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If we expect driverless cars to be further delayed and we continue building our cities to encourage micromobility (bikes, electric scooters, segregated lanes, c

by bogle 7y ago

If we expect driverless cars to be further delayed and we continue building our cities to encourage micromobility (bikes, electric scooters, segregated lanes, car free streets, etc.) then at which point does the value of the driverless car become moot because we no longer drive? Does this sound unlikely? Consider European cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam which have encouraged cycling over the last two decades and all the other cities, like London and New York, that are embarking on ambitious transformations to create friendlier streets for people. If you don't need to drive why would you buy a driverless car? Also, why would I prefer a driverless taxi if an electric car with a human driver costs no more? Note that I'm only asking about city travel, not intercity transportation.

bluGill 7y ago
Even in the inner city there are times when a car beats everything else. Or more likely a truck. The store you get groceries from gets deliveries every day, and they probably should have a special waiver to drive on that car free street to get the truck to their back door (I've seen areas in Germany where the old part of town was effectively car free except delivery trucks) Most people will not need to drive very often, so they would not buy a car at all. However everybody has situations where driving of some sort is the best option.
de_watcher 7y ago
There are places where it's cold, where it rains and snows. So we can't bike everywhere. The good thing about the driverless cars is that they solve the parking problems in the cities. We can even add lanes or pavements by removing all parking spaces in the city centers.
- ed312 7y ago
  You can absolutely bike in the cold, and in the rain, and even in light snow. Also, public transit & busses can get you further without even the dreaded prospect of burning a calorie. Removing free rental of public space to park your private vehicle is something I _do_ endorse though!
  - arethuza 7y ago
    After commuting by bike for a number of years the only weather than I found sensible to avoid was very strong winds - I got blown off my bike onto the side of a lorry once, fortunately I was OK but I did get a scare!
    - mikestew 7y ago
      In the Seattle area, if it’s 38F or below, I use four wheels. In 35 years of riding a motorcycle, the singular time I’ve dumped one on the street was black ice when bike’s temp sensor was screaming, “it’s 38F, ice! Ice!” One time it was right. :-( That, and I’ve dumped enough bicycles in similar conditions that I’ve just quit doing it. So total, there’s about a week of days every winter that I drive. I’m fine with that, because as I’ve mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I ain’t young anymore, and that collarbone is gonna snap one of these days if I don’t start exercising some caution.
- AlexandrB 7y ago
  > The good thing about the driverless cars is that they solve the parking problems in the cities. They only solve them by doubling the traffic problems. I'm not a civil engineer so I'm not sure which problem is harder to solve, but this hardly seems like a free lunch.
- stkdump 7y ago
  > There are places where it's cold, where it rains and snows. Like Amsterdam and Copenhagen? > The good thing about the driverless cars is that they solve the parking problems in the cities. They solve the search for parking by humans. But if you want to get the cars out of the city while they aren't used, you practically double the traffic and emissions.
  - criddell 7y ago
    Amsterdam and Copenhagen don't get very cold.
    - bogle 7y ago
      The canals freeze. That's sea water, too.
      - criddell 7y ago
        I'm not saying it never gets cold, just that the climate is much warmer than, say, Wisconsin. I grew up in Southwestern Ontario and we had days were school was cancelled due to cold, not snow. They were worried about frostbite on any exposed skin.
  - todd8 7y ago
    No, not like Amsterdam. I love Amsterdam, but I'm so tired of it being used as an example of how we should all be on bikes. It has a very temperate climate. The weather in most of the US isn't as mild and cool as Amsterdam. There are cites in the US with great weather, for example San Diego, Santa Barbara, all of Marine and Sonoma Counties in CA have great weather (sadly it is having wild fire problems right now). I agree that we could be biking in those places more. The US as a whole has climate all over the place, from polar (N. Alaska) to tropical (S. Florida) to a desert. The coldest it has ever been in the Netherlands is -27 °C, but the continental US has gotten down to -57 °C (Alaska has reached -62 °C). The hottest it has ever been in Amsterdam is +41 °C while the US has reached +57 °C. It's true that these are crazy extremes and we can't decide on public policy based solely on rare events, but there are big cities all over the US where it is too cold to bike. Consider: Average Weather: days at or below temperature: City (population) -18 °C 0 °C ----------------- ------ ----- Amsterdam (821 K) none none Minneapolis (422 K) 23 148 Chicago (2716 K) 7 122 Denver (620 K) 7 157 Milwaukee (595 K) 7 126 Detroit (673 K) 4 115 Indianapolis(872 K) 4 104 Rochester (208 K) 4 129 Buffalo (259 K) 3 124 Cleveland (386 K) 3 104 Hartford (123 K) 3 125 It also gets too hot to bike in the US: Average Weather: days at or above 38 °C: City (population) 38 °C ------------------- ----- Amsterdam (821 K) none Phoenix (1626 K) 107 Las Vegas (642 K) 70 Riverside (328 K) 24 Dallas (1341 K) 17 Austin (951 K) 16 Sacramento (502 K) 11 Oklahoma City (644 K) 11 San Antonio (1493 K) 8 Salt Lake City (201 K) 5 Houston (2313 K) 4 Kansas City (489 K) 3 Some very hardy people do bike in the cold. See [1], the worlds longest winter ultra-marathon (running, biking or skiing 1000km, the last 500 miles without support!!!) It might be the hardest race in the world. (There are not very many other races where contestants have had to be evacuated by helicopter because they were being stalked by a pack of wolves.) [1] https://www.iditarodtrailinvitational.com https://www.iditarodtrailinvitational.com
- PanMan 7y ago
  You mean places like... Amsterdam? Plenty of rain here. That won't stop people from biking. If the majority of people own a bike, but not a car, biking becomes the default. Even with rain.
  - trenning 7y ago
    No places like Wisconsin and Minnesota where there's week spans of high temps that barley get above 0F and wind chills that will give you frost bite if you're exposed for too long. I live in Seattle, rain sucks to ride in and most people don't have facilities to change or shower at work. That's a luxury not a standard. It's all a moot point anyways because all this assumes everyone lives within biking distance of work and that work trucks/vans don't exist for a valid purpose.
    - bluGill 7y ago
      I went to school in MN, and regularly did 1 mile walks in all weather including highs of -25F. You learn to dress for it.
- mikestew 7y ago
  I keep forgetting that since the dawn of time, humans have been so sensitive to environmental conditions that it is a wonder we survived as a species. I get what you're saying, but in the end it boils down to "it must be 72F and dry anywhere I go". A little rain isn't going to kill you, leave the car at home today. Don't want to ride in the rain? Then don't ride in the rain, I certainly won't judge. But it is not some failing of the design of human beings that makes us incapable of doing so. they solve the parking problems in the cities By turning the general traffic lanes into de facto moving parking spaces?
  - rustybelt 7y ago
    So you're admitting that your solution involves a reduced quality of life?
    - lazerpants 7y ago
      Trench foot builds character.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- NovaS1X 7y ago
  >There are places where it's cold, where it rains and snows. So what? Can you only bike on sunny days? Get better gear. Hell I motorcycle year round even when it drops below freezing. When it gets real crazy I just take the bus for a day or two.
DickingAround 7y ago
This is kind of silly. It's nice to imagine a world where people don't need cars. But most/all european cities, many of which we laid out before cars, still have cars. We all have cars because cars are incredibly useful; Got 4 young kids and you need to get groceries for the week? You're not going to bicycle them to the store and all that food home again in the mountains. Live in the city and want to go hiking 20 miles away? You're not going to settle for 30MPH when you could be doing 70MPH to get there. The reasons for cars are endless. That's why we have them. (BTW, I pretty much only bike in my city. But it's pretty obvious why people have cars.)
- bpyne 7y ago
  "Live in the city and want to go hiking 20 miles away?" Yes, you want to use a car in this case. But, in the life I imagine, I would rent a car. I dislike driving intensely, but I can see use-cases in which cars are necessary. However, Americans have been largely forced into car ownership, despite the expense and hassle of owning one. A reduction in car ownership coupled with more pedestrian-friendly community designs is more my goal than making cars extinct. I would like my household to go from two to one vehicle.
  - cloudwalking 7y ago
    If you have to rent a car to go hiking, you aren't going to hike very often.
    - bpyne 7y ago
      And why is that?
      - ryan93 7y ago
        Dont pretend like its normal to go through the hassle and expense of car rental just to do a routine activity
        7y ago
