16 ms·
Now is an opportunity, perhaps first in ~100 years, perhaps last, to recover the streets for unaugmented humans: slow down cars in urban areas, increase qualifi
by mlinksva 9y ago
Now is an opportunity, perhaps first in ~100 years, perhaps last, to recover the streets for unaugmented humans: slow down cars in urban areas, increase qualifications for humans to drive, eventually ban human drivers entirely, leaving only automated vehicles with enough sensors and going slowly enough to reduce auto-related deaths for pedestrians and passengers alike to zero.
- jadedtuna 9y agoDo you mean ban human drivers in urban areas or in general?
- bcit-cst 9y agohe means ban humans. period . fullstop.
- jdhopeunique 9y agoIf automated vehicles become popular, I predict new crimes will be added in addition to jaywalking. Cyclists may be restricted and anything else that confuses AI drivers. If certain intersections or sections of road consistently confuse AI drivers, automakers will lobby for ways to change these roadways. I suspect calls for AI regulation by people like Elon Musk are really attempts at regulatory capture to make automated vehicles possible and dominated by the first market entrants.
- DiThi 9y ago> Cyclists may be restricted and anything else that confuses AI drivers. I don't think that will ever happen. It may even be the opposite: AI will drive in a way it will always be able to stop if there's a possibility that there's someone behind some obstacle that may jump to the road at any moment. Worst case scenario, beacons become mandatory. Cheap and anonymous beacons you have to carry when you're near a road. Smart phones may include such functionality.
- mieseratte 9y agoI cannot imagine mandatory tracking devices, anonymous or not, ever being mandatory in the United States. That would never fly.
- jrowley 9y agoMaybe not mandatory but otherwise you’re liable so your insurance company requires it.
- macintux 9y agoInsurance companies mandating pedestrians carry a beacon? That's even less likely.
- freeflight 9y agoThey don't need to mandate it, at least not at first. They can just incentivize it the right way and people will willingly jump on board. "Install this app on your phone to make traffic lights recognize you when you approach them, for a timely shift to green light" "Install this app to collect pedestrian-points, exchange points for prices and discounts!" "Get a better insurance tier for installing this app which tracks your fitness. Do your daily 10.000 steps for a free <whatever>!" Once enough people jump on board, and it's generally accepted as being "normal because everybody uses it", then you can mandate it and the few people left who resist can easily be branded as "paranoid tinfoil-hat people" to marginalize their opposition.
- macintux 9y agoIf you're relying on a smartphone to host a beacon, isn't that already a solved problem? Smartphones are radio transceivers, I would imagine any anonymous beacon technology wouldn't be noticeably louder than what smartphones are already emitting.
- gamblor956 9y ago
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Tiktaalik 9y agoAbsolutely. I see this here on hacker news with people excited about the notion of doing away with stop lights so that AI traffic can flow easily. People are completely ignoring the existence of pedestrians and cyclists. It would not be surprising to see a new crime of "hindering an autonomous automobile" be lobbied for.
- whatshisface 9y agoIt's only a matter of time before some stupid kids start jumping in the way of self-driving cars to make them brake hard. That's when we'll see the anti-pedestrian regulations appear, by my estimation.
- maxxxxx 9y agoThat's a good point. I can totally see how as a kid I would have tried to mess with self driving cars.
- intrasight 9y agoWe messed with human-driven cars to great amusement (to us) when we were teens.
- kbenson 9y agoTo be fair, regulations put in place because kids are jumping in front of cars could be anti-pedestrian, but it could also just be anti-fucking-idiot if drafted well.
- btbuildem 9y agoNot just kids - it's a perfect way to carjack someone.
- sigstoat 9y agocarjacking vehicles with constant internet connections and GPS's doesn't strike me as an extremely profitable maneuver. the whole "car detects obstacle in an untrafficed area, stops, door is opened, passenger gets out, passenger gets back in, changes destination to a place not proximate to anywhere they've ever been before" process also sounds like the sort of thing that would justifiably raise a bit of a red flag. maybe not an automated call to 911, but it should probably dump all records to the cloud and trigger a call from an onstar operator or similar.
