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all of this time and money wasted on driverless cars has been a complete failure. companies and cities should be investing their time into improving public tra

by xyst 4y ago

all of this time and money wasted on driverless cars has been a complete failure. companies and cities should be investing their time into improving public transportation and designing our cities to be more walkable and make alternate modes of transportation more feasible. the US culture of using a car for everyday transportation is fucking insane, wasteful, and contributes to the rising cost of living across the US (not just SF).

asah 4y ago
!RemindMe 10 years
cecilpl2 4y ago
Cities cannot easily be "redesigned". Infrastructure exists and you can't just refactor neighborhoods like software. Autonomous vehicles are an enormous market and well worth the investment.
- picture 4y ago
  Except, you sorta can. See "superblocks" in places like Barcelona
  - ryukafalz 4y ago
    Right. You can make huge impacts with comparatively very small changes to the built environment. It’s the “MVP” of city design. :)
  - fastball 4y ago
    Barcelona is laid out entirely differently from almost every American city. What's a superblock in Houston gonna do?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- kiba 4y ago
  AI is an extremely difficult challenge imposed by the current constraint. Change the constraint, then you don't need an AI to drive cars.
  - munchenphile 4y ago
    Yep, this is the plain reality. Self driving cars just feels like a bunch of engineers wanting to solve a really hard and really interesting problem. But is it really the right problem to solve? I don’t think so. Currently we have: >other unpredictable human-driven vehicles on the road >no sensors or passive/active guides in the physical infrastructure — guidance is completely determined onboard >no signage designed for CV — everything written in plain English, so you have to waste compute on object detection and OCR. And, you have a constant and unending need to collect mapping data >no vehicle-to-vehicle communication whatsoever Design the roads and signage for self driving cars, enforce an industry-wide V2V standard with NHTSA, and start small in some test areas that only allow other vehicles that are part of the botnet (perhaps not necessarily self-driving, but at least part of the V2V network). That’s a reasonable problem space. The current one is unworkable — the models won’t converge and they’ll never make it out of “beta”.
    - nradov 4y ago
      So you intend to ban bicycles from those areas? Because bikes are never going to have reliable V2V communication.
- foobarian 4y ago
  I mean refactoring production software is no easy feat either
- ryukafalz 4y ago
  > Cities cannot easily be "redesigned". Tell that to Jersey City: https://youtu.be/1mC1l8L5aBA https://youtu.be/1mC1l8L5aBA Transport infrastructure in cities absolutely can be redesigned quickly, if you’re willing to take a quick and dirty approach in the short term. Which is usually enough when it comes to influencing people’s behavior; it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be functional and feel safe.
  - bko 4y ago
    You're talking about adding bike lanes. That's cool I guess but you still need a car for every day life. Not everyone is a young single person that can just go to a food co-op every few days, throw some organic produce in their backpack and ride home.
    - ben-schaaf 4y ago
      > Not everyone is a young single person that can just go to a food co-op every few days, throw some organic produce in their backpack and ride home. In places with good bicycle infrastructure like the Netherlands pretty much everyone cycles (93% cycle at least once per week). In fact the mode share for bicycles is lowest in the 30-40 age range with the 2nd highest being 65 and up - highest is under 18. The biggest use for cycling is shopping (22%). http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2011/02/who-cycles-in-netherlands.html?m=1 http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2011/02/who-cycles-in-n...
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - jen20 4y ago
      I lived in Jersey City for quite some time without a car, and had absolutely no issues with every day life. On the occasion one was needed, Uber sufficed perfectly well.
- dopidopHN 4y ago
  It’s not easy, for sure. But it has been done. It’s a matter of will. Not saying it’s de facto a good idea. But cities can be refactored. See : Haussmann. Are you from the US? I find the kind of passive statement about the state of systems prevalent here. ( be it public transportation, internet infrastructure, political framework ) I start to doubt the capacity of this country to adapt.
- asdff 4y ago
  Sometimes the market is not worth existing if it harms the planet. And most cities were actually designed for streetcar lines in the U.S., that includes all the big ones in California too. We just need to reengage that, and do simple things like give the existing bus networks signal preemption and their own lanes. Plus considering most car trips are under 5 miles and california has good weather, it makes no sense why there shouldn't be bike lanes absolutely everywhere and the majority of journeys done on bike or ebike.