ossworkerrights 7y ago
But why do we even need to cluster in massive cities, when today’s technologies allow for remote work for pretty much any non physical type of work? Accountants, developers, designers, architects, customer support, and so on can all be done remotely. That would reduce both the need to drive and to cram people in overcrowded public transport options.
- Phenomenit 7y ago
  Gravity is still an important aspect of an economy. People congregate near food sources(jobs). Companies congregate close to the other services they need because it costs less. as long as our food is on one specific location so will we. If the trend of subsistence farming because more than that we might see a shift in urban areas.
- ElFitz 7y ago
  It's not just a matter of work. Good luck finding my local theater's shows in Greenfields, nowhere, USA. Sure I can work from anywhere, but businesses (especially leisure) tend to concentrate where people concentrate. Just like when I went trekking. I asked our guide once, _where do we have to go for the trail to be less crowded?_ He named a few places. Then mentioned there were no stairs on the slopes of the mountains he just named. No hot water for showers in the lodges on the way. Much fewer places to stay to eat or sleep. And not as much choice on the menu. Wether it's around the Annapurna or in the US, businesses and services develop and concentrate where there they can find more customers. People go where they can find the products, services and experiences they long for, and the people they care about.
- mantap 7y ago
  Many people like living in cities. There are many dozens of restaurants within walking distance of my home and quite literally thousands if I hop on the tube. How would my life be enriched if I lived in suburbia?
  - 14 7y ago
    Many people like living in she suburbs. There they are exposed to less traffic and emissions from said traffic. We discussed this [1] last week and it seems less traffic has a major effect on air quality. The air you breath would literally be enriched if you lived in suburbia. But I do get your point, I live in a small town and when I travel to a place like Vancouver, it is fascinating to be able to choose from so many different venues and options throughout the entire giant city. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21322291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21322291
ghaff 7y ago
Lots of people don’t live in urban cores. And it’s outside those cores where people can drive significant distances where self-driving has the most value. I actually expect we will eventually see self-driving on limited access highways and other “easy” situations. Self-driving in cities and as taxis may be indefinitely postponed.
- astrodust 7y ago
  > Lots of people don’t live in urban cores. That's what has to change. Both the location of people, and the definition of "urban core".
  - criddell 7y ago
    > That's what has to change. Good luck with that. People like living in the suburbs. It's where I live and when self-driving cars are available I'll move further out of the city.
    - bluGill 7y ago
      Where people live is always a compromise. I want my mansion on 100 acres within a few meters of New York's subway (any station), and no more than 20 minutes from my job (in the midwest - I'd have to average 3x the speed of sound to make that trip time). The above of course is impossible, even if you are the richest person in the world.
      - criddell 7y ago
        Yep. Where I am now is definitely a compromise between convenience and space. A self-driving car will make it possible to increase both my convenience and space.
  - rootusrootus 7y ago
    As a practical matter, meaningful change to the population density distribution will take decades, if not centuries. And it will not happen at all until we can find a way to make urban living less brutally expensive. And yeah, urban core will need to be redefined. Not everyone wants to live in a skyscraper. We need to strike a balance.
bonoboTP 7y ago
Not everyone lives in cycling distance to work, not all are fit enough to cycle regularly (old age, disability, obesity). In many countries such people use public transportation, but that's crowded and inconvenient for the richer folks who can afford cars. Why do you think people still have cars in Amsterdam?
- bradleyankrom 7y ago
  Also, sometimes it rains.
- bogle 7y ago
  I think many will still have cars, although they'll have to be electric [0]. Will the driverless car be as cheap as the second hand Nissan Leaf? Also, perhaps the car isn't used to commute every day when the weather is good and you aren't battling through traffic. In Europe cycling distance to work within a city is as quick as driving. If you aren't quite fit enough you can get an electric bike (very popular amongst the elderly). I didn't consider the suburbs in my question but in a small to medium sized city (<0.5m) I'd suggest the average commute would be ~8km. That takes ~25mins on a bicycle. Now project a better micromobility infrastructure and cycling looks much more attractive. All those school runs just vanish. So you'd have to rich and fat to still be driving. ;) [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/03/amsterdam-ban-petrol-diesel-cars-bikes-2030 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/03/amsterdam-ban-...
  - kalleboo 7y ago
    > Will the driverless car be as cheap as the second hand Nissan Leaf? Eventually, yes. That is the march of technology. Especially if Elon Musk's bet that it can be done using only cameras is right - then the hardware cost is the same as an iPhone. If LIDAR is also required, it will take longer for the prices to go down. This year I bought a 2-year old used econobox car (63 horsepower of pure fury). It already came with 360 degree "top-down-view" parking cameras, stereo camera auto emergency braking, lane departure warning, green light departure warning. And it's a mild hybrid. Once the software is developed, it won't take more than a decade to start coming down in price.
redwood 7y ago
That may be happening in Europe but for 95% of Americans it's sadly a pipedream.
- bogle 7y ago
  What is stopping American cities from changing their infrastructure investment from automobiles to micromobility? Is there one, big, standout reason that could be addressed? It's a change that takes decades and it's fighting against incumbents with deep pockets but it could be done.
  - javagram 7y ago
    Democracy. Other than Manhattan, everywhere else a majority of residents own cars (Even in Manhattan I think it’s like 40% or something own a car). Moreover, the last 70 years of migration have led to a common pattern of people living in the suburbs and commuting via car to their workplace - replacing that with micromobility feels like a threat to their way of life and they will fight it vigorously. What we actually see happen is even small tweaks like the 14th street bus lane in NYC get tied up in court and fought via democratic processes, when they do succeed it’s after a lot of effort.
    - astrodust 7y ago
      Car ownership is declining and will continue to decline because it's an expense many people would rather avoid.
      - greedo 7y ago
        Car ownership in the US has been steadily increasing over time. There's a small increase in "no-car households" since 2010, but it's around a .5% increase. https://investorplace.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screenshot-132.png https://investorplace.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screens...
  - bluGill 7y ago
    What do you mean by micromobility? Walk? There is no place you can walk to from your house. Our strict zoning codes have carefully kept anyplace you might want to walk to farther from your house than walking distance. Even if we eliminated all codes today (ignoring all downsides) it will be many years before it makes much a difference. Bike? Cities in the US are too large and spread out. You can get farther in a car than a bike. There is some opportunity, but not much because few people live within reasonable bike distance of work so they will have a car: once you have a car you may as well drive: you can fit more in the trunk than the bike racks, so it is easy to be lazy. In addition, streets tend to wind around, you often spend far longer than desirable getting out of your neighborhood. This is only a few minutes by car, but on a bike it is a lot longer and you feel that when you spend a lot of time going the opposite direction of your destination because that is how the roads go. This is really hard to fix without knocking down houses. This same issue mean that transit cannot work, even if density is high enough (it typically is!) the winding roads mean the bus can't run fast enough to get people anywhere in a reasonable amount of time.
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>then at which point does the value of the driverless car become moot because we no longer drive? When nearly everywhere people live is sufficiently urban to for it to not be economically insane to deploy good enough public transit to replace cars in all those areas. So not in the lifetime of anyone discussing it here. Maybe never if predictions about population leveling off hold.
300bps 7y ago
If you don't need to drive why would you buy a driverless car? I don’t anticipate many people will ever buy a driverless car. The whole concept of buying a car is kind of ridiculous. You pay for it then you continue paying for registration, insurance, maintenance, park, etc all while it sits idle 90% of the time. Driverless cars allow you to be picked up at your front door and dropped off exactly at the spot wherever and whenever you want for a low fee per trip. And we’ll need about 1/10 the number of cars that we have today.
