else. So are the engineers that design planes' autopilots. Nobody relies on an engineer being perfect, and there's no need to.
ColbyJackRat 11y ago
I suppose you think that we shouldn't fund NASA too because that money could be used to feed starving African children too, right?
afarrell 11y ago
> spend 1B on buses Driverless busses would allow for: * Every dollar spent on busses to go much farther * Vastly improved public transit, which would allow people to live in cheaper areas and still have access to work.
- zizee 11y ago
  Do you know how much it costs to buy a bus? It is not unusual to pay 400k+ for a city bus. Let's say driverless cars will cost $20k each (I have no idea), that's 20 cars per bus. I suggest the only reason taxi trips are so much more expensive than bus rides is the cost of medallions and driver wages. Once driverless cars arrive, public buses will not make sense anymore. http://publictransport.about.com/od/Transit_Vehicles/a/How-Much-Does-A-Bus-Cost-To-Purchase-And-Operate.htm http://publictransport.about.com/od/Transit_Vehicles/a/How-M...
  - purpled_haze 11y ago
    > Once driverless cars arrive, public buses will not make sense anymore. How is that exactly? Buses have routes and schedules. How could you plan a schedule with cars if you don't know where everyone is going? You would have to have excess capacity, that's how. And those extra cars will be more expensive than the bus. Please prove your point with examples.
    - alexhawdon 11y ago
      If the bus is full, I'm sure you're correct. I think there will always be place for mass transit along popular routes. In the UK there are a lot of buses that drive around with only a handful of passengers. It's a subsidised service that's important to lots of people, but ultimately very inefficient. I'd imagine at least 60% of bus movements (not passenger miles) could be replaced with self-driving cars.
    - zizee 11y ago
      This is only an issue during peak times. Most of the time during the day, buses are fairly empty. If driverless car companies use something like uber's surge pricing, so that it is more expensive to travel 1/2hr before/after peak, people will respond, flattening out peak demand. Intelligent routing software will assist, allowing people to car pool to reduce the required number of cars. Finally, let's say if automated cars remove half the riders from buses, the costs of providing buses will need to be spread across half the number of riders, making the economics of running a bus system twice as expensive per passenger. At that point, it makes sense even more sense to replace the buses with cars. The only question will be how long it takes for people to adapt due to existing habits having momentum.
jgreen10 11y ago
About 2000 elderly die of starvation every year, and about 30-40,000 people die in traffic. There are many cases in which the government doesn't have its priorities straight, this is not one of them. It was government funding via DARPA that led private companies to work on self-driving cars. Google simply hired to two winning DARPA Grand Challenge teams. The Internet is another example showing that the government is quite capable, and often necessary in driving technology forward.
- smsm42 11y ago
  I'm sure when the self-driven cars are finally made, everybody would know the government created them, just as everybody now knows the government created the internet.
JeremyBanks 11y ago
Are you high?
tslug 11y ago
It's cheaper and easier to get food, clothes, and care to people over a fleet of self-driving, shared cars than it is over a hodge-podge network of human-driven, privately-owned cars.
- purpled_haze 11y ago
  If there are any problems with getting food, clothes, and care to people, it's ignorance, apathy, and greed. Not whether cars can drive themselves or not.

user9982 11y ago

Because that's not how funding works. This is research money, you can't just move money around willy nilly.

enraged_camel 11y ago

>>Yes, but that much money could be used to feed, clothe, and take care of a lot of people. You could make this argument for literally anything that isn't feeding, clothing or taking care of people, which means it is a silly argument.

horsecaptin 11y ago
Not a silly argument at all. Every time we say, "lets spend $x on y", it is fair to question whether that money can be used to feed and clothe... or defend.. or fix the infrastructure, etc.
- euyyn 11y ago
  > whether that money can be used to... Of course it can, there's no reason it couldn't. That doesn't make it a proper challenge. One would be "instead of $4B, $X should be invested on this, because of such and such". X == 0 without details is a big red flag.

zuron7 11y ago

Because if the govt. gave the underprivileged all the money, they wouldn't have any incentive to work hard.

benjiweber 11y ago

Self driving cars have the potential to solve the leading cause of death amongst young people, and save a significant percentage of GDP http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs358/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs358/en/ Seems worth investing in?