  - djbusby 4y ago
    Some cities even started out with a bunch of street-cars then tore out all the lines (for cars!) rather than expand existing rail - looking at you Seattle
    - dskrvk 4y ago
      Philly did this too, though in the recent years the city started bringing some lines back. Heck, when the full tram network was around a 100 years ago, it could take you pretty far out into the suburbs, while today you either have to take the train which comes every 30-60 minutes or drive.
  - quartesixte 4y ago
    Streetcars would be an amazing God send to LA. Would love to have them back.
    - astrange 4y ago
      Those largely died out because they were run by private operators, but the government then decided to make them cheaper by imposing price controls, and then didn't "nationalize" them when they ran out of business and died. (The common story is they were bought up and shut down by car companies, but that's a myth afaik.)
    - asdff 4y ago
      Honestly the bus network in LA is great as far as US cities are concerned. Great coverage, but hampered by sharing the grade with cars and waiting at red lights. All it would take is a can of paint for a bus lane and the same signal preemption enjoyed by police cars looking to run a red. No new technology is required or great investment beyond that.
- jonnycomputer 4y ago
  Sometimes you can't even refactor software like they do neighborhoods.
- bogomipz 4y ago
  Sure they can and do. Here are 10 pedestrian-friendly redesigns from the last 10 years in one of the largest and densest cities in the world: https://www.6sqft.com/before-after-10-nyc-blocks-and-enclaves-transformed-by-pedestrian-friendly-design/ https://www.6sqft.com/before-after-10-nyc-blocks-and-enclave... and a few more examples here, with the designer talking about the process: https://www.wired.com/video/watch/wired-news-and-science-street-design https://www.wired.com/video/watch/wired-news-and-science-str...
- astrange 4y ago
  Dutch cities looked a lot more like American cities pretty recently, and American cities were full of smog pretty recently too. You can change a lot in a decade or three.
uoaei 4y ago
Everything here is objectively correct and this is a comment that contributes to the conversation. But I saw your comment and it was already gray, with 0 minutes of age. Funny how shamelessly "rational" people react emotionally when their preferred narrative is challenged.
- trgn 4y ago
  It's because the commenter's solution to the problems of waste, noise, pollution, obesity, and people dying and getting maimed through traffic violence, is, essentially, the removal of a technological layer. Driverless cars, in opposition, is the addition of a technological layer. We are all modernists now. Essentially, this means that we perceive technology in itself as a value. The primary value is not the end goal, say, for example, a healthy urban environment. No, instead, living in a sci-fi future with robotic vehicles is a value, because it is technologically more advanced than a future without that. In modernism, it's a sickness of the mind really, a solution cannot be imagined, unless it involves technological mediation. This has been the curse of human civilization for a good 100 years now. Anyways, I don't think research in driverless cars is wasted. They are better than the current state of affairs. They can only be a marginal improvement though, they are not a paradigm shift.
  - JKCalhoun 4y ago
    > It's because the commenter's solution to the problems of waste, noise, pollution, obesity, and people dying and getting maimed through traffic violence, is, essentially, the removal of a technological layer. I thought they suggested public transportation?
- bowsamic 4y ago
  You must be new to HN
- gverrilla 4y ago
  don't forget there's $ on the line: a lot of "hackers" here are only corporate slaves and will do anything for a salary, just like good nazi soldiers.
maximus-decimus 4y ago
Self driving would be worth it for trucking on its own and you're not gonna reduce trucking by making cities more walkable.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  No, but trains could reduce trucking.
  - nradov 4y ago
    Where? A huge amount of freight already travels by train. Over-the-road trucks are mostly only used when trains are too slow for time-sensitive loads, or where it's impractical to lay tracks.
nyx_land 4y ago
What, it's not insane that we've opted to instead throw massive amounts of computing resources at mountains of data to train statistical models to drive cars instead of not bending to the whims of NIMBYs holding onto the houses they bought decades ago so they can be buried like Egyptian pharoahs with their hoarded wealth? /s
mrshadowgoose 4y ago
Public transportation could take the form of government-owned fleets of self-driving electric cars :) I love going directly from point A to B in a private space and I'm not ashamed to admit it. This provides value to my life in the form of comfort and convenience, factors that are so frequently waved away as irrelevant by anyone screaming "car culture". However, it's admittedly obscene that for this privledge, my vehicle sits unused most of the time. I'd be more than happy to have a non-owned electric vehicle show up when I need it, take me to my destination, and then proceed to help someone else with their journey.