- arethuza 7y ago
  A lot of those benefits can be had from taxis - and yet people still buy their own cars.
  - ArnoVW 7y ago
    Taxis are expensive because they require a human to drive them. Hence the reason the SDC could change that dynamic. A shared car that does not require an expensive human to drive it. Another model are shared cars, like dockless scooters and bikes. They are reasonably popular in the Netherlands for example. But they still require quite a bit of planning to ensure the car is available, and they are not always "in front of your door". Also you need to rent it for the entire time that you're away. Irrespective, SDC will take some time. Like NLP, they work will within a constrained problem domain, but don't really generalise.
    - arethuza 7y ago
      But I'm sure I have done the arithmetic and worked out that taxis would be a lot cheaper than buying cars - but I still ended up buying a car. Mind you I live in a rural area and spend a fair amount of time (1 day week) in areas with no or very poor mobile phone coverage so that might put me off!
    - vonmoltke 7y ago
      > Taxis are expensive because they require a human to drive them. Hence the reason the SDC could change that dynamic. A shared car that does not require an expensive human to drive it. Human driver's only account for 50% - 55% of a cab's cost. https://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-taxis-can-tell-us-about-driverless.html?m=1 https://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-taxis-can-tell... https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-breakdown-of-where-taxi-fares-go https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-breakdown-of-where-taxi-fa...
jplayer01 7y ago
I think the whole point of driverless cars is at some point, you can deploy car sharing services that largely replace private car ownership/usage. At least, that's what I'd hope, because it's an insane waste of space and resources that the vast majority of cars you see on the road only transport a single person around. I mean, I get that people don't care about their environmental impact, but at some point we're going to have to care.
- w0utert 7y ago
  Why do you think people using a driverless car service would care less about having to share their ride? In theory if people would just carpool much more right now, the number of cars on the road would go down a lot, and they could divide the costs. But somehow they don't. I don't see why people who don't consider carpooling right now would order a driverless car that needs to pick up some other people before going where they want. So how would driverless cars reduce the number of cars on the road? Or to state it differently: why do we need driverless cars to get the average occupancy of cars on the road above 1?
  - jplayer01 7y ago
    Convenience. Habit. Cultural pressure. Regulatory changes. Etc. It isn't as simple as "People don't do it now, why would they do it in the future?" There are many ways to make automated car sharing far more attractive to people than car pooling ever could.
    - bluGill 7y ago
      This isn't a technology problem, it is a geometry problem. Car pooling/sharing cannot work very well because eventually the car needs to go down some "dead end" that you didn't want to go down to pick up/drop off somebody, and that time is wasted. If you are the last one on and first one off it is great, for everybody else it is wasted time where they are not making any progress getting to their destination. Everybody would be better off (less congestion - less expensive roads need to be built) if everybody carpools, but you are always personally better off to be the one person who doesn't. It may seem like you can solve this by just picking up in the neighborhood. However there are not enough people in any given neighborhood to make that work. This morning exactly one person (car) passed me on my way to the bus stop - I don't know if this person would go the same direction as me or not: there isn't much opportunity for ride sharing within one neighborhood. Transit has the same problems. It solves them by forcing people to walk to the stop/station. At least everybody feels like they are making progress. They also come on a schedule which means you can't leave when you want to.
WhompingWindows 7y ago
This ignores the massive value SDC's can provide to the blind, disabled, elderly, and children, all of whom may not be able to hop on a bike or scooter.
- bogle 7y ago
  I did mention taxis. The question would then be, why an SDC as opposed to a taxi? In the example you give a driver would be of more use.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    Because a car your own means your stuff is in it. If you use it somewhat regularly it is cheaper in the long run to own your own SDC over a taxi (even assuming automation), if only because you get to decide when to clean it.
ivanhoe 7y ago
What you're saying is taking into account only big cities and young population, but in small places and suburbs you depend on cars to do anything, get anywhere. Old people can't be expected to walk far or drive scooters and bikes everyday. And population is mostly getting older, plus with the rise of remote work I presume that more and more people will move outside the big urban centers looking for slower pace and cheaper life, closer to the nature. That means cars will be needed more, not less, and driverless cars can save you a lot of time when commuting everyday.
- jdavis703 7y ago
  > Old people can't be expected to walk far or drive scooters and bikes everyday. Yet that's what one sees in Copenhagen.
  - ivanhoe 7y ago
    And Copenhagen is well known for its high hills, right? Not everyone lives in Holland and Copenhagen and other flat places. Also, while it's definitely great that Scandinavians live their healthy and slightly ascetic lifestyle, it's not everyones cup of tea outside of those specific nations/cultures. Maybe it should be, by all means if this is what young people want they should do it one day when they grow old. But it's silly to expect from old people who grew up in some other time to now suddenly jump into that lifestyle, especially in places that naturally don't fit it. Walking short distances, great. Public transportation, also great. Bikes for everyone... well, great for those who want it, but leave people a room to dislike riding a bike (or anything else) for whatever their reason is.
    - fergie 7y ago
      "And Copenhagen is well known for its high hills, right?" No, but Oslo is, and they are gradually phasing cars out of the city centre
    - kiba 7y ago
      That is why you have electric bikes to tackle those high hills. Anyway, young people biking more means that more older people will actually be able to bike, because exercise helps with increasing mobility as we age.
PhasmaFelis 7y ago
> Also, why would I prefer a driverless taxi if an electric car with a human driver costs no more? Is that something that seems likely to happen? But even assuming it does, I suppose the answer would be because you don't have to worry about finding parking for a taxi, or walking to wherever you parked last night. With a little forethought, you can step right out your door and into your waiting vehicle.
notus 7y ago
Works great in those cities, doesn't work for the rest of the world. Everyone else is sprawled out.
mcv 7y ago
> "If you don't need to drive why would you buy a driverless car?" Not everybody lives in a city, and even people who do live in a city want to leave the city sometimes. I use my bike whenever I can, but we still own a car. That said, the less you drive, the more interesting a driverless car might become: we won't be used to driving, so a self-driving car might be safer for us. And the main reason I prefer to take the train over a car is that I can read in the train. With a driverless car, maybe I can read in the car (though car sickness is also an issue there).
- mrec 7y ago
  > we won't be used to driving, so a self-driving car might be safer for us Very much this. I've lived in London for nearly 20 years. I haven't driven in nearly 20 years. I've barely set foot in a car in nearly 20 years. If I ever needed to drive I'd essentially have to learn all over again (ethically, anyway; not sure about the legal situation). A driverless option for those rare occasions would be great.
lkbm 7y ago
> Also, why would I prefer a driverless taxi if an electric car with a human driver costs no more? I believe the number one cause of death for Americans under the age of 30 is traffic accidents.[0] It's around 40,000 deaths per year (in the US alone). Cars are getting safer, but humans aren't getting better drivers. Individuals humans will get better with experience, but experienced drivers cycle out and new drivers cycle in. A 16-year-old doesn't get to inherit the experience of the 70-year-old they're replacing. A new self-driving car does inherit the experience of older self-driving cars. They also learn from each other in a way humans can't. Human drivers also improve at a rate of O(1). Self-driving cars can share their experience perfectly, so they improve at a rate of O(n). I get a day of driving experience per day. Each one of a million self-driving cars on the road will acquire a million days of driving experience. They won't drive traffic accidents down to zero in a week, but in a few years, if we were to deploy them en masse, they could. [0] Can't actually find CDC data about this anymore. "Accidents" is definitely still #1, but they no longer break out traffic accidents. I know in the past, that was #1. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/LCWK1_2015.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/LCWK1_2015.pdf
- zapita 7y ago
