4 ms·

It's not an attitude. It's reality. Self-driving cars, if even attainable (which is questionable), don't solve any real problems besides bolstering the want for

by bmitc 4y ago

It's not an attitude. It's reality. Self-driving cars, if even attainable (which is questionable), don't solve any real problems besides bolstering the want for cars and thus more roads and highways, which are primary contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. That is, other than creating "cool" jobs and supporting get rich schemes and startups. If we cared about transportation and climate change, we'd be investing into buses, trams, trains, biking and walking paths, and other such solutions. The attitude designation belongs with self-driving car enthusiasts, who are perfectly happy throwing out decades of safety research and progress.

psychomugs 4y ago
I'm of this attitude as well, that the Jevon's paradox would kick in for cars again and lead to more use, like how ride-hailing apps worsened congestion.
- bmitc 4y ago
  Agreed. And thank you for the reference to Jevon's paradox. I haven't heard of it before, but I've been looking for things like this.
  - psychomugs 4y ago
    I've recently been listening to some talks from Matthew Crawford and his arguments for protecting manual, human tasks from automation and safetyism. I find his stance to be a good middle ground between technocratic progress and luddite wariness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxONOUwOX80 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxONOUwOX80
weavejester 4y ago
> Self-driving cars, if even attainable (which is questionable), don't solve any real problems besides bolstering the want for cars and thus more roads and highways, which are primary contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. It may be the opposite, as driverless cars can potentially be utilized more efficiently. If I drive to a destination, my car will sit in a parking space doing nothing and wasting space. A driverless car could drop me off, then drive away to taxi other people around. There's much less need for parking lots, freeing up valuable urban land. It may reduce car ownership overall. I have a car because it's more convenient than public transport, and far cheaper than a taxi. If I could have a self-driving car at my door in, say, 15 minutes, and it was competitively priced, then I probably wouldn't bother owning a car. Another advantage would be that if I needed more seats, or more space, I could order a vehicle to my specifications. It may increase utilization of roads, as self-driving cars that can communicate with each other can make more efficient use of them. Less need for stopping distances if all cars can brake simultaneously, and being able to slow down in advance reduces the impact of traffic jams.
- bmitc 4y ago
  I would argue that all of that is somewhat wishful thinking. I highly doubt it comes to be. And even if it would, it would still be less efficient than public transportation systems (possibly operated partially privately).
  - weavejester 4y ago
    It's certainly the case that societal changes are hard to predict. It might be the case that self-driving vehicles will encourage longer drives, for example. That said, I think my own personal carbon footprint would likely fall, because most of the time I could use a much smaller vehicle. Unless I doubled the amount of time I spent on the road, I'd probably use less energy overall, as I could use a 2 seater car with half the mass. Public transport is, of course, much more efficient; but it's also much less convenient, and at least in my country, more expensive. It costs less to run my car for a year than it would be to pay the equivalent bus fare for a year. If buses were self-driving, maybe the opposite would be true.
- morpheos137 4y ago
  Ever consider if the effective duty cycle of your car is increased the vehicle wears out quicker? The whole idea of autonomous robo taxis is bad on its face for many, many reasons. When will we grow up and admit it?
  - weavejester 4y ago
    > Ever consider if the effective duty cycle of your car is increased the vehicle wears out quicker? Sure, but by how much? What's the average extra overhead per person? By that I mean, what's the average distance that a taxi would need to drive between dropping one person off, and picking the next person up. The more taxis there are, the lower the overhead, as the more likely it is a taxi will happen be nearby to someone who wants one. We're used to taxis being rare, especially outside of major cities, but if taxis were common, the overhead might be very low. I can look outside right now, and see maybe 20 vehicles parked within 50m of my home. If that were 5 self-driving taxis instead, that would be easily be enough capacity for my immediate neighborhood, at least most of the time. So you could likely reduce the amount of cars locally by a factor of 4 or 5, and I'd still have a vehicle less than a minute away at most locations. Yes, if you had a 5th of the cars they'd have to do 5 times the work; but likely not much more than that. In other words, the maintenance cost wouldn't significantly worsen, and may even improve; cars aren't immune to entropy while stationary. The other advantage of having self-driving taxis is that you can more easily specialize. I have a pretty typical 5 seater car because I sometimes need that space. But most of the time, I could make do with a 2 seater with half the mass. My choice of car is determined by the edge cases, but my choice of taxi would be determined by what I needed at the time.
buzzert 4y ago
> cars and thus more roads and highways, which are primary contributors to greenhouse gas emissions No… they are _not_ the primary contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Road transport accounts for less than 12% of emissions[0]. What does climate change have to do with driverless cars anyway? It seems like you're basically saying we should keep driving miserable under some false pretense that it's responsible for the death of the planet. [0]: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
- bmitc 4y ago
  I didn't say the primary. They are indeed major contributors. I probably should have spelled out the point more, but building roads is the real problem. And so anything that supports building more and thus having to maintain more roads is a problem. If I remember the stat off the top of my head, building just 1-mile of road (I forget the definition of "road") is about as much as a single EV. > It seems like you're basically saying we should keep driving miserable under some false pretense that it's responsible for the death of the planet. And no, that's not what I'm saying. Self-driving cars are just trying to patch the problem of terrible traffic and terrible public transportation. By doing so, they aren't solving any real problem, and they will increase problems of congestion and also climate change, since they will continue to bolster cars and thus roads needed to support cars.
  - buzzert 4y ago
    > they aren't solving any real problem, and they will increase problems of congestion and also climate change, since they will continue to bolster cars and thus roads needed to support cars. Again, this is zero sum thinking. We can have both efficient and safe driverless EVs as well as trains/buses run by the government. Personally, I'd prefer to take the former given how little interest the government has in enforcing laws on public transportation, and this trend seems undue to change.
    - AlexandrB 4y ago
      > Personally, I'd prefer to take the former given how little interest the government has in enforcing laws on public transportation, and this trend seems undue to change. I'm not sure what you mean by this. Are you talking about HOV lanes and bus lanes not being enforced, fares not being enforced, or literal lawlessness on public transit?