- MaxBarraclough 9y ago> If certain intersections or sections of road consistently confuse AI drivers, automakers will lobby for ways to change these roadways. I doubt that attitude will ever catch on. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but it seems to me that there's a healthy suspicion about AI drivers. So far at least, the attitude taken by, well, everyone, is that AI drivers are untrustworthy until proven trustworthy. If AI drivers can't cope with the various challenges of real driving, then the AI drivers are to blame, not the external factors. If they work well, AI drivers will be permitted to drive. If they do not, they will not be permitted to drive. At no point will they get to dictate what other road-users may do. Our Ludditism will see to that.
- taneliv 9y agoWhen 80-90% of car driving population have switched over to AI driven cars, the focus of Ludditism probably shifts to something more emerging technology and the great majority of people will just nod their heads in unison with those lobbying automakers. It is not particularly difficult to imagine the general public swaying even to some opposite extreme, supported by some reasoning like "he probably did something wrong to get killed, the AI cars make very few mistakes."
- MaxBarraclough 9y agoInteresting points. I suppose that's one possibility, but I'm more of an optimist.
- yalph 9y agoWhy cant we get automated bicycles and get rid of the humans on bikes?
- Brakenshire 9y agoWe could end up with roads dedicated to cars being separated from roads dedicated to pedestrians or cyclists. You could imagine if a city was designed from scratch the vehicles could move around almost in tunnel-like back-alleys, with periodic embarkation points into pedestrianized open plazas and boulevards. If Musk's reduction in cost of tunnelling is more than just a pipe-dream, then you might be able to retrofit something like that into an existing city. But I agree that if autonomous cars come to pass, there will be a lot of pressure to go down the route you discuss.
- artpepper2 9y agoIt's hard enough to get bike lines built, let alone a separate road system.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- asteli 9y agoThis is the future of cities. Doing this would open the door for massive efficiency gains. Within these controlled "back-alleys," you could lay down metallic guides for the cars to glide down (dramatically reduced rolling friction losses), and couple vehicles moving in the same direction (dramatically reduced aerodynamic losses). Eventually you could electrify the whole thing so that cars wouldn't have to carry fuel while in the back-alley network . It needs a catchy name though. Back-alley is too harsh. Something that represents our aspirations for the cities of the future. I'm thinking "Metro."
- Brakenshire 9y agoHah, yes, I agree! But with a difference of point to point rather than line-based. Autonomous technology will probably mean a kind of union between private and public transport, and between road and metro rail.
- tristor 9y agoI like that nobody caught on. But yes, that's basically a Metro system. The difference is that a Metro system doesn't allow divergence without transfer and it's a "mass transit" system. Autonomous vehicles provide an opportunity to blend controlled and uncontrolled transit paths, privacy, and the ability to diverge without transfer while increasing traffic efficiency, reducing the dangers of driving, and freeing up commuter time for other activities, just like mass transit.
- neves 9y agoWhen I think of crimes and AI drivers I always think of people using drugs or making sex in driverless taxis.
- nkoren 9y agoAnd then you remember that as part of the passenger safety case for driverless taxis, there will necessarily be cameras and microphones and the ability to lock the doors and redirect the taxi to the nearest hospital or police station, right? When we were building the Heathrow Pod[1] -- which is effectively an autonomous taxi system -- this was an objection that people raised all the time. In practice, it took approximately zero instances of bad passenger behaviour for people to catch onto the fact that the interior of an autonomous vehicle that can deliver you non-stop to airport security is really the last place on Earth that you'd want to engage in anti-social behaviour. 1: https://www.heathrow.com/transport-and-directions/heathrow-parking/heathrow-pod-parking-terminal-5 https://www.heathrow.com/transport-and-directions/heathrow-p...