cgio 11y ago
Valid from this perspective. There is also the negative impact to GDP from increase in unemployment, which might be inescapable though.
purpled_haze 11y ago
You are assuming perfection. Have you considered that these cars may cause more deaths? What if a solar flare affected GPS and caused all of the navigation systems to injure or kill almost everyone driving at the same time? While that may be only a remote possibility, there are a myriad of other problems navigation systems may run into that they are unprepared for.
- euyyn 11y ago
  > that they are unprepared for Certainly the people working on this are clowns that know nothing about safety countermeasures, and don't care about their whole industry going belly up if major accidents happened.
  - smsm42 11y ago
    The same clowns that run software industry and regularly allow major security incidents costing millions of dollars to happen. It's not like nobody knows making a backdoor in a major networking software is not the best practice. It's just that people are people, and they are imperfect. I'm sure people that make those cars are as imperfect as the rest of us, no more, no less.
    - euyyn 11y ago
      It's acknowledging the imperfection of people what makes software an engineering field instead of a hard science. It's not news to anybody. Continuous testing, code reviews, defense in depth, etc. are practiced to deal with that. The engineers that design cars (the "hardware") are as imperfect as anybody else. So are the engineers that design planes' autopilots. Nobody relies on an engineer being perfect, and there's no need to.

ColbyJackRat 11y ago

I suppose you think that we shouldn't fund NASA too because that money could be used to feed starving African children too, right?

afarrell 11y ago

> spend 1B on buses Driverless busses would allow for: * Every dollar spent on busses to go much farther * Vastly improved public transit, which would allow people to live in cheaper areas and still have access to work.

zizee 11y ago
Do you know how much it costs to buy a bus? It is not unusual to pay 400k+ for a city bus. Let's say driverless cars will cost $20k each (I have no idea), that's 20 cars per bus. I suggest the only reason taxi trips are so much more expensive than bus rides is the cost of medallions and driver wages. Once driverless cars arrive, public buses will not make sense anymore. http://publictransport.about.com/od/Transit_Vehicles/a/How-Much-Does-A-Bus-Cost-To-Purchase-And-Operate.htm http://publictransport.about.com/od/Transit_Vehicles/a/How-M...
- purpled_haze 11y ago
  > Once driverless cars arrive, public buses will not make sense anymore. How is that exactly? Buses have routes and schedules. How could you plan a schedule with cars if you don't know where everyone is going? You would have to have excess capacity, that's how. And those extra cars will be more expensive than the bus. Please prove your point with examples.
  - alexhawdon 11y ago
    If the bus is full, I'm sure you're correct. I think there will always be place for mass transit along popular routes. In the UK there are a lot of buses that drive around with only a handful of passengers. It's a subsidised service that's important to lots of people, but ultimately very inefficient. I'd imagine at least 60% of bus movements (not passenger miles) could be replaced with self-driving cars.
  - zizee 11y ago
    This is only an issue during peak times. Most of the time during the day, buses are fairly empty. If driverless car companies use something like uber's surge pricing, so that it is more expensive to travel 1/2hr before/after peak, people will respond, flattening out peak demand. Intelligent routing software will assist, allowing people to car pool to reduce the required number of cars. Finally, let's say if automated cars remove half the riders from buses, the costs of providing buses will need to be spread across half the number of riders, making the economics of running a bus system twice as expensive per passenger. At that point, it makes sense even more sense to replace the buses with cars. The only question will be how long it takes for people to adapt due to existing habits having momentum.

jgreen10 11y ago

About 2000 elderly die of starvation every year, and about 30-40,000 people die in traffic. There are many cases in which the government doesn't have its priorities straight, this is not one of them. It was government funding via DARPA that led private companies to work on self-driving cars. Google simply hired to two winning DARPA Grand Challenge teams. The Internet is another example showing that the government is quite capable, and often necessary in driving technology forward.

smsm42 11y ago
I'm sure when the self-driven cars are finally made, everybody would know the government created them, just as everybody now knows the government created the internet.

JeremyBanks 11y ago

Are you high?

tslug 11y ago

It's cheaper and easier to get food, clothes, and care to people over a fleet of self-driving, shared cars than it is over a hodge-podge network of human-driven, privately-owned cars.

purpled_haze 11y ago
If there are any problems with getting food, clothes, and care to people, it's ignorance, apathy, and greed. Not whether cars can drive themselves or not.