by bmitc 4y ago

psychomugs 4y ago

I'm of this attitude as well, that the Jevon's paradox would kick in for cars again and lead to more use, like how ride-hailing apps worsened congestion.

bmitc 4y ago
Agreed. And thank you for the reference to Jevon's paradox. I haven't heard of it before, but I've been looking for things like this.
- psychomugs 4y ago
  I've recently been listening to some talks from Matthew Crawford and his arguments for protecting manual, human tasks from automation and safetyism. I find his stance to be a good middle ground between technocratic progress and luddite wariness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxONOUwOX80 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxONOUwOX80

weavejester 4y ago

> Self-driving cars, if even attainable (which is questionable), don't solve any real problems besides bolstering the want for cars and thus more roads and highways, which are primary contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. It may be the opposite, as driverless cars can potentially be utilized more efficiently. If I drive to a destination, my car will sit in a parking space doing nothing and wasting space. A driverless car could drop me off, then drive away to taxi other people around. There's much less need for parking lots, freeing up valuable urban land. It may reduce car ownership overall. I have a car because it's more convenient than public transport, and far cheaper than a taxi. If I could have a self-driving car at my door in, say, 15 minutes, and it was competitively priced, then I probably wouldn't bother owning a car. Another advantage would be that if I needed more seats, or more space, I could order a vehicle to my specifications. It may increase utilization of roads, as self-driving cars that can communicate with each other can make more efficient use of them. Less need for stopping distances if all cars can brake simultaneously, and being able to slow down in advance reduces the impact of traffic jams.

bmitc 4y ago
I would argue that all of that is somewhat wishful thinking. I highly doubt it comes to be. And even if it would, it would still be less efficient than public transportation systems (possibly operated partially privately).
- weavejester 4y ago
  It's certainly the case that societal changes are hard to predict. It might be the case that self-driving vehicles will encourage longer drives, for example. That said, I think my own personal carbon footprint would likely fall, because most of the time I could use a much smaller vehicle. Unless I doubled the amount of time I spent on the road, I'd probably use less energy overall, as I could use a 2 seater car with half the mass. Public transport is, of course, much more efficient; but it's also much less convenient, and at least in my country, more expensive. It costs less to run my car for a year than it would be to pay the equivalent bus fare for a year. If buses were self-driving, maybe the opposite would be true.
morpheos137 4y ago
Ever consider if the effective duty cycle of your car is increased the vehicle wears out quicker? The whole idea of autonomous robo taxis is bad on its face for many, many reasons. When will we grow up and admit it?
- weavejester 4y ago
  > Ever consider if the effective duty cycle of your car is increased the vehicle wears out quicker? Sure, but by how much? What's the average extra overhead per person? By that I mean, what's the average distance that a taxi would need to drive between dropping one person off, and picking the next person up. The more taxis there are, the lower the overhead, as the more likely it is a taxi will happen be nearby to someone who wants one. We're used to taxis being rare, especially outside of major cities, but if taxis were common, the overhead might be very low. I can look outside right now, and see maybe 20 vehicles parked within 50m of my home. If that were 5 self-driving taxis instead, that would be easily be enough capacity for my immediate neighborhood, at least most of the time. So you could likely reduce the amount of cars locally by a factor of 4 or 5, and I'd still have a vehicle less than a minute away at most locations. Yes, if you had a 5th of the cars they'd have to do 5 times the work; but likely not much more than that. In other words, the maintenance cost wouldn't significantly worsen, and may even improve; cars aren't immune to entropy while stationary. The other advantage of having self-driving taxis is that you can more easily specialize. I have a pretty typical 5 seater car because I sometimes need that space. But most of the time, I could make do with a 2 seater with half the mass. My choice of car is determined by the edge cases, but my choice of taxi would be determined by what I needed at the time.

buzzert 4y ago

> cars and thus more roads and highways, which are primary contributors to greenhouse gas emissions No… they are _not_ the primary contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Road transport accounts for less than 12% of emissions[0]. What does climate change have to do with driverless cars anyway? It seems like you're basically saying we should keep driving miserable under some false pretense that it's responsible for the death of the planet. [0]: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector

bmitc 4y ago
I didn't say the primary. They are indeed major contributors. I probably should have spelled out the point more, but building roads is the real problem. And so anything that supports building more and thus having to maintain more roads is a problem. If I remember the stat off the top of my head, building just 1-mile of road (I forget the definition of "road") is about as much as a single EV. > It seems like you're basically saying we should keep driving miserable under some false pretense that it's responsible for the death of the planet. And no, that's not what I'm saying. Self-driving cars are just trying to patch the problem of terrible traffic and terrible public transportation. By doing so, they aren't solving any real problem, and they will increase problems of congestion and also climate change, since they will continue to bolster cars and thus roads needed to support cars.
- buzzert 4y ago
  > they aren't solving any real problem, and they will increase problems of congestion and also climate change, since they will continue to bolster cars and thus roads needed to support cars. Again, this is zero sum thinking. We can have both efficient and safe driverless EVs as well as trains/buses run by the government. Personally, I'd prefer to take the former given how little interest the government has in enforcing laws on public transportation, and this trend seems undue to change.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    > Personally, I'd prefer to take the former given how little interest the government has in enforcing laws on public transportation, and this trend seems undue to change. I'm not sure what you mean by this. Are you talking about HOV lanes and bus lanes not being enforced, fares not being enforced, or literal lawlessness on public transit?