- Akronymus 4y ago
  > I love going directly from point A to B in a private space and I'm not ashamed to admit it. This provides value to my life in the form of comfort and convenience, factors that are so frequently waved away as irrelevant by anyone screaming "car culture". Its not irrelevant. But driving becomes better the less people are taking cars. So, even for people who would never take public transport or something like that, its beneficial to invest in it. Being able to take a car is a freedom, HAVING to take one isn't.
  - JKCalhoun 4y ago
    I was a spoiled programmer working for Apple in the Bay Area when they (following Google's lead) offered buses for employees. For several years (until Covid) I took the bus back and forth to work every day. So awesome.
    - astrange 4y ago
      I always got motion sick on those things.
- thescriptkiddie 4y ago
  > Public transportation could take the form of government-owned fleets of self-driving electric cars It absolutely could not, here simply is not enough space for all those cars. A heavy rail metro line can carry up to 60 thousand passengers per hour per direction, which is the equivalent of a 30 lane highway.
bko 4y ago
> $80 Billion Has Been Spent on Self-Driving Cars With Nothing to Show for It. [0] That's a lot of money sure, but what could that get you if it was spent on infrastructure? That couldn't even pay for a 500 mile high speed rail from LA to San Fransisco which is now going to cost at least $110 billion [1]. [0] https://www.treehugger.com/praise-dumb-transportation-self-driving-4857758 https://www.treehugger.com/praise-dumb-transportation-self-d... [1] https://www.constructiondive.com/news/california-high-speed-rail-costs-rise-to-105-billion/618877/ https://www.constructiondive.com/news/california-high-speed-...
- sroussey 4y ago
  And how, exactly, do the investors get like 5x their money back in less than 10 years?
- asdff 4y ago
  On the other hand you are comparing the costs of tangible fully built out infrastructure to what at this point has been marginally scaled up robotics class exercises
robbrown451 4y ago
"all of this time and money wasted on driverless cars has been a complete failure." That's quite a stretch. If you think the money would be better spent elsewhere, ok. But to call it a failure is silly. Personally, I think driverless taxis making car ownership less necessary will be a huge plus. It will also make life a lot better for those due to age (too young or too old) or other issues not being able to drive. I remember the space program being credited as contributing so much to the economy via by-product technology. Certainly self-driving cars contributes to automating tons of things beyond driving people around on public streets. After all, self-driving car tech is really just a subset of robotics. Of course if you are against automation in all senses (e.g. they're putting people out of work!") that's a different discussion. "the US culture of using a car for everyday transportation is fucking insane, wasteful, and contributes to the rising cost of living across the US (not just SF)." Ok, but to get away from that you need gradual steps. I'd say it is far less insane to call a robo-taxi when needed (possibly a van-sized one that carries many people at once, which become practical once more people are willing to give up owning cars), than it is to actually own a car that sits idle, possibly on city streets, 95% of the time. Also there will be robo-deliveries, so you don't need to use a car for such basic things as going to the grocery store. This can actually be far cheaper for the stores, since there is no need for large spaces consumers can walk around in. The whole process can be automated, including filling your order, putting it on a truck, and putting it on your front porch (or in some kind of box accessible to the bot). Stuff like this is all part of the same technological effort.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  >but to get away from that you need gradual steps Given that you bring up the space program in the same post I'll stick with the metaphor and point out that you can't go to the moon by climbing up trees, or as Russ Ackoff said, doing the wrong thing right is worse than doing the right thing wrong, because making the wrong thing more efficient just makes things worse. If you want fully automated, efficient transport this technology already exists, it's train and subway systems. We even know how to virtually automate them 100% already, 24/7. With the tens of bilions if not more spent on driverless cars you could have actually rebuilt a decent chunk of infrastructure. Having individual people drive around in two tons of steel to buy a bag of groceries is fundamentally stupid and its destroying cities, whether the car is electric or automated doesn't matter that much and there's no gradual change away from it, only a disruptive one.
AlotOfReading 4y ago