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y agoSo it will be illegal to have sex at the back of an autonomously driven car?
- nkoren 9y agoWho said anything about illegal? Merely monetised. You'll be able to find the videos at www.lookwhohadsexinthebackofataxi.xxx.[1] 1: This does not reflect the views of any previous, current, or future employers, or indeed of myself when I'm being serious.
- upvotinglurker 9y agoPresumably not if you own the car. Sex in public (including in buses, subways, etc.) is already illegal in many areas, and cab-company equivalents would presumably get to set their own rules as they do now.
- phil21 9y agoYup. The first thing I think about wrt to driverless cars being adopted en-masse is how trivially easy it would be to DDoS them. Literally just stand in front of them and there will be nothing they can do. Once people get used to zero social repercussions (driverless cars will be empty probably 50% of the time en-route to pick someone up or go park themselves by my estimation) I imagine you will see things like certain folks simply crossing streets blindly comfortable in the fact that the cars will stop for them regardless of right of way. Many will disagree that this will happen, but I think many underestimate the antisocialness of folks when there are no consequences.
- kozak 9y agoPeople tend to get less motion sickness when they are in control of the motion (i.e. drivers are not as susceptible to motion sickness as their passengers). So in this future world you might still be allowed to hold the steering wheel (if you paid for the option of having one in the car at all), but the car will take control from you immediately as soon as it decides that someone might be in danger (just like some present-day cars can auto-brake if they sense an impending collision).
- konschubert 9y agoPeople take busses and trams and trains with no issues. There aren't any steering wheels for all passengers to hold.
- kozak 9y agoOK, let's rephrase: some percentage of people will still be ready to pay extra to be able to control the car to some extent.
- rootusrootus 9y agoI try to be careful in where I sit on the train so that I can keep my pain to just a mild headache and maybe a little sweating. Just because I don't vomit on you nor complain out loud about the suffering doesn't mean it isn't happening.
- eloisant 9y agoI'm confused, do you need to hold a steering wheel when you take the bus?
- klibertp 9y agoMotion sickness comes from the conflict between your eyes and the part of your ear which tells you which way is up and lets you stay in balance. It is way less of a problem in big vehicles where you have a lot of things and people to look at, which experience the same forces as you and so move the way your brain expects. Being in control of these forces is another way of aligning what you perceive and what your brain expects. Motion sickness is very real, don't discount it as a non issue.
- randomdrake 9y ago> slow down cars in urban areas This is actually happening. Portland has recently fallen in line with other cities, like Seattle, and lowered thousands of miles of streets from 25 MPH to 20 MPH. http://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/index.ssf/2018/01/portland_poised_to_drop_speed.html http://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/index.ssf/2018/01/portla...
- richrichardsson 9y agoIn the UK a lot of residential areas have introduced 20mph limits (down from 30mph), close to no-one (except learner drivers) obey this new limit! :(
- Symbiote 9y agoIt's still an improvement, since before they didn't obey the 30mph limit. 25mph is much better than 35mph.
- richrichardsson 9y agoMy experience/estimation is it's still > 30mph they are driving. :(
- intrasight 9y agoAutomated speeding tickets will fix that quickly
- crankylinuxuser 9y agoIndeed. And automated driving will end a great deal of greed based revenue as well. And given the sensor data, proving lack of violation is trivial. The $64k question is: what will states and counties do without police citation revenue?
- intrasight 9y agoAutomated enforcement revenue will be much higher
- simias 9y agoThat seems to be happening, at least in some European cities. Paris for instance is (very) slowly chasing cars outside of the city. London has the congestion tax. The problem of course is that you need the infrastructure to replace all the cars and public transportation in Paris is close to saturated. Still, it's probably a move in the right direction IMO.
