7 ms·

I guess it's the season of AI fear. Humans don't rarely drive to their endurance levels now, so why would removal of a rarely-used limit affect much? 8 hours

• donmcronald 4y ago
  > 8 hours (4+4) spent in commuting, driving or not, is an entire life. This isn't a realistic concern, but something pulled out of a cyberpunk novel. What if that time is spent sleeping? Maybe you don't even need a house, so you'll have more money to spend on a nice car.
  • lallysingh 4y ago
    That just digs deeper into cyberpunk distopia.
    • trgn 4y ago
      lol It's really uncanny, every time, there it is, man must submit to the technology rather than have technology submit to us. Because a self-driving car is advanced technology, therefore men must move with self-driving cars. Even if that literally includes having to live out of your car.
      • TeMPOraL 4y ago
        Indeed this is how it works. Or, more accurately, man has to use the new technology to keep up with other men, as those who don't get outraced by those to do. The end result is a ratchet of progress. It's ironic how people in software don't notice it, despite the fact that our industry caused several such shifts, and we're all living with (and whining about) the consequences. Myself I didn't notice it for close to two decades since first learning to code. The realization came to me with age - I'm at the point where I have more disposable income than free time, so all the "wonderful" self-service software enabled now grates and irritates me to no end.
        • trgn 4y ago
          > The realization came to me with age same > self-service software enabled now grates and irritates me to no end. haha yeah, devil's bargain
      • lallysingh 4y ago
        Technology is a tool, often to make one group submit to another.
  • sporkl 4y ago
    If you don't have a house, and sleeping when you're in the car, then why would you bother commuting at all?
    • nix0n 4y ago
      In many places within the USA it is illegal to sleep in a car.
    • TeMPOraL 4y ago
      Maybe you're the next generation of digital nomads - working from a nice location for a day, then sleeping in your car while it shuttles you to a new nice location for tomorrow.
• yesco 4y ago
  > 8 hours (4+4) spent in commuting, driving or not, is an entire life There are already people who live in their vans anyway, if they didn't even need to drive them anymore perhaps areas with overzealous zoning laws that circumvent supply & demand would see an influx of small moving apartments instead. It would be like a land yacht, and economically sound so long as the price of gas is lower than the price of rent.
  • theossuary 4y ago
    This is my plan. As soon as self driving tech is available I'm putting it in a school busy mini-house. Punch in any destination and then live my life while I head there. It'll basically be teleportation in my lifetime.
    • elif 4y ago
      What you describe is basically how my wife and I treat the model Y on road trips, except we speak the destination instead of punch it in. But you'll still want to wear a seatbelt because although self driving cars don't tend to cause accidents, they very much are the victim of them. And consider the electricity demand of keeping your big skooli heated and cooled compared to that of a small and tight modern vehicle, you'll likely be forced into charging last thing every night and first thing every morning while on the road, while for us it is about 25% of battery on the worst nights so we can camp anywhere.
• mrcode007 4y ago
  This debate reminds me of one of the funniest hacks ever: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drzymała%27s_wagon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drzymała%27s_wagon
• roughly 4y ago
  [flagged]
• anigbrowl 4y ago
  I've met several people who in pre-pandemic times were commuting from beyond Sacramento to San Francisco, which is about a 4-5 hour daily commute. You'd be surprised how far some people will go to have both a good paying job and the house of their dreams.
  • manquer 4y ago
    There are plenty of places between SF city and beyond Sacramento which would be just as affordable. this kind of commute daily no less seems to be more of a stubborn personal choice than any economics forcing it .
    • thuuuomas 4y ago
      Those dang irrational personal choices! All models are wrong, but some keep your hopes closer
      • manquer 4y ago
        Almost anywhere in the world a one way 110+ miles commute one way is a personal choice that maybe makes sense to that person. It is certainly not because of economics of rent or house ownership or any other reasonable criteria so not sure what point such personal outliers prove in this discussion
  • Arrath 4y ago
    What the hell is the point? With that kind of commute assuming they work a full day they'll be home for a scant few hours a night sleeping (we hope, for the sake of other commuters) and the weekends for which they'll probably be dead tired.