As someone in the autonomous driving industry, maybe I can contribute a different perspective. I totally agree that better designed cities would be superior. When I took the initiative to participate in my local government, I was screamed and cursed at for the most trivial improvements imaginable, like a shared bike lane on a few miles of a particularly dangerous street. Multiply that by the opposition to actual improvements and advocacy in every single town, city, and state in America. Fuck that. Self driving cars are way easier.
- 13of40 4y ago
  Not totally on topic, but what's your take on being able to roll out autonomous vehicles in places with more "fluid" driving habits? I've driven in some crazy environments in the past, but I just came back from a very large country (let's call it an eighth of the world's population) where I can't imagine renting a car and driving there because of the near complete disregard they have for official traffic rules. Obviously they're just following a different set of rules, because people don't just crash into each other, but in that situation do you program the car to follow government rules or local custom?
  - AlotOfReading 4y ago
    Depends on what you mean and what you think driver behavior will be like. "Able to avoid hitting other things in a dense environment, but may not make forward progress" is fairly straightforward from the current state-of-the-art (though not necessarily easy!). There's a reasonable argument to be made that making forward progress while remaining safe when intelligent agents are willing to play chicken requires a good theory of mind, but I can't formalize it. It's "just a hunch", but that seems like a Hard Problem to me and not necessarily something we'll completely solve soon. There's been work along these lines with statistical/ML methods, but my personal suspicion is that existing work would quickly fall apart in a truly hostile environment. There's also the discussion around navigating non-roads, potholes, and other infrastructural issues that the industry hasn't solved yet. I don't think these are insurmountable, just difficult engineering issues.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
numpad0 4y ago
Public transportations and walking don’t replace a lot of use cases for cars, except for commuting for office works. You can’t board a train while soaked in mud, or pushing a Subaru seat, or carrying bag full of groceries. Actually I’ve done the latter two, but I haven’t seen anyone else doing it, and it had been extremely awkward. Everyone feels driving cars are wrong, perhaps because of emissions, but trains and buses just don’t cut it. I even doubt a public driverless taxis fills the gap, as moving large objects on human driven taxis can be awkward enough.
- cultofmetatron 4y ago
  we only have bags full of groceries because zoning prohibits grocery stores being near where people live in most place. So you need a car and since its a pain, you migt as well stock up on as much as you can while you're at it. If it were, you'd probably just go on a 10 minute walk and pickup enough for two days of food.
  - nradov 4y ago
    That's fine for young childless people. For families with multiple children it's a huge hassle to have to have to shop like that. Growing kids eat a lot. And when you buy heavy items like watermelon or milk or whole frozen chickens it's just not easy to carry. Much easier to drive a big car to a big box store and stock up on everything needed for a week.
    - cultofmetatron 4y ago
      plenty of people with young children in Europe and latin Americs manage to do just fine this way from what I've seen.
    - asdff 4y ago
      You don't have to carry it, you can get one of those grocery carts. I see people bring them on my bus full of groceries.
    - em500 4y ago
12amxn12 4y ago
astrange 4y ago
There's not really a way for companies to invest in public transportation, it being public and them not. Cities don't appreciate changes to it, nor voters, nor people who complain about the tech industry. (When they do try to change it people complain about it and say "those morons just invented the bus again".)
JKCalhoun 4y ago
Sorry you're being downvoted. I agree with you. It seems so inefficient to me to be putting resources into self-driving cars. From the point of view of the commuter, a bus or train is "self driving" since the commuter is free to read, work on their laptop, etc. while on a bus/train. We've had that tech for a few hundred years, it is vastly more efficient not only in fuel consumption but cost as well. We should use it more. I understand why people in most of the U.S. are reticent to use public transportation though, without descending into listing off the litany of reasons, I will say though that I believe those issues are all fairly easy to solve (to be sure, some issues require a hefty expenditure of capital). And I am a hypocrite — I too have a list of reasons that I dislike the public transportation (such as it is) that is available to me in a mid-size U.S. city and do not use it. (Christ, I miss Tokyo though.) I am hesitant to judge, but to me the idea of a "personal chauffeur" (self-driving car) in lieu of pushing for more public transportation is somewhat gross.

