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>people you need to actually talk to and help customers - something Google has basically never done before As a google advertiser this made me laugh. At the s

by vivekd 7y ago

>people you need to actually talk to and help customers - something Google has basically never done before As a google advertiser this made me laugh. At the same time I don't think expense will be a setback for autonomous vehicles. The reason being that if vehicles are fully autonomous there would be no reason for any individuals to own them. It would make more sense to have them operate like a taxi service. This is because without the costs of having to pay for a driver, it would be cheaper to just order an autonomous vehicle whenever you need to go anywhere than it would be own your own vehicle. Just from an efficiency standpoint it is terribly inefficient for each person to have a car. We're not driving most of the time and the only reason we have our car sitting in the driveway is we need it to be available should we need to drive. With autonomous cars, my car could on it's own drive across town to pick up other people when I'm not using it. The reason we can't do that today is because of the additional logistics and costs involved in transporting my unused car from my driveway to the driveway of the person across town who needs it. This problem would not exist in a world with autonomous vehicles. To me, it seems likely that a world with autonomous cars would be a world where the majority of vehicles in the world are owned by services like uber.

YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
>> At the same time I don't think expense will be a setback for autonomous vehicles. The reason being that if vehicles are fully autonomous there would be no reason for any individuals to own them. It would make more sense to have them operate like a taxi service. This is because without the costs of having to pay for a driver, it would be cheaper to just order an autonomous vehicle whenever you need to go anywhere than it would be own your own vehicle. I have a better idea that we can implement right now without waiting for autonomous driving to become a real technological capability. We could make big cars with many seats and have them driven around town by humans- just a single human could drive a single vehicle capable of transporting 50, maybe 100 others. We could have those big cars stopping at predetermined points around the city, so that people would know where to get on and off. And we could support that service by asking the users to pay a small fee upon boarding the big car. This would cover the costs of the driver, and the big car, and still leave some to pay for infrastructure, etc. These big cars would probably have relatively restricted areas of operation, but, for the foreseeable future, so will autonomous cars (which have to be geofenced) and, like I say, we already have the technology for those big-cars-with-many-people-sitting-in-them-and-a-single-driver that I'm talking about. And since a whole bunch of people would be carried by one or two of those big cars per day, instead of each riding a single (autonomous or not) car, we could drastically reduce the number of automobiles-per-person, and, therefore, the CO2 emissions, thereby reducing pollution and protecting the environment to boot. So? Anyone want to invest on that?
- vivekd 7y ago
  Getting off topic here but actually I would love to invest in transit. And judging from the kickstarter in the link below so would many other people. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/crowd-funded-bus-takes-a-run-at-transit-starved-liberty-village-1.2771419 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/crowd-funded-bus-take... Unfortunately in my city (Toronto) and I would assume in many others it's illegal to run a private bus service. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/liberty-village-shuttle-bus-axed-1.2916451 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/liberty-village-shutt... So we're stuck with the government monopoly burdened with the enormous costs of public service transit unions with some transit union workers making six figures for things like being bus drivers or ticket collectors. Then you have bus routes that are not decided by numbers business purposes but by politics. Finally you have rude drivers and buses and trains that smell like urine. And you have buses and trains provided by special favored contractors that are technologically and mechanically less than what is available. My aging mother says it hurts her body to ride the bus because it doesn't provide a smooth comfortable ride. So if we want funding into buses and trains we can start by dealing with the political quagmire that has made buses and trains inefficient and unfriendly to users. But the familiar government cry of "just keep throwing more money at it until the problem is solved" is likely not the best solution.
  - username223 7y ago
    > transit union workers making six figures for things like being bus drivers or ticket collectors You say that like it's a bad thing. We also have "tech workers making six figures for things like increasing engagement on social networks by 0.1%." What do you think about that? > Finally you have rude drivers and buses and trains that smell like urine. This would change right-quick if congestion pricing pushed wealthier people onto public transit.
  - pferde 7y ago
    I have utmost respect for anyone who can safely and responsibly drive a huge vehicle full of people, day in and day out, on cramped city streets with precision down to centimeters on some complicated turns and crossroads. If anything, good bus drivers aren't paid enough.
nradov 7y ago
I doubt it. Relying on taxi services (driven by humans or computers) might work fine for childless urbanites. But I keep a lot of stuff in my car, and there's no way I'm going to waste time loading and unloading a taxi every day. Plus my family likes having a nice clean car. I'm never going to give up convenience and time savings just to save a little money.
- michaelanckaert 7y ago
  I fully agree with you. Another argument against this ride sharing that most people conveniently forget are peak times. How many millions of vehicles are standing still during office hours only to power up when everyone needs to go home? How is a robotaxi service going to solve that? The number of cars on the roads at peak times won’t go down much imo.
  - pas 7y ago
    Peak times are already constrained by road capacity. That said just having smart buses picking crusing and picking up people when and where they are and dropping them off at their destination would be great. (After all usually a lot of people want to go from similar A to similar B places at the same time.)