  Wouldn't the safety of self-driving cars relative to human drivers also become moot if cars were no longer needed?
  - Sargos 7y ago
    We are a LOT further away from cars no longer being needed than we are full self-driving cars.
    - zapita 7y ago
      Who's "we"? It seems to me that not all parts of the world are equally dependent on cars.
    - steadicat 7y ago
      This is an odd comment considering how humans have lived hundreds of thousands of years without cars, and only a few decades with them. You’re saying that a solution that’s as old as time - and used by billions of people today - is not as realistic as a technology that hasn’t been developed yet?
mitfahrener 7y ago
Let me guess. Single male, able body, no kids. When you have kids, you'd appreciate having a car/rent a car/uber when grocery shopping for example. And the city is full of people with kids. We are not the minority here. Not everyone is interested in a scooter that is inherently unsafe at moderate speeds.
- rossdavidh 7y ago
  original comment said "why would I prefer a driverless taxi if an electric car with a human driver costs no more?" Which would not seem to be talking about a scooter.
  - ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
    Also the original comment ignores the people that would pay considerably more for a driver less taxi, just to avoid interacting with a human driver.
- anchpop 7y ago
  > Single male, able body, no kids What does being male have to do with it?
- bogle 7y ago
  Married with 3 kids. I think the multiple errors in your assumption is due to poor thinking on at least two counts. I live in the city, as my question may have suggested, and my family can cycle and walk and take the tram and bus and train everywhere we need to go in the city. Also, we do have a vehicle, it's a campervan. We don't need it to do the shopping because we're walking distance to some small stores and get deliveries of groceries and fresh, organic vegetables (yum). The reference to the safety of scooters may require you to provide some evidence. The children are required by myself to wear a helmet and their health is better.
pacala 7y ago
We'd be better off building our cities to encourage mass transit. Micromobility follows as a bonus.
- greedo 7y ago
  Good luck redesigning US cities and suburbs.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
TheMinorityGuy 7y ago
Biking to work or micro-commute is a hipster activity. Most folks do not care about such things and at any given time only a small % of total commuters are "micro commuting". God forbid if this number goes up it will create chaos on our pavements. Public transport is more efficient and better alternative to cars but has its own constraints. The only thing that can totally replace cars is some kind of teleportation technology. Economics of Driverless cars. Electric bulb did not replace candles. In fact we sell more candles today than 100 years ago. Electric bulb opened up new unforeseen possibilities. One of which was that people were able to be productive at night. That caused a revolution in human productivity. Suddenly there were new industries, night schools and what not. Driverless cars will not replace human drivers any time soon and yet will turn out of be revolutionary in next 10 years or so. Google's honeycomb sensor in itself is finding uses in various other sectors. Waymo's plan is not to have a fleet of vehicles that replace Uber for you. Rather they will provide their services on fixed routes to begin with. (Example from airport to a train terminal). Even such minor improvements will help them get profitable soon.
maxsilver 7y ago
> Consider cities... like London and New York. (snip) Note that I'm only asking about city travel Generally speaking, I don't see any future where people no longer drive, because the cost of not-driving is so exorbitantly expensive that very few people will ever be able to afford it. EVs are cheap, and get cheaper every day. Dense urban "car-free" housing is already unaffordable for almost everyone, and only gets more expensive every day as development continues. Unless we get extremely lucky and the housing market crashes hard, the future will probably be one where it's cheaper to have buy 6 to 12 brand-new zero-emission EVs, than it will be to afford an urban car-free 2-bedroom condo in any top-20 city. Given Urbanists political goals (and the fact that Urbanists are winning their goals), I suspect public car commuting and VMT to grow every single year, for 80% of the low and/or middle class population.
- bluGill 7y ago
  High density being expensive and getting those rents shows there is demand: we should be building more of it to fill demand, and in turn bring prices down. In less dense areas the car shines above anything else. However in those dense areas where people have shown they want to live cars are too big and we need something else.
  - maxsilver 7y ago
    > we should be building more of it to fill demand, and in turn bring prices down. That's not really how construction works in the US. All construction generates higher prices than existed before (this is explicit intentional policy, at both the local, state, and federal level). There is no such thing as new housing in the US that lowers property values, therefore there is no such thing as a new building that lowers "prices". No one does this (except perhaps, non-profits and such). And even if you wanted to anyway, no bank would ever finance it.
    - bluGill 7y ago
      That is correct only to the first order. New construction is always higher priced and luxury. However the new construction in turns pulls someone out of some older place elsewhere which then goes down a little in value and becomes more affordable. The best time to build affordable housing is 20 years ago, the second best time is now.
ycombonator 7y ago
So I have to take my 4 year old who developed a high fever to the emergency room on an electric bike/ scooter ?
- bluGill 7y ago
  Sure, why not. If it is a really life or death emergency you of course need to call an ambulance which I'll assume has license to do things illegal for you to get there faster. Most ER visits are important to soon, but few are now important.
  - ycombonator 7y ago
    By your methodology everyone visiting an emergency room on a typical night should call ambulance because the cars have been banned in the city ? I know for sure as heck they can walk or ride a fancy electric bike.
    - bluGill 7y ago
      No, most people don't need an ambulance because they can walk in to the ER. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be in the ER, just that an extra hour walking there isn't going to matter. (in hindsight 80% shouldn't be there, but the symptoms of something that needs to be handled now and a trivial ache are generally the same so you go just in case which inflates the numbers)
- bogle 7y ago
  You'll take her by the fastest method appropriate. No one, said have to, that was just you. It doesn't take much to imagine a situation where the nearest emergency room is a mile away and she can still go on the bike's child seat. Or a taxi. If you live in a city your car, even if you have one, is not necessarily the quickest way to get around.
the_watcher 7y ago
[Speaking about the US, specifically] Micromobility in major cities doesn't really change the realities for the vast number of Americans who don't live in a place where this is realistic. I grew up outside Palm Springs (so not just talking about the very rural part of the country, which is vast and still populated). It would have taken me almost an hour to bike to my high school from my house, but only took ~20 minutes in a car, and for two of the years, the route included dropping off two younger siblings. Skipping past the safety concerns, I think that two daily hour long bike rides is pretty unrealistic for kids under a certain age. This also ignores that, in high school, I literally didn't have a spare 1.5 hours with varsity sports, AP/IB classes, and all the other "necessary" extra-curricular stuff for college prep (which is a separate issue, but still exists). "No longer driving at all" is really only for single and/or childless people, and mainly those living in a large city where the retailers and service providers you need to see in person are within a realistic biking range.
- bpyne 7y ago
  I'm not sure he meant "no longer drive" literally or if he meant that the number of drivers has curtailed enough that the problems autonomous vehicles were created to solve are no longer problems. As you described, clearly there are good cases for driving. Cities are not one of them.
pinky1417 7y ago
Maybe we'll call them something besides "cars" in the future, but motorized air conditioned boxes that take us directly from point to point are not going away anytime soon. I'm all in favor of more transportation options and especially, since I'm a cyclist, segregated bike lanes. Heck, when I lived in Boston, I loved being able to ride just about anywhere in the city. On a bicycle, cars were the bane of my existence. I'd love car free streets! But I'm also a young human who's in pretty good shape. My dad, who uses a walker and has other mobility issues, can't bike and can't walk distances. Buses and trains are options, but he'd have to use them for any distance travel + a wheelchair if he has to go more than a block... not easy. When I was in Boston, I had the privilege of living in an expensive apartment in the middle of town. I could walk, bike, take a bus, etc. But if you can't afford to live downtown, you're once again restricted to buses and trains. Of course, we should build up complementary transportation systems but a car-free future isn't going to happen and we shouldn't want it to happen. For many people and use cases, cars can't be beat.