    • pc86 4y ago
      Nobody actually does this commute 5 days a week, 45-50 weeks a year. It's either someone who does it sporadically but regularly (e.g. every other Monday or something for a few years) or briefly while finding something less insane (for a few weeks, maybe a month or two). I had a job with an effective ~4-hour round trip commute, from one major city to another in both my car and a train, but only had to do it once a month.
• brenns10 4y ago
  > Cars can park away from you and come back to pick you up. This should alleviate parking problems, and reduce parking-space-search based congestion on the street. I know this sounds nice for just a moment, but if you consider it longer, it's awful. It won't decrease congestion, it will increase it. Why? 1. Cars will still be searching for parking: many people will prefer to have their car nearby. It's not as if every car will altruistically drive to a far-off area. Since self driving cars have more patience than humans, they'll be on the road much longer searching for their parking. It may be more efficient to keep the car circling the block, which is even worse. 2. Parking availability is a major inhibitor of car trips, especially in cities. This is a good thing. If it becomes easier to "park" (ie leave your car driving on the street or send it away), that will induce more car trips, and more car trips means more congestion, until there's a new equilibrium (maybe a 7-minute parking search is eliminated, but it's replaced with 7+ minutes of traffic). 3. Pick-up and drop-off in cities is already difficult with rideshare services. If all personal vehicles are doing it as well, they'll definitely congest the curb lanes more. This is definitely a more solvable problem than the first two, but still an annoyance. And for what it's worth, the 4-hour commute may be a bit far fetched, but it's hard to deny that many wouldn't mind an extra 20 minutes of commute time in traffic if they can relax, nap, read, watch a show, etc. People will chose that option more, adding more trips and more congestion, until an equilibrium is reached. Maybe it won't be 4-hour commute times but it will be a major increase and added congestion. All of these extra miles traveled searching for parking, and adding extra congestion, are disastrous to cities and neighborhoods. Sure, the fossil fuel emissions alone would be awful, but suppose (charitably) that all autonomous vehicles are electric, and assume that their electricity generation is emission free (unrealistic for decades). The weight of EV batteries will dramatically increase road wear and tear, and they'll increase the pollution due to rubber tires, which are already the major source of microplastic pollution. And of course, it's a dramatic waste of energy from the power grid. And all of this is ignoring that dedicating that much road space storing to idling and parked vehicles is a no-good, terrible, awful way to utilize public space in a city or neighborhood, when it could be used by some efficient public transit, parks, and safer infrastructure for personal vehicles when necessary.
  • lallysingh 4y ago
    Price the spots by location (or bid) and make their availability known through a web service. The parking trip is a straight shot and spot congestion is managed better than today. Another benefit of automating a manual process.
• ghaff 4y ago
  I don't think it's 8 hour commutes so much. But that I could now take the 75-90 minute trip into the city that's about 50 miles away for dinner/show without thinking about it too much. I've really cut down on casually swinging into town to meet someone or do an activity on a weeknight because it's just a hassle to drive with all the traffic and driving back home when I'm probably getting a bit tired. Of course, it still costs money and if everyone does that now maybe it's 2+ hours in a car each way and I still won't mostly do it. I'd also routinely take the car into the city for a work event of some sort rather than dealing with non-trivial hassle of multi-modal driving to the train station and 2 different forms of public transit.
  • throwaway2037 4y ago
    I've really cut down on casually swinging into town to meet someone or do an activity on a weeknight because it's just a hassle to drive with all the traffic and driving back home when I'm probably getting a bit tired. This sounds like age, more than anything. Your energy levels fall, and you tell yourself "next time". In reality, next time comes less and less.
    • ghaff 4y ago
      In part that's probably true. I've also been working from home most of the time since well before the pandemic and it both takes longer and has a higher "activation energy" to do something in the evening when I'm not already out and about. That said, the driving time has also increased 15 to 30 minutes over time. So it is a combination.
• Spooky23 4y ago
  How many cars are operating 12 hours a day? With self driving cars, it will be like a NYC taxi, the goal is 24 hour operations.
  • Dylan16807 4y ago
    Only if it's serving a lot of users. So for those cars, the time on the road per user doesn't change much, but the need for parking greatly decreases.
• mgsouth 4y ago
  > 8 