- jandrese 9y agoIt is kind of annoying when the solution to "our public transit is slow and shitty" is "make the alternatives worse".
- Sharlin 9y agoSometimes it really is a zero-sum game. Pedestrians, bikers, personal cars, buses and trams compete for the same surface area, and out of those cars are the main cause of congestion due to their abysmal people/m^2 value.
- logfromblammo 9y agoI think the answer to pedestrians versus cars is the same as for cars versus trains: grade separation. Turn the sidewalks into elevated walkways. Or use pedestrian tunnels underneath the road surface. Pedestrian crosswalks are a money-saving measure, ignoring one of the many externalities involved in automobile manufacture. Cars simply should not be driving on pedestrian walkways, and pedestrians should not be walking anywhere that does not have a significant physical barrier between them and the massive objects moving at high speed.
- clairity 9y agoput the cars underground, not the pedestrians. let the cars go fast and let the people stroll in the sunshine.
- Balero 9y agoOr the rain...
- jandrese 9y agoDigging out extensive underground road infrastructure is very expensive. Ask Boston residents if they'd like to do a second Big Dig on a much larger scale to bury the streets. Elevated walkways would be vastly cheaper, but still infeasible on any current budget. You would end up having to rebuild the lobby of most buildings to be on the second floor, and probably turn the first floor into parking. It feels like one of those utopian ideals from the 50s or 60s that came out before people started thinking about the money.
- logfromblammo 9y agoOn the other hand, the downtown area of Chicago was raised up from natural ground level in the 1850s. Seattle was raised in the 1880s. A portion of Atlanta was raised in the 1920s. They actually did rebuild new lobbies on the upper floors, and a lot of the old storefronts are still intact down below.
- clairity 9y ago
- clairity 9y agolet's make walking and biking cool, but not at the expense of fast personal transport (cars). the best solution isn't to try to slow down the cars but rather to make mixed-use urban areas the default so that walking and biking become the norm. you also get all kinds of other benefits with that (less traffic, healthier air, more fit people, etc) i agree that driving qualifications should be more strict, but probably in a different dimension than you: test drivers on situational awareness and predictive decision making. fail people for both distracted driving and indecision (and lack of follow-through), as well as not communicating intent (e.g, signaling) to other drivers.
- adrianN 9y agoI the city cars are already not much faster than bikes. For distances below 10km or so there is hardly any difference. During rush hours bikes are much faster. I'd wager that you can reduce the top speed cars are allowed to travel significantly before the effective speed goes down by much, especially if you can improve traffic flow by e.g. vehicle-vehicle communication.
- dragonshed 9y agoThe difference is in the need for a shower and change of clothes afterwards.
- bluntfang 9y agoyou really don't need to shower and change your clothes. You can if you want to ride your bike fast and push your physical limits, but generally casual biking won't make you sweat more than if you were walking.
- frabbit 9y agoOn some days in a dry, warm climate (e.g. California) it's actually a good deal cooler than walking due to the air flow.
- 9y ago
- intrasight 9y agoProbably not to zero - accidents will still happen. But I agree with all your points. I'll elaborate with: a) during transition, human-driven cars must be instrumented. Automatic moving violation for speeding. b) automatic moving violation for driving a non-instrumented vehicle in a zone where they are mandatory.
- rootusrootus 9y agoI would be stunned to see this happen in the US. Culturally we are a long way from accepting such draconian ideas and I don't see that we're getting closer. And even as liberal as I am, I'm glad.
- Overtonwindow 9y agoI truly cringe at the thought of a ban on human drivers. There's a considerable amount of freedom in that ability to get in the car, and drive. Otherwise you're beholden to a machine, a corporation, and likely, a government. Trapped and unable to go anywhere unless they authorize it. Aside, you might find this short-fiction story from Vice interesting: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xygzvz/one-star https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xygzvz/one-star
- hocuspocus 9y agoRemind me who's building the road infrastructure again? Your freedom comes at a high price, direct and indirect. Countries with functioning public transportation are providing a lot of this freedom, to a broader population and at a fraction of the cost compared to personal cars.