by bogle 7y ago

bluGill 7y ago

Even in the inner city there are times when a car beats everything else. Or more likely a truck. The store you get groceries from gets deliveries every day, and they probably should have a special waiver to drive on that car free street to get the truck to their back door (I've seen areas in Germany where the old part of town was effectively car free except delivery trucks) Most people will not need to drive very often, so they would not buy a car at all. However everybody has situations where driving of some sort is the best option.

de_watcher 7y ago

There are places where it's cold, where it rains and snows. So we can't bike everywhere. The good thing about the driverless cars is that they solve the parking problems in the cities. We can even add lanes or pavements by removing all parking spaces in the city centers.

ed312 7y ago
You can absolutely bike in the cold, and in the rain, and even in light snow. Also, public transit & busses can get you further without even the dreaded prospect of burning a calorie. Removing free rental of public space to park your private vehicle is something I _do_ endorse though!
- arethuza 7y ago
  After commuting by bike for a number of years the only weather than I found sensible to avoid was very strong winds - I got blown off my bike onto the side of a lorry once, fortunately I was OK but I did get a scare!
  - mikestew 7y ago
    In the Seattle area, if it’s 38F or below, I use four wheels. In 35 years of riding a motorcycle, the singular time I’ve dumped one on the street was black ice when bike’s temp sensor was screaming, “it’s 38F, ice! Ice!” One time it was right. :-( That, and I’ve dumped enough bicycles in similar conditions that I’ve just quit doing it. So total, there’s about a week of days every winter that I drive. I’m fine with that, because as I’ve mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I ain’t young anymore, and that collarbone is gonna snap one of these days if I don’t start exercising some caution.
AlexandrB 7y ago
> The good thing about the driverless cars is that they solve the parking problems in the cities. They only solve them by doubling the traffic problems. I'm not a civil engineer so I'm not sure which problem is harder to solve, but this hardly seems like a free lunch.
stkdump 7y ago
> There are places where it's cold, where it rains and snows. Like Amsterdam and Copenhagen? > The good thing about the driverless cars is that they solve the parking problems in the cities. They solve the search for parking by humans. But if you want to get the cars out of the city while they aren't used, you practically double the traffic and emissions.
- criddell 7y ago
  Amsterdam and Copenhagen don't get very cold.
  - bogle 7y ago
    The canals freeze. That's sea water, too.
    - criddell 7y ago
      I'm not saying it never gets cold, just that the climate is much warmer than, say, Wisconsin. I grew up in Southwestern Ontario and we had days were school was cancelled due to cold, not snow. They were worried about frostbite on any exposed skin.
- todd8 7y ago
  No, not like Amsterdam. I love Amsterdam, but I'm so tired of it being used as an example of how we should all be on bikes. It has a very temperate climate. The weather in most of the US isn't as mild and cool as Amsterdam. There are cites in the US with great weather, for example San Diego, Santa Barbara, all of Marine and Sonoma Counties in CA have great weather (sadly it is having wild fire problems right now). I agree that we could be biking in those places more. The US as a whole has climate all over the place, from polar (N. Alaska) to tropical (S. Florida) to a desert. The coldest it has ever been in the Netherlands is -27 °C, but the continental US has gotten down to -57 °C (Alaska has reached -62 °C). The hottest it has ever been in Amsterdam is +41 °C while the US has reached +57 °C. It's true that these are crazy extremes and we can't decide on public policy based solely on rare events, but there are big cities all over the US where it is too cold to bike. Consider: Average Weather: days at or below temperature: City (population) -18 °C 0 °C ----------------- ------ ----- Amsterdam (821 K) none none Minneapolis (422 K) 23 148 Chicago (2716 K) 7 122 Denver (620 K) 7 157 Milwaukee (595 K) 7 126 Detroit (673 K) 4 115 Indianapolis(872 K) 4 104 Rochester (208 K) 4 129 Buffalo (259 K) 3 124 Cleveland (386 K) 3 104 Hartford (123 K) 3 125 It also gets too hot to bike in the US: Average Weather: days at or above 38 °C: City (population) 38 °C ------------------- ----- Amsterdam (821 K) none Phoenix (1626 K) 107 Las Vegas (642 K) 70 Riverside (328 K) 24 Dallas (1341 K) 17 Austin (951 K) 16 Sacramento (502 K) 11 Oklahoma City (644 K) 11 San Antonio (1493 K) 8 Salt Lake City (201 K) 5 Houston (2313 K) 4 Kansas City (489 K) 3 Some very hardy people do bike in the cold. See [1], the worlds longest winter ultra-marathon (running, biking or skiing 1000km, the last 500 miles without support!!!) It might be the hardest race in the world. (There are not very many other races where contestants have had to be evacuated by helicopter because they were being stalked by a pack of wolves.) [1] https://www.iditarodtrailinvitational.com https://www.iditarodtrailinvitational.com
PanMan 7y ago
You mean places like... Amsterdam? Plenty of rain here. That won't stop people from biking. If the majority of people own a bike, but not a car, biking becomes the default. Even with rain.
- trenning 7y ago
  No places like Wisconsin and Minnesota where there's week spans of high temps that barley get above 0F and wind chills that will give you frost bite if you're exposed for too long. I live in Seattle, rain sucks to ride in and most people don't have facilities to change or shower at work. That's a luxury not a standard. It's all a moot point anyways because all this assumes everyone lives within biking distance of work and that work trucks/vans don't exist for a valid purpose.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    I went to school in MN, and regularly did 1 mile walks in all weather including highs of -25F. You learn to dress for it.
mikestew 7y ago
I keep forgetting that since the dawn of time, humans have been so sensitive to environmental conditions that it is a wonder we survived as a species. I get what you're saying, but in the end it boils down to "it must be 72F and dry anywhere I go". A little rain isn't going to kill you, leave the car at home today. Don't want to ride in the rain? Then don't ride in the rain, I certainly won't judge. But it is not some failing of the design of human beings that makes us incapable of doing so. they solve the parking problems in the cities By turning the general traffic lanes into de facto moving parking spaces?
- rustybelt 7y ago
  So you're admitting that your solution involves a reduced quality of life?
  - lazerpants 7y ago
    Trench foot builds character.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
NovaS1X 7y ago
>There are places where it's cold, where it rains and snows. So what? Can you only bike on sunny days? Get better gear. Hell I motorcycle year round even when it drops below freezing. When it gets real crazy I just take the bus for a day or two.

DickingAround 7y ago

This is kind of silly. It's nice to imagine a world where people don't need cars. But most/all european cities, many of which we laid out before cars, still have cars. We all have cars because cars are incredibly useful; Got 4 young kids and you need to get groceries for the week? You're not going to bicycle them to the store and all that food home again in the mountains. Live in the city and want to go hiking 20 miles away? You're not going to settle for 30MPH when you could be doing 70MPH to get there. The reasons for cars are endless. That's why we have them. (BTW, I pretty much only bike in my city. But it's pretty obvious why people have cars.)

bpyne 7y ago
"Live in the city and want to go hiking 20 miles away?" Yes, you want to use a car in this case. But, in the life I imagine, I would rent a car. I dislike driving intensely, but I can see use-cases in which cars are necessary. However, Americans have been largely forced into car ownership, despite the expense and hassle of owning one. A reduction in car ownership coupled with more pedestrian-friendly community designs is more my goal than making cars extinct. I would like my household to go from two to one vehicle.
- cloudwalking 7y ago
  If you have to rent a car to go hiking, you aren't going to hike very often.
  - bpyne 7y ago
    And why is that?
    - ryan93 7y ago
      Dont pretend like its normal to go through the hassle and expense of car rental just to do a routine activity
      - 7y ago

ossworkerrights 7y ago

But why do we even need to cluster in massive cities, when today’s technologies allow for remote work for pretty much any non physical type of work? Accountants, developers, designers, architects, customer support, and so on can all be done remotely. That would reduce both the need to drive and to cram people in overcrowded public transport options.