by xyst 4y ago

asah 4y ago

!RemindMe 10 years

cecilpl2 4y ago

Cities cannot easily be "redesigned". Infrastructure exists and you can't just refactor neighborhoods like software. Autonomous vehicles are an enormous market and well worth the investment.

picture 4y ago
Except, you sorta can. See "superblocks" in places like Barcelona
- ryukafalz 4y ago
  Right. You can make huge impacts with comparatively very small changes to the built environment. It’s the “MVP” of city design. :)
- fastball 4y ago
  Barcelona is laid out entirely differently from almost every American city. What's a superblock in Houston gonna do?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
kiba 4y ago
AI is an extremely difficult challenge imposed by the current constraint. Change the constraint, then you don't need an AI to drive cars.
- munchenphile 4y ago
  Yep, this is the plain reality. Self driving cars just feels like a bunch of engineers wanting to solve a really hard and really interesting problem. But is it really the right problem to solve? I don’t think so. Currently we have: >other unpredictable human-driven vehicles on the road >no sensors or passive/active guides in the physical infrastructure — guidance is completely determined onboard >no signage designed for CV — everything written in plain English, so you have to waste compute on object detection and OCR. And, you have a constant and unending need to collect mapping data >no vehicle-to-vehicle communication whatsoever Design the roads and signage for self driving cars, enforce an industry-wide V2V standard with NHTSA, and start small in some test areas that only allow other vehicles that are part of the botnet (perhaps not necessarily self-driving, but at least part of the V2V network). That’s a reasonable problem space. The current one is unworkable — the models won’t converge and they’ll never make it out of “beta”.
  - nradov 4y ago
    So you intend to ban bicycles from those areas? Because bikes are never going to have reliable V2V communication.
foobarian 4y ago
I mean refactoring production software is no easy feat either
ryukafalz 4y ago
> Cities cannot easily be "redesigned". Tell that to Jersey City: https://youtu.be/1mC1l8L5aBA https://youtu.be/1mC1l8L5aBA Transport infrastructure in cities absolutely can be redesigned quickly, if you’re willing to take a quick and dirty approach in the short term. Which is usually enough when it comes to influencing people’s behavior; it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be functional and feel safe.
- bko 4y ago
  You're talking about adding bike lanes. That's cool I guess but you still need a car for every day life. Not everyone is a young single person that can just go to a food co-op every few days, throw some organic produce in their backpack and ride home.
  - ben-schaaf 4y ago
    > Not everyone is a young single person that can just go to a food co-op every few days, throw some organic produce in their backpack and ride home. In places with good bicycle infrastructure like the Netherlands pretty much everyone cycles (93% cycle at least once per week). In fact the mode share for bicycles is lowest in the 30-40 age range with the 2nd highest being 65 and up - highest is under 18. The biggest use for cycling is shopping (22%). http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2011/02/who-cycles-in-netherlands.html?m=1 http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2011/02/who-cycles-in-n...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - jen20 4y ago
    I lived in Jersey City for quite some time without a car, and had absolutely no issues with every day life. On the occasion one was needed, Uber sufficed perfectly well.
dopidopHN 4y ago
It’s not easy, for sure. But it has been done. It’s a matter of will. Not saying it’s de facto a good idea. But cities can be refactored. See : Haussmann. Are you from the US? I find the kind of passive statement about the state of systems prevalent here. ( be it public transportation, internet infrastructure, political framework ) I start to doubt the capacity of this country to adapt.
asdff 4y ago
Sometimes the market is not worth existing if it harms the planet. And most cities were actually designed for streetcar lines in the U.S., that includes all the big ones in California too. We just need to reengage that, and do simple things like give the existing bus networks signal preemption and their own lanes. Plus considering most car trips are under 5 miles and california has good weather, it makes no sense why there shouldn't be bike lanes absolutely everywhere and the majority of journeys done on bike or ebike.
- djbusby 4y ago
  Some cities even started out with a bunch of street-cars then tore out all the lines (for cars!) rather than expand existing rail - looking at you Seattle
  - dskrvk 4y ago
    Philly did this too, though in the recent years the city started bringing some lines back. Heck, when the full tram network was around a 100 years ago, it could take you pretty far out into the suburbs, while today you either have to take the train which comes every 30-60 minutes or drive.
- quartesixte 4y ago
  Streetcars would be an amazing God send to LA. Would love to have them back.
  - astrange 4y ago
    Those largely died out because they were run by private operators, but the government then decided to make them cheaper by imposing price controls, and then didn't "nationalize" them when they ran out of business and died. (The common story is they were bought up and shut down by car companies, but that's a myth afaik.)
  - asdff 4y ago
    Honestly the bus network in LA is great as far as US cities are concerned. Great coverage, but hampered by sharing the grade with cars and waiting at red lights. All it would take is a can of paint for a bus lane and the same signal preemption enjoyed by police cars looking to run a red. No new technology is required or great investment beyond that.
jonnycomputer 4y ago
Sometimes you can't even refactor software like they do neighborhoods.
bogomipz 4y ago
Sure they can and do. Here are 10 pedestrian-friendly redesigns from the last 10 years in one of the largest and densest cities in the world: https://www.6sqft.com/before-after-10-nyc-blocks-and-enclaves-transformed-by-pedestrian-friendly-design/ https://www.6sqft.com/before-after-10-nyc-blocks-and-enclave... and a few more examples here, with the designer talking about the process: https://www.wired.com/video/watch/wired-news-and-science-street-design https://www.wired.com/video/watch/wired-news-and-science-str...
astrange 4y ago
Dutch cities looked a lot more like American cities pretty recently, and American cities were full of smog pretty recently too. You can change a lot in a decade or three.