- donatj 9y agoThis is a huge deal to me that keeps me up at night. I already see this with public transit. Public transport is a method of population control. You can keep classes of people confined to their neighborhoods simply based on how and where you choose to route buses/trains. I can get in my car and go anywhere. That to me is the true spirit of America.
- ocschwar 9y agoA freedom you can only exercise with a license.
- rootusrootus 9y agoNothing stopping you from driving without a license. Sure, there are consequences to getting caught, but people drive all the time without a license. It's a bit different than not being able to catch the train or bus because the nearest stop is miles away.
- pwaai 9y ago> Now is an opportunity, perhaps first in ~100 years, perhaps last, to recover the streets for unaugmented humans: slow down cars in urban areas, increase qualifications for humans to drive, eventually ban human drivers entirely, leaving only automated vehicles with enough sensors and going slowly enough to reduce auto-related deaths for pedestrians and passengers alike to zero. What about people who genuinely love to drive cars & ride motorcycles? Are we a danger this utopian self automated future? I just don't see it happening. There's so many people that are enamored with cars and motorcycles, who love the sensation, independence and freedom derived from the experience. Older manual Ferraris or air-cooled Porsches appreciate in value for a reason. I almost lament at the future where an entire generation will grow up without experiencing such "archaic, manual and dangerous vehicles" because it will be too expensive, much as classic supercars will remain out of reach for majority of the population.
- dionidium 9y ago> What about people who genuinely love to drive cars & ride motorcycles? I suspect we can find a place for them outside of our most densely populated urban cores. The popularity of cars isn't in itself a scandal. The scandal is that cars still enjoy undue priority in places like Midtown Manhattan, it's that urban neighborhoods were destroyed and divided by interstate highways, it's that most cities no longer function properly for the carless.
- pwaai 9y ago> I suspect we can find a place for them outside of our most densely populated urban cores. That seems unconstitutional and a bit like North Korea where they restrict cars to specific areas and ban it in others.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> That seems unconstitutional There is no Constitutional right to bear cars.
- 9y ago
- msla 9y agoI'd be on board with that if you similarly phased out bicycles. People who ride bicycles down the sidewalk are a danger, and need to be stopped.
- forinti 9y agoI think we should limit the mass of urban cars, so that they would not be heavier than a golf cart. This way, most accidents would be of no consequence (I remember an out-of-control cart in a football stadium that hit several people and none were hurt), and we could let even younger people drive. It really makes no sense for an 80Kg person to go around in a 1000kg vehicle.
- mulmen 9y agoMass is only part of the equation. If you move a golf cart at 45mph it's still going to do damage if it hits someone. We have to reduce speed as well and that means it takes longer to get to your destination. There are solutions there (mixed use/high density residential?) but it's not as simple as "smaller cars". The 1000kg vehicle protects the 80kg person from harm because the 80kg person is not designed to go 100kph.
- JoeAltmaier 9y agoPart of that makes sense - only automated vehicles will be a great boon. Going slower in already-congested urban areas is a non-starter; it doesn't solve the problem and makes it worse. Automation could tremendously improve the accident rate all by itself anyway. And until ALL the human drivers are gone, automated ones are going to have to drive 'on eggshells' in case an uninstrumented car happens by. IF it were known for a fact that all cars were instrumented (so the software knew where ALL of them were) then we could even do away with stop lights etc - the cars could regulate intersections 'in the cloud'. And so on. Which leaves the interesting problem - what do we do to cross the chasm - from all human drivers to all automated drivers? There are few good solutions in the middle.
- racer-v 9y ago> ban human drivers entirely Such a utopia: not only do the police have a monopoly on violence, but also private transportation.
- downrightmike 9y agoWe'll run out of donated organs at that point.