Phenomenit 7y ago
Gravity is still an important aspect of an economy. People congregate near food sources(jobs). Companies congregate close to the other services they need because it costs less. as long as our food is on one specific location so will we. If the trend of subsistence farming because more than that we might see a shift in urban areas.
ElFitz 7y ago
It's not just a matter of work. Good luck finding my local theater's shows in Greenfields, nowhere, USA. Sure I can work from anywhere, but businesses (especially leisure) tend to concentrate where people concentrate. Just like when I went trekking. I asked our guide once, _where do we have to go for the trail to be less crowded?_ He named a few places. Then mentioned there were no stairs on the slopes of the mountains he just named. No hot water for showers in the lodges on the way. Much fewer places to stay to eat or sleep. And not as much choice on the menu. Wether it's around the Annapurna or in the US, businesses and services develop and concentrate where there they can find more customers. People go where they can find the products, services and experiences they long for, and the people they care about.
mantap 7y ago
Many people like living in cities. There are many dozens of restaurants within walking distance of my home and quite literally thousands if I hop on the tube. How would my life be enriched if I lived in suburbia?
- 14 7y ago
  Many people like living in she suburbs. There they are exposed to less traffic and emissions from said traffic. We discussed this [1] last week and it seems less traffic has a major effect on air quality. The air you breath would literally be enriched if you lived in suburbia. But I do get your point, I live in a small town and when I travel to a place like Vancouver, it is fascinating to be able to choose from so many different venues and options throughout the entire giant city. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21322291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21322291

ghaff 7y ago

Lots of people don’t live in urban cores. And it’s outside those cores where people can drive significant distances where self-driving has the most value. I actually expect we will eventually see self-driving on limited access highways and other “easy” situations. Self-driving in cities and as taxis may be indefinitely postponed.

astrodust 7y ago
> Lots of people don’t live in urban cores. That's what has to change. Both the location of people, and the definition of "urban core".
- criddell 7y ago
  > That's what has to change. Good luck with that. People like living in the suburbs. It's where I live and when self-driving cars are available I'll move further out of the city.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    Where people live is always a compromise. I want my mansion on 100 acres within a few meters of New York's subway (any station), and no more than 20 minutes from my job (in the midwest - I'd have to average 3x the speed of sound to make that trip time). The above of course is impossible, even if you are the richest person in the world.
    - criddell 7y ago
      Yep. Where I am now is definitely a compromise between convenience and space. A self-driving car will make it possible to increase both my convenience and space.
- rootusrootus 7y ago
  As a practical matter, meaningful change to the population density distribution will take decades, if not centuries. And it will not happen at all until we can find a way to make urban living less brutally expensive. And yeah, urban core will need to be redefined. Not everyone wants to live in a skyscraper. We need to strike a balance.

bonoboTP 7y ago

Not everyone lives in cycling distance to work, not all are fit enough to cycle regularly (old age, disability, obesity). In many countries such people use public transportation, but that's crowded and inconvenient for the richer folks who can afford cars. Why do you think people still have cars in Amsterdam?

bradleyankrom 7y ago
Also, sometimes it rains.
bogle 7y ago
I think many will still have cars, although they'll have to be electric [0]. Will the driverless car be as cheap as the second hand Nissan Leaf? Also, perhaps the car isn't used to commute every day when the weather is good and you aren't battling through traffic. In Europe cycling distance to work within a city is as quick as driving. If you aren't quite fit enough you can get an electric bike (very popular amongst the elderly). I didn't consider the suburbs in my question but in a small to medium sized city (<0.5m) I'd suggest the average commute would be ~8km. That takes ~25mins on a bicycle. Now project a better micromobility infrastructure and cycling looks much more attractive. All those school runs just vanish. So you'd have to rich and fat to still be driving. ;) [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/03/amsterdam-ban-petrol-diesel-cars-bikes-2030 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/03/amsterdam-ban-...
- kalleboo 7y ago
  > Will the driverless car be as cheap as the second hand Nissan Leaf? Eventually, yes. That is the march of technology. Especially if Elon Musk's bet that it can be done using only cameras is right - then the hardware cost is the same as an iPhone. If LIDAR is also required, it will take longer for the prices to go down. This year I bought a 2-year old used econobox car (63 horsepower of pure fury). It already came with 360 degree "top-down-view" parking cameras, stereo camera auto emergency braking, lane departure warning, green light departure warning. And it's a mild hybrid. Once the software is developed, it won't take more than a decade to start coming down in price.

redwood 7y ago

That may be happening in Europe but for 95% of Americans it's sadly a pipedream.

bogle 7y ago
What is stopping American cities from changing their infrastructure investment from automobiles to micromobility? Is there one, big, standout reason that could be addressed? It's a change that takes decades and it's fighting against incumbents with deep pockets but it could be done.
- javagram 7y ago
  Democracy. Other than Manhattan, everywhere else a majority of residents own cars (Even in Manhattan I think it’s like 40% or something own a car). Moreover, the last 70 years of migration have led to a common pattern of people living in the suburbs and commuting via car to their workplace - replacing that with micromobility feels like a threat to their way of life and they will fight it vigorously. What we actually see happen is even small tweaks like the 14th street bus lane in NYC get tied up in court and fought via democratic processes, when they do succeed it’s after a lot of effort.
  - astrodust 7y ago
    Car ownership is declining and will continue to decline because it's an expense many people would rather avoid.
    - greedo 7y ago
      Car ownership in the US has been steadily increasing over time. There's a small increase in "no-car households" since 2010, but it's around a .5% increase. https://investorplace.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screenshot-132.png https://investorplace.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screens...
- bluGill 7y ago
  What do you mean by micromobility? Walk? There is no place you can walk to from your house. Our strict zoning codes have carefully kept anyplace you might want to walk to farther from your house than walking distance. Even if we eliminated all codes today (ignoring all downsides) it will be many years before it makes much a difference. Bike? Cities in the US are too large and spread out. You can get farther in a car than a bike. There is some opportunity, but not much because few people live within reasonable bike distance of work so they will have a car: once you have a car you may as well drive: you can fit more in the trunk than the bike racks, so it is easy to be lazy. In addition, streets tend to wind around, you often spend far longer than desirable getting out of your neighborhood. This is only a few minutes by car, but on a bike it is a lot longer and you feel that when you spend a lot of time going the opposite direction of your destination because that is how the roads go. This is really hard to fix without knocking down houses. This same issue mean that transit cannot work, even if density is high enough (it typically is!) the winding roads mean the bus can't run fast enough to get people anywhere in a reasonable amount of time.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

>then at which point does the value of the driverless car become moot because we no longer drive? When nearly everywhere people live is sufficiently urban to for it to not be economically insane to deploy good enough public transit to replace cars in all those areas. So not in the lifetime of anyone discussing it here. Maybe never if predictions about population leveling off hold.