uoaei 4y ago

Everything here is objectively correct and this is a comment that contributes to the conversation. But I saw your comment and it was already gray, with 0 minutes of age. Funny how shamelessly "rational" people react emotionally when their preferred narrative is challenged.

trgn 4y ago
It's because the commenter's solution to the problems of waste, noise, pollution, obesity, and people dying and getting maimed through traffic violence, is, essentially, the removal of a technological layer. Driverless cars, in opposition, is the addition of a technological layer. We are all modernists now. Essentially, this means that we perceive technology in itself as a value. The primary value is not the end goal, say, for example, a healthy urban environment. No, instead, living in a sci-fi future with robotic vehicles is a value, because it is technologically more advanced than a future without that. In modernism, it's a sickness of the mind really, a solution cannot be imagined, unless it involves technological mediation. This has been the curse of human civilization for a good 100 years now. Anyways, I don't think research in driverless cars is wasted. They are better than the current state of affairs. They can only be a marginal improvement though, they are not a paradigm shift.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  > It's because the commenter's solution to the problems of waste, noise, pollution, obesity, and people dying and getting maimed through traffic violence, is, essentially, the removal of a technological layer. I thought they suggested public transportation?
bowsamic 4y ago
You must be new to HN
gverrilla 4y ago
don't forget there's $ on the line: a lot of "hackers" here are only corporate slaves and will do anything for a salary, just like good nazi soldiers.

maximus-decimus 4y ago

Self driving would be worth it for trucking on its own and you're not gonna reduce trucking by making cities more walkable.

JKCalhoun 4y ago
No, but trains could reduce trucking.
- nradov 4y ago
  Where? A huge amount of freight already travels by train. Over-the-road trucks are mostly only used when trains are too slow for time-sensitive loads, or where it's impractical to lay tracks.

nyx_land 4y ago

What, it's not insane that we've opted to instead throw massive amounts of computing resources at mountains of data to train statistical models to drive cars instead of not bending to the whims of NIMBYs holding onto the houses they bought decades ago so they can be buried like Egyptian pharoahs with their hoarded wealth? /s

mrshadowgoose 4y ago

Public transportation could take the form of government-owned fleets of self-driving electric cars :) I love going directly from point A to B in a private space and I'm not ashamed to admit it. This provides value to my life in the form of comfort and convenience, factors that are so frequently waved away as irrelevant by anyone screaming "car culture". However, it's admittedly obscene that for this privledge, my vehicle sits unused most of the time. I'd be more than happy to have a non-owned electric vehicle show up when I need it, take me to my destination, and then proceed to help someone else with their journey.