by vivekd 7y ago

YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago

>> At the same time I don't think expense will be a setback for autonomous vehicles. The reason being that if vehicles are fully autonomous there would be no reason for any individuals to own them. It would make more sense to have them operate like a taxi service. This is because without the costs of having to pay for a driver, it would be cheaper to just order an autonomous vehicle whenever you need to go anywhere than it would be own your own vehicle. I have a better idea that we can implement right now without waiting for autonomous driving to become a real technological capability. We could make big cars with many seats and have them driven around town by humans- just a single human could drive a single vehicle capable of transporting 50, maybe 100 others. We could have those big cars stopping at predetermined points around the city, so that people would know where to get on and off. And we could support that service by asking the users to pay a small fee upon boarding the big car. This would cover the costs of the driver, and the big car, and still leave some to pay for infrastructure, etc. These big cars would probably have relatively restricted areas of operation, but, for the foreseeable future, so will autonomous cars (which have to be geofenced) and, like I say, we already have the technology for those big-cars-with-many-people-sitting-in-them-and-a-single-driver that I'm talking about. And since a whole bunch of people would be carried by one or two of those big cars per day, instead of each riding a single (autonomous or not) car, we could drastically reduce the number of automobiles-per-person, and, therefore, the CO2 emissions, thereby reducing pollution and protecting the environment to boot. So? Anyone want to invest on that?

vivekd 7y ago
Getting off topic here but actually I would love to invest in transit. And judging from the kickstarter in the link below so would many other people. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/crowd-funded-bus-takes-a-run-at-transit-starved-liberty-village-1.2771419 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/crowd-funded-bus-take... Unfortunately in my city (Toronto) and I would assume in many others it's illegal to run a private bus service. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/liberty-village-shuttle-bus-axed-1.2916451 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/liberty-village-shutt... So we're stuck with the government monopoly burdened with the enormous costs of public service transit unions with some transit union workers making six figures for things like being bus drivers or ticket collectors. Then you have bus routes that are not decided by numbers business purposes but by politics. Finally you have rude drivers and buses and trains that smell like urine. And you have buses and trains provided by special favored contractors that are technologically and mechanically less than what is available. My aging mother says it hurts her body to ride the bus because it doesn't provide a smooth comfortable ride. So if we want funding into buses and trains we can start by dealing with the political quagmire that has made buses and trains inefficient and unfriendly to users. But the familiar government cry of "just keep throwing more money at it until the problem is solved" is likely not the best solution.
- username223 7y ago
  > transit union workers making six figures for things like being bus drivers or ticket collectors You say that like it's a bad thing. We also have "tech workers making six figures for things like increasing engagement on social networks by 0.1%." What do you think about that? > Finally you have rude drivers and buses and trains that smell like urine. This would change right-quick if congestion pricing pushed wealthier people onto public transit.
- pferde 7y ago
  I have utmost respect for anyone who can safely and responsibly drive a huge vehicle full of people, day in and day out, on cramped city streets with precision down to centimeters on some complicated turns and crossroads. If anything, good bus drivers aren't paid enough.

nradov 7y ago

I doubt it. Relying on taxi services (driven by humans or computers) might work fine for childless urbanites. But I keep a lot of stuff in my car, and there's no way I'm going to waste time loading and unloading a taxi every day. Plus my family likes having a nice clean car. I'm never going to give up convenience and time savings just to save a little money.

michaelanckaert 7y ago
I fully agree with you. Another argument against this ride sharing that most people conveniently forget are peak times. How many millions of vehicles are standing still during office hours only to power up when everyone needs to go home? How is a robotaxi service going to solve that? The number of cars on the roads at peak times won’t go down much imo.
- pas 7y ago
  Peak times are already constrained by road capacity. That said just having smart buses picking crusing and picking up people when and where they are and dropping them off at their destination would be great. (After all usually a lot of people want to go from similar A to similar B places at the same time.)