300bps 7y ago

If you don't need to drive why would you buy a driverless car? I don’t anticipate many people will ever buy a driverless car. The whole concept of buying a car is kind of ridiculous. You pay for it then you continue paying for registration, insurance, maintenance, park, etc all while it sits idle 90% of the time. Driverless cars allow you to be picked up at your front door and dropped off exactly at the spot wherever and whenever you want for a low fee per trip. And we’ll need about 1/10 the number of cars that we have today.

arethuza 7y ago
A lot of those benefits can be had from taxis - and yet people still buy their own cars.
- ArnoVW 7y ago
  Taxis are expensive because they require a human to drive them. Hence the reason the SDC could change that dynamic. A shared car that does not require an expensive human to drive it. Another model are shared cars, like dockless scooters and bikes. They are reasonably popular in the Netherlands for example. But they still require quite a bit of planning to ensure the car is available, and they are not always "in front of your door". Also you need to rent it for the entire time that you're away. Irrespective, SDC will take some time. Like NLP, they work will within a constrained problem domain, but don't really generalise.
  - arethuza 7y ago
    But I'm sure I have done the arithmetic and worked out that taxis would be a lot cheaper than buying cars - but I still ended up buying a car. Mind you I live in a rural area and spend a fair amount of time (1 day week) in areas with no or very poor mobile phone coverage so that might put me off!
  - vonmoltke 7y ago
    > Taxis are expensive because they require a human to drive them. Hence the reason the SDC could change that dynamic. A shared car that does not require an expensive human to drive it. Human driver's only account for 50% - 55% of a cab's cost. https://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-taxis-can-tell-us-about-driverless.html?m=1 https://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-taxis-can-tell... https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-breakdown-of-where-taxi-fares-go https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-breakdown-of-where-taxi-fa...

jplayer01 7y ago

I think the whole point of driverless cars is at some point, you can deploy car sharing services that largely replace private car ownership/usage. At least, that's what I'd hope, because it's an insane waste of space and resources that the vast majority of cars you see on the road only transport a single person around. I mean, I get that people don't care about their environmental impact, but at some point we're going to have to care.

w0utert 7y ago
Why do you think people using a driverless car service would care less about having to share their ride? In theory if people would just carpool much more right now, the number of cars on the road would go down a lot, and they could divide the costs. But somehow they don't. I don't see why people who don't consider carpooling right now would order a driverless car that needs to pick up some other people before going where they want. So how would driverless cars reduce the number of cars on the road? Or to state it differently: why do we need driverless cars to get the average occupancy of cars on the road above 1?
- jplayer01 7y ago
  Convenience. Habit. Cultural pressure. Regulatory changes. Etc. It isn't as simple as "People don't do it now, why would they do it in the future?" There are many ways to make automated car sharing far more attractive to people than car pooling ever could.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    This isn't a technology problem, it is a geometry problem. Car pooling/sharing cannot work very well because eventually the car needs to go down some "dead end" that you didn't want to go down to pick up/drop off somebody, and that time is wasted. If you are the last one on and first one off it is great, for everybody else it is wasted time where they are not making any progress getting to their destination. Everybody would be better off (less congestion - less expensive roads need to be built) if everybody carpools, but you are always personally better off to be the one person who doesn't. It may seem like you can solve this by just picking up in the neighborhood. However there are not enough people in any given neighborhood to make that work. This morning exactly one person (car) passed me on my way to the bus stop - I don't know if this person would go the same direction as me or not: there isn't much opportunity for ride sharing within one neighborhood. Transit has the same problems. It solves them by forcing people to walk to the stop/station. At least everybody feels like they are making progress. They also come on a schedule which means you can't leave when you want to.

WhompingWindows 7y ago

This ignores the massive value SDC's can provide to the blind, disabled, elderly, and children, all of whom may not be able to hop on a bike or scooter.

bogle 7y ago
I did mention taxis. The question would then be, why an SDC as opposed to a taxi? In the example you give a driver would be of more use.
- bluGill 7y ago
  Because a car your own means your stuff is in it. If you use it somewhat regularly it is cheaper in the long run to own your own SDC over a taxi (even assuming automation), if only because you get to decide when to clean it.

ivanhoe 7y ago

What you're saying is taking into account only big cities and young population, but in small places and suburbs you depend on cars to do anything, get anywhere. Old people can't be expected to walk far or drive scooters and bikes everyday. And population is mostly getting older, plus with the rise of remote work I presume that more and more people will move outside the big urban centers looking for slower pace and cheaper life, closer to the nature. That means cars will be needed more, not less, and driverless cars can save you a lot of time when commuting everyday.

jdavis703 7y ago
> Old people can't be expected to walk far or drive scooters and bikes everyday. Yet that's what one sees in Copenhagen.
- ivanhoe 7y ago
  And Copenhagen is well known for its high hills, right? Not everyone lives in Holland and Copenhagen and other flat places. Also, while it's definitely great that Scandinavians live their healthy and slightly ascetic lifestyle, it's not everyones cup of tea outside of those specific nations/cultures. Maybe it should be, by all means if this is what young people want they should do it one day when they grow old. But it's silly to expect from old people who grew up in some other time to now suddenly jump into that lifestyle, especially in places that naturally don't fit it. Walking short distances, great. Public transportation, also great. Bikes for everyone... well, great for those who want it, but leave people a room to dislike riding a bike (or anything else) for whatever their reason is.
  - fergie 7y ago
    "And Copenhagen is well known for its high hills, right?" No, but Oslo is, and they are gradually phasing cars out of the city centre
  - kiba 7y ago
    That is why you have electric bikes to tackle those high hills. Anyway, young people biking more means that more older people will actually be able to bike, because exercise helps with increasing mobility as we age.

PhasmaFelis 7y ago

> Also, why would I prefer a driverless taxi if an electric car with a human driver costs no more? Is that something that seems likely to happen? But even assuming it does, I suppose the answer would be because you don't have to worry about finding parking for a taxi, or walking to wherever you parked last night. With a little forethought, you can step right out your door and into your waiting vehicle.

notus 7y ago

Works great in those cities, doesn't work for the rest of the world. Everyone else is sprawled out.

mcv 7y ago

> "If you don't need to drive why would you buy a driverless car?" Not everybody lives in a city, and even people who do live in a city want to leave the city sometimes. I use my bike whenever I can, but we still own a car. That said, the less you drive, the more interesting a driverless car might become: we won't be used to driving, so a self-driving car might be safer for us. And the main reason I prefer to take the train over a car is that I can read in the train. With a driverless car, maybe I can read in the car (though car sickness is also an issue there).

mrec 7y ago
> we won't be used to driving, so a self-driving car might be safer for us Very much this. I've lived in London for nearly 20 years. I haven't driven in nearly 20 years. I've barely set foot in a car in nearly 20 years. If I ever needed to drive I'd essentially have to learn all over again (ethically, anyway; not sure about the legal situation). A driverless option for those rare occasions would be great.

lkbm 7y ago

> Also, why would I prefer a driverless taxi if an electric car with a human driver costs no more? I believe the number one cause of death for Americans under the age of 30 is traffic accidents.[0] It's around 40,000 deaths per year (in the US alone). Cars are getting safer, but humans aren't getting better drivers. Individuals humans will get better with experience, but experienced drivers cycle out and new drivers cycle in. A 16-year-old doesn't get to inherit the experience of the 70-year-old they're replacing. A new self-driving car does inherit the experience of older self-driving cars. They also learn from each other in a way humans can't. Human drivers also improve at a rate of O(1). Self-driving cars can share their experience perfectly, so they improve at a rate of O(n). I get a day of driving experience per day. Each one of a million self-driving cars on the road will acquire a million days of driving experience. They won't drive traffic accidents down to zero in a week, but in a few years, if we were to deploy them en masse, they could. [0] Can't actually find CDC data about this anymore. "Accidents" is definitely still #1, but they no longer break out traffic accidents. I know in the past, that was #1. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/LCWK1_2015.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/LCWK1_2015.pdf

zapita 7y ago
Wouldn't the safety of self-driving cars relative to human drivers also become moot if cars were no longer needed?
- Sargos 7y ago
  We are a LOT further away from cars no longer being needed than we are full self-driving cars.
  - zapita 7y ago
    Who's "we"? It seems to me that not all parts of the world are equally dependent on cars.
  - steadicat 7y ago
    This is an odd comment considering how humans have lived hundreds of thousands of years without cars, and only a few decades with them. You’re saying that a solution that’s as old as time - and used by billions of people today - is not as realistic as a technology that hasn’t been developed yet?