Akronymus 4y ago
> I love going directly from point A to B in a private space and I'm not ashamed to admit it. This provides value to my life in the form of comfort and convenience, factors that are so frequently waved away as irrelevant by anyone screaming "car culture". Its not irrelevant. But driving becomes better the less people are taking cars. So, even for people who would never take public transport or something like that, its beneficial to invest in it. Being able to take a car is a freedom, HAVING to take one isn't.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  I was a spoiled programmer working for Apple in the Bay Area when they (following Google's lead) offered buses for employees. For several years (until Covid) I took the bus back and forth to work every day. So awesome.
  - astrange 4y ago
    I always got motion sick on those things.
thescriptkiddie 4y ago
> Public transportation could take the form of government-owned fleets of self-driving electric cars It absolutely could not, here simply is not enough space for all those cars. A heavy rail metro line can carry up to 60 thousand passengers per hour per direction, which is the equivalent of a 30 lane highway.

bko 4y ago

> $80 Billion Has Been Spent on Self-Driving Cars With Nothing to Show for It. [0] That's a lot of money sure, but what could that get you if it was spent on infrastructure? That couldn't even pay for a 500 mile high speed rail from LA to San Fransisco which is now going to cost at least $110 billion [1]. [0] https://www.treehugger.com/praise-dumb-transportation-self-driving-4857758 https://www.treehugger.com/praise-dumb-transportation-self-d... [1] https://www.constructiondive.com/news/california-high-speed-rail-costs-rise-to-105-billion/618877/ https://www.constructiondive.com/news/california-high-speed-...

sroussey 4y ago
And how, exactly, do the investors get like 5x their money back in less than 10 years?
asdff 4y ago
On the other hand you are comparing the costs of tangible fully built out infrastructure to what at this point has been marginally scaled up robotics class exercises

robbrown451 4y ago

"all of this time and money wasted on driverless cars has been a complete failure." That's quite a stretch. If you think the money would be better spent elsewhere, ok. But to call it a failure is silly. Personally, I think driverless taxis making car ownership less necessary will be a huge plus. It will also make life a lot better for those due to age (too young or too old) or other issues not being able to drive. I remember the space program being credited as contributing so much to the economy via by-product technology. Certainly self-driving cars contributes to automating tons of things beyond driving people around on public streets. After all, self-driving car tech is really just a subset of robotics. Of course if you are against automation in all senses (e.g. they're putting people out of work!") that's a different discussion. "the US culture of using a car for everyday transportation is fucking insane, wasteful, and contributes to the rising cost of living across the US (not just SF)." Ok, but to get away from that you need gradual steps. I'd say it is far less insane to call a robo-taxi when needed (possibly a van-sized one that carries many people at once, which become practical once more people are willing to give up owning cars), than it is to actually own a car that sits idle, possibly on city streets, 95% of the time. Also there will be robo-deliveries, so you don't need to use a car for such basic things as going to the grocery store. This can actually be far cheaper for the stores, since there is no need for large spaces consumers can walk around in. The whole process can be automated, including filling your order, putting it on a truck, and putting it on your front porch (or in some kind of box accessible to the bot). Stuff like this is all part of the same technological effort.

Barrin92 4y ago
>but to get away from that you need gradual steps Given that you bring up the space program in the same post I'll stick with the metaphor and point out that you can't go to the moon by climbing up trees, or as Russ Ackoff said, doing the wrong thing right is worse than doing the right thing wrong, because making the wrong thing more efficient just makes things worse. If you want fully automated, efficient transport this technology already exists, it's train and subway systems. We even know how to virtually automate them 100% already, 24/7. With the tens of bilions if not more spent on driverless cars you could have actually rebuilt a decent chunk of infrastructure. Having individual people drive around in two tons of steel to buy a bag of groceries is fundamentally stupid and its destroying cities, whether the car is electric or automated doesn't matter that much and there's no gradual change away from it, only a disruptive one.

