8 ms·
One of the reasons this toilet is so expensive no doubt, is that the new SF public toilets are self cleaning and will have attendants on duty to try to prevent
by mattnewton 4y ago
One of the reasons this toilet is so expensive no doubt, is that the new SF public toilets are self cleaning and will have attendants on duty to try to prevent this. The one on golden gate park and Haight closes after each visitor to spray the inside down like a dishwasher, and has an attendant on duty to make sure no one is inside while it does that (and to generally discourage people from shady stuff). It's not perfect but they have been clean every time I used it.
- lr4444lr 4y agoThey have to pay an attendant hourly just to be sure no one is in there while the self clean runs? Why can't it operate based on a weight sensor?
- gregoriol 4y agoBecause no startup has made an AI for that purpose yet?
- uoaei 4y agoAll you need is a PIR sensor
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y agoEasily defeated with a masking tape.
- yupper32 4y agoIt's cheaper to pay someone $20 an hour 24 hours a day for 20 years than it is to pay out the $4mil lawsuit for when that sensor fails.
- mousetree 4y agoI'm not an American, but can/would people sue for getting washed in a self-cleaning toilet? Surely some signs and disclosures would be sufficient?
- dahdum 4y agoThey’d be injecting hard drugs, especially fentanyl, constantly in this toilet, so signs and disclosures won’t mean much. SF is a rather “special” place, you can’t easily compare to other international cities.
- pyuser583 4y agoAre people really shooting up on the streets in Noe Valley? I kept hearing it’s the one nice part of the city.
- uoaei 4y agoSpoken like someone who has not spent more than a week in SF, probably entirely in hotels or restaurants.
- staticautomatic 4y agoI’ve lived in SF for more than a decade and if I opened the door to a public toilet I’d be surprised if someone wasn’t shooting up inside.
- uoaei 4y agoYou don't spend much time outside of your house, then.
- Turing_Machine 4y agoPeople in America will sue because the "crunchberries" in breakfast cereals aren't real berries. That doesn't mean they'll win, but even a bogus lawsuit is expensive and time-consuming. https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/judge_tosses_suit_claiming_crunchberry_deception_by_capn_crunch/ https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/judge_tosses_suit_cl...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hot_gril 4y ago
- borissk 4y agoBecause somebody will step on the sink or somehow else avoid the sensor and then sue for a round sum.
- mrits 4y agoI think I'd take my chances with the sidewalk than risk a startups new self cleaning censor. Literally a shit storm
- mattnewton 4y agoIt's not some startups self cleaning sensor, this is old technology that is in several other cities without attendants, and is basically idiot proof. The attendant hopefully makes it american-idiot proof too.
- thatguy0900 4y agoI think the problem isn't making it idiot proof, but making it malicious user who really wants to do heroin in there proof
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Phlogistique 4y agoAll the toilets in Paris self-clean between users. You don't need the sensor to work not to get sprayed, just to exit the toilet when a voice says "EXIT THE TOILET NOW, THE SELF CLEANING PROCESS IS ABOUT TO BEGIN.
- sixstringtheory 4y agoI used one of these and the self clean cycle started without warning while I was washing my hands. I couldn’t have been in there more than 4-5 minutes. Luckily the door didn’t lock so I was able to escape before getting “cleaned”.
- hot_gril 4y agoHeck, I cover up the self-flushing mechanism on toilets every time then remove it after. Not a pleasant surprise when it miscalculates.
- mikeryan 4y agoWhen unmonitored public toilets have had issues with people camping out while partaking illicit substances and other X-rated activities.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- iancmceachern 4y agoValid point, public bathrooms in France do this without an attendant
- mym1990 4y agoThese were the type of public toilets in France, it was actually very interesting to see and a bit confusing as I couldn't figure out why I couldn't go in right after another person... Wonder if it cost Paris 1.7 mil as well?
- david_allison 4y agoRented for about €1200 per month per toilet. 6MM/year for 420 of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanisette#In_Paris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanisette#In_Paris
- bruce343434 4y ago6 million million?
- david_allison 4y ago6 million. Slipped my mind that MM is industry specific. M is ambiguous between the Roman (M = 1,000), the SI prefix (M = 1,000,000), and metres (screen readers). $1MM (capitalized) or $1mn (more recent) reduces the ambiguity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MM#Units_of_measurement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MM#Units_of_measurement
- programmer_dude 4y agoM is not ambiguous at all it stands for mega which is 1e6 (which happens to be a million). Meters is lowercase m. And nobody uses Roman numerals as a suffix. MM is just unnecessary.
- qeternity 4y agoWell you're gonna be really disappointed to find out lots of people do use "mm" particularly in finance, and that Roman numerals have been used far longer than the SI system has existed. Just because you don't use them, or aren't aware they are used, does not make it unnecessary.
- perfectstorm 4y agowhy not have a full time janitor who cleans after each visit? much cheaper than a self cleaning toilet. even if you pay $100k to the janitor in annual salary, it will take 10+yrs to reach 1.7M and who knows what kind of issues these self cleaning toilets will have in that 10yrs.
- nathanaldensr 4y agoI was thinking the same thing. We now hire people to watch extremely expensive machines do incredibly menial tasks. Yes, I clean my own toilets at home.
- mattnewton 4y agoBecause a human who can afford to live in San Francisco almost certainly costs more than this machine over 10 years (the 1.7 million is for the whole project, not just the self cleaning portion), and drugged out crazies can make a mess that would be a very hard and unpleasant job to give a human.
- 1024core 4y agoA large number of City employees live outside the City. According to this article, only 40% of the City employees live in SF. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/remote-work-17510522.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/remote-work-17510522.... So why is residence a requirement for the janitor??
- mattnewton 4y agoSure, substitute live in San Francisco with live in commuting distance of San Francisco. It's not like Daly city or Oakland are cheap either. Even when we focus on the fiscal aspect of it, I don't think a machine is a bad idea compared to a plan of "find some willing to clean up after addicts and the mentally ill at all hours" - how much would you need to be paid to take that job and show up to outcompete the toilet-dishwasher-machine every day? California has tons of other jobs and generous social programs. And that's ignoring the angle that we're allocating a human life to this extremely unpleasant and automatable task.
- baud147258 4y agoHow does it work? I mean in France I saw many self-cleaning toilets (you can find some in Paris) and they don't need an attendant to function; they just wait for people to leave before the cleaning start and if you get sprayed it's just on you.