mitfahrener 7y ago

Let me guess. Single male, able body, no kids. When you have kids, you'd appreciate having a car/rent a car/uber when grocery shopping for example. And the city is full of people with kids. We are not the minority here. Not everyone is interested in a scooter that is inherently unsafe at moderate speeds.

rossdavidh 7y ago
original comment said "why would I prefer a driverless taxi if an electric car with a human driver costs no more?" Which would not seem to be talking about a scooter.
- ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
  Also the original comment ignores the people that would pay considerably more for a driver less taxi, just to avoid interacting with a human driver.
anchpop 7y ago
> Single male, able body, no kids What does being male have to do with it?
bogle 7y ago
Married with 3 kids. I think the multiple errors in your assumption is due to poor thinking on at least two counts. I live in the city, as my question may have suggested, and my family can cycle and walk and take the tram and bus and train everywhere we need to go in the city. Also, we do have a vehicle, it's a campervan. We don't need it to do the shopping because we're walking distance to some small stores and get deliveries of groceries and fresh, organic vegetables (yum). The reference to the safety of scooters may require you to provide some evidence. The children are required by myself to wear a helmet and their health is better.

pacala 7y ago

We'd be better off building our cities to encourage mass transit. Micromobility follows as a bonus.

greedo 7y ago
Good luck redesigning US cities and suburbs.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

TheMinorityGuy 7y ago

Biking to work or micro-commute is a hipster activity. Most folks do not care about such things and at any given time only a small % of total commuters are "micro commuting". God forbid if this number goes up it will create chaos on our pavements. Public transport is more efficient and better alternative to cars but has its own constraints. The only thing that can totally replace cars is some kind of teleportation technology. Economics of Driverless cars. Electric bulb did not replace candles. In fact we sell more candles today than 100 years ago. Electric bulb opened up new unforeseen possibilities. One of which was that people were able to be productive at night. That caused a revolution in human productivity. Suddenly there were new industries, night schools and what not. Driverless cars will not replace human drivers any time soon and yet will turn out of be revolutionary in next 10 years or so. Google's honeycomb sensor in itself is finding uses in various other sectors. Waymo's plan is not to have a fleet of vehicles that replace Uber for you. Rather they will provide their services on fixed routes to begin with. (Example from airport to a train terminal). Even such minor improvements will help them get profitable soon.

maxsilver 7y ago

> Consider cities... like London and New York. (snip) Note that I'm only asking about city travel Generally speaking, I don't see any future where people no longer drive, because the cost of not-driving is so exorbitantly expensive that very few people will ever be able to afford it. EVs are cheap, and get cheaper every day. Dense urban "car-free" housing is already unaffordable for almost everyone, and only gets more expensive every day as development continues. Unless we get extremely lucky and the housing market crashes hard, the future will probably be one where it's cheaper to have buy 6 to 12 brand-new zero-emission EVs, than it will be to afford an urban car-free 2-bedroom condo in any top-20 city. Given Urbanists political goals (and the fact that Urbanists are winning their goals), I suspect public car commuting and VMT to grow every single year, for 80% of the low and/or middle class population.

bluGill 7y ago
High density being expensive and getting those rents shows there is demand: we should be building more of it to fill demand, and in turn bring prices down. In less dense areas the car shines above anything else. However in those dense areas where people have shown they want to live cars are too big and we need something else.
- maxsilver 7y ago
  > we should be building more of it to fill demand, and in turn bring prices down. That's not really how construction works in the US. All construction generates higher prices than existed before (this is explicit intentional policy, at both the local, state, and federal level). There is no such thing as new housing in the US that lowers property values, therefore there is no such thing as a new building that lowers "prices". No one does this (except perhaps, non-profits and such). And even if you wanted to anyway, no bank would ever finance it.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    That is correct only to the first order. New construction is always higher priced and luxury. However the new construction in turns pulls someone out of some older place elsewhere which then goes down a little in value and becomes more affordable. The best time to build affordable housing is 20 years ago, the second best time is now.

ycombonator 7y ago

So I have to take my 4 year old who developed a high fever to the emergency room on an electric bike/ scooter ?

bluGill 7y ago
Sure, why not. If it is a really life or death emergency you of course need to call an ambulance which I'll assume has license to do things illegal for you to get there faster. Most ER visits are important to soon, but few are now important.
- ycombonator 7y ago
  By your methodology everyone visiting an emergency room on a typical night should call ambulance because the cars have been banned in the city ? I know for sure as heck they can walk or ride a fancy electric bike.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    No, most people don't need an ambulance because they can walk in to the ER. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be in the ER, just that an extra hour walking there isn't going to matter. (in hindsight 80% shouldn't be there, but the symptoms of something that needs to be handled now and a trivial ache are generally the same so you go just in case which inflates the numbers)
bogle 7y ago
You'll take her by the fastest method appropriate. No one, said have to, that was just you. It doesn't take much to imagine a situation where the nearest emergency room is a mile away and she can still go on the bike's child seat. Or a taxi. If you live in a city your car, even if you have one, is not necessarily the quickest way to get around.

the_watcher 7y ago

[Speaking about the US, specifically] Micromobility in major cities doesn't really change the realities for the vast number of Americans who don't live in a place where this is realistic. I grew up outside Palm Springs (so not just talking about the very rural part of the country, which is vast and still populated). It would have taken me almost an hour to bike to my high school from my house, but only took ~20 minutes in a car, and for two of the years, the route included dropping off two younger siblings. Skipping past the safety concerns, I think that two daily hour long bike rides is pretty unrealistic for kids under a certain age. This also ignores that, in high school, I literally didn't have a spare 1.5 hours with varsity sports, AP/IB classes, and all the other "necessary" extra-curricular stuff for college prep (which is a separate issue, but still exists). "No longer driving at all" is really only for single and/or childless people, and mainly those living in a large city where the retailers and service providers you need to see in person are within a realistic biking range.

bpyne 7y ago
I'm not sure he meant "no longer drive" literally or if he meant that the number of drivers has curtailed enough that the problems autonomous vehicles were created to solve are no longer problems. As you described, clearly there are good cases for driving. Cities are not one of them.

pinky1417 7y ago

Maybe we'll call them something besides "cars" in the future, but motorized air conditioned boxes that take us directly from point to point are not going away anytime soon. I'm all in favor of more transportation options and especially, since I'm a cyclist, segregated bike lanes. Heck, when I lived in Boston, I loved being able to ride just about anywhere in the city. On a bicycle, cars were the bane of my existence. I'd love car free streets! But I'm also a young human who's in pretty good shape. My dad, who uses a walker and has other mobility issues, can't bike and can't walk distances. Buses and trains are options, but he'd have to use them for any distance travel + a wheelchair if he has to go more than a block... not easy. When I was in Boston, I had the privilege of living in an expensive apartment in the middle of town. I could walk, bike, take a bus, etc. But if you can't afford to live downtown, you're once again restricted to buses and trains. Of course, we should build up complementary transportation systems but a car-free future isn't going to happen and we shouldn't want it to happen. For many people and use cases, cars can't be beat.