AlotOfReading 4y ago

As someone in the autonomous driving industry, maybe I can contribute a different perspective. I totally agree that better designed cities would be superior. When I took the initiative to participate in my local government, I was screamed and cursed at for the most trivial improvements imaginable, like a shared bike lane on a few miles of a particularly dangerous street. Multiply that by the opposition to actual improvements and advocacy in every single town, city, and state in America. Fuck that. Self driving cars are way easier.

13of40 4y ago
Not totally on topic, but what's your take on being able to roll out autonomous vehicles in places with more "fluid" driving habits? I've driven in some crazy environments in the past, but I just came back from a very large country (let's call it an eighth of the world's population) where I can't imagine renting a car and driving there because of the near complete disregard they have for official traffic rules. Obviously they're just following a different set of rules, because people don't just crash into each other, but in that situation do you program the car to follow government rules or local custom?
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  Depends on what you mean and what you think driver behavior will be like. "Able to avoid hitting other things in a dense environment, but may not make forward progress" is fairly straightforward from the current state-of-the-art (though not necessarily easy!). There's a reasonable argument to be made that making forward progress while remaining safe when intelligent agents are willing to play chicken requires a good theory of mind, but I can't formalize it. It's "just a hunch", but that seems like a Hard Problem to me and not necessarily something we'll completely solve soon. There's been work along these lines with statistical/ML methods, but my personal suspicion is that existing work would quickly fall apart in a truly hostile environment. There's also the discussion around navigating non-roads, potholes, and other infrastructural issues that the industry hasn't solved yet. I don't think these are insurmountable, just difficult engineering issues.
- Gigachad 4y ago

numpad0 4y ago

Public transportations and walking don’t replace a lot of use cases for cars, except for commuting for office works. You can’t board a train while soaked in mud, or pushing a Subaru seat, or carrying bag full of groceries. Actually I’ve done the latter two, but I haven’t seen anyone else doing it, and it had been extremely awkward. Everyone feels driving cars are wrong, perhaps because of emissions, but trains and buses just don’t cut it. I even doubt a public driverless taxis fills the gap, as moving large objects on human driven taxis can be awkward enough.

cultofmetatron 4y ago
we only have bags full of groceries because zoning prohibits grocery stores being near where people live in most place. So you need a car and since its a pain, you migt as well stock up on as much as you can while you're at it. If it were, you'd probably just go on a 10 minute walk and pickup enough for two days of food.
- nradov 4y ago
  That's fine for young childless people. For families with multiple children it's a huge hassle to have to have to shop like that. Growing kids eat a lot. And when you buy heavy items like watermelon or milk or whole frozen chickens it's just not easy to carry. Much easier to drive a big car to a big box store and stock up on everything needed for a week.
  - cultofmetatron 4y ago
    plenty of people with young children in Europe and latin Americs manage to do just fine this way from what I've seen.
  - asdff 4y ago
    You don't have to carry it, you can get one of those grocery carts. I see people bring them on my bus full of groceries.
  - em500 4y ago

12amxn12 4y ago

astrange 4y ago

There's not really a way for companies to invest in public transportation, it being public and them not. Cities don't appreciate changes to it, nor voters, nor people who complain about the tech industry. (When they do try to change it people complain about it and say "those morons just invented the bus again".)

JKCalhoun 4y ago

Sorry you're being downvoted. I agree with you. It seems so inefficient to me to be putting resources into self-driving cars. From the point of view of the commuter, a bus or train is "self driving" since the commuter is free to read, work on their laptop, etc. while on a bus/train. We've had that tech for a few hundred years, it is vastly more efficient not only in fuel consumption but cost as well. We should use it more. I understand why people in most of the U.S. are reticent to use public transportation though, without descending into listing off the litany of reasons, I will say though that I believe those issues are all fairly easy to solve (to be sure, some issues require a hefty expenditure of capital). And I am a hypocrite — I too have a list of reasons that I dislike the public transportation (such as it is) that is available to me in a mid-size U.S. city and do not use it. (Christ, I miss Tokyo though.) I am hesitant to judge, but to me the idea of a "personal chauffeur" (self-driving car) in lieu of pushing for more public transportation is somewhat gross.