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There was nothing in the article to support the notion that self-driving cars won't address the danger of cars. Sure, as long as there are human drivers there w

There was nothing in the article to support the notion that self-driving cars won't address the danger of cars. Sure, as long as there are human drivers there will be accidents caused by human drivers (and obviously there will be human drivers for a long time, just as horse drawn vehicles remained around for a long time after automobiles arrived [1]), but if the only argument related to self driving cars is that they won't replace human drivers 100%, that is a weak argument. The author completely avoids taking on the fact that self driving cars will eliminate -- for that vehicle -- the major cause of traffic deaths, human error, and the hypothesis that they will not significantly replace it with machine error. Obviously some people argue they will never get that technology right, and while I disagree with that, I'd at least appreciate it if the author even addressed it. I'm all for getting rid of most cars, but I think the most realistic path to that is driverless taxis and small busses (i.e. vans) that are economical and efficient. The latter can be highly efficient if enough people use them, especially if they reward people with a few cents discount for scheduling a few minutes or a few hours ahead of time, and for using them at least busy times of day, and for being willing to have a couple quick stops along the way. You'd need far fewer of these vehicles total, since many would have multiple passengers at once, they would be in near constant use, and they aren't wasting driving time and valuable space by the need to park near their endpoints. 1. and remain, especially in Amish country.

bluGill 7y ago
Small cars and vans don't need signalling to be good. The reason is geometric: someone already in the car doesn't want to detour to your front door to pick you up (they will excuse this if you are obviously handicapped and thus need special treatment). All transit makes the most sense when they run a regular fixed route - just like large buses and trains run. The advantage of self driving is they run every 5 minutes or less 24/7 so you don't have to check a schedule to find out when the next bus comes. The small is an advantage only in that it is cheaper to buy and uses less fuel on routes that that don't have enough demand to fill a larger vehicle on the same route. The advantage of self driving is cost of labor (drivers) is a large reason buses don't run these routes already. Bottom line: if your neighborhood currently doesn't have the ability to support transit today having a personal self driving car is going to make more sense. Do not confuse ability to support with currently supports: even in the non-dense suburbs if everybody took transit instead of their car there is enough density to support every 10 minute service with stops every mile down a grid, at less cost than everybody's car currently costs. Most suburbs do not have the type of grid that would support this though. Even if they did the transit system needs to be large and frequent enough for years before people will make the switch - years where transit is more expensive than just buying all the riders a used car (7 years old, free replacement every 5 years)
- robbrown451 7y ago
  They don't necessarily have to detour to your front door, you can often walk to a pickup point that is a compromise: balancing amount of detouring, amount of walking, amount of waiting, amount of adapting your schedule to the schedule of the transportation. The more flexible you are on any of those things, the more you can save yourself a few cents. The worst case is, you need the car as soon as possible, you want it to come to your door, you don't want to be slowed down at all by stops along the way. Maybe you have other requirements, like you need it to have room for cargo, you need it to have a seat for your kid, you need to take your Golden Retriever along, or whatever. In those cases, it'll cost you a bit more, but it's still the same system so it's not a big deal. On the other hand, maybe you are good with scheduling your trip in advance, you don't mind it making lots of stops because you'll just be working on your laptop anyway, and if the weather is nice you are good with a bit of a walk on either end. The more people who are this flexible, the better the system works, so they are happy to give you a discount. What I'm talking about is about is somewhere between a city bus, and an Uber/cab. Lots of efficiencies can be gained by balancing all these different things, and the more people using it, the easier it gets to do this sort of thing. I can't see why people wouldn't want it to work like that.

bluGill 7y ago

Small cars and vans don't need signalling to be good. The reason is geometric: someone already in the car doesn't want to detour to your front door to pick you up (they will excuse this if you are obviously handicapped and thus need special treatment). All transit makes the most sense when they run a regular fixed route - just like large buses and trains run. The advantage of self driving is they run every 5 minutes or less 24/7 so you don't have to check a schedule to find out when the next bus comes. The small is an advantage only in that it is cheaper to buy and uses less fuel on routes that that don't have enough demand to fill a larger vehicle on the same route. The advantage of self driving is cost of labor (drivers) is a large reason buses don't run these routes already. Bottom line: if your neighborhood currently doesn't have the ability to support transit today having a personal self driving car is going to make more sense. Do not confuse ability to support with currently supports: even in the non-dense suburbs if everybody took transit instead of their car there is enough density to support every 10 minute service with stops every mile down a grid, at less cost than everybody's car currently costs. Most suburbs do not have the type of grid that would support this though. Even if they did the transit system needs to be large and frequent enough for years before people will make the switch - years where transit is more expensive than just buying all the riders a used car (7 years old, free replacement every 5 years)

robbrown451 7y ago
They don't necessarily have to detour to your front door, you can often walk to a pickup point that is a compromise: balancing amount of detouring, amount of walking, amount of waiting, amount of adapting your schedule to the schedule of the transportation. The more flexible you are on any of those things, the more you can save yourself a few cents. The worst case is, you need the car as soon as possible, you want it to come to your door, you don't want to be slowed down at all by stops along the way. Maybe you have other requirements, like you need it to have room for cargo, you need it to have a seat for your kid, you need to take your Golden Retriever along, or whatever. In those cases, it'll cost you a bit more, but it's still the same system so it's not a big deal. On the other hand, maybe you are good with scheduling your trip in advance, you don't mind it making lots of stops because you'll just be working on your laptop anyway, and if the weather is nice you are good with a bit of a walk on either end. The more people who are this flexible, the better the system works, so they are happy to give you a discount. What I'm talking about is about is somewhere between a city bus, and an Uber/cab. Lots of efficiencies can be gained by balancing all these different things, and the more people using it, the easier it gets to do this sort of thing. I can't see why people wouldn't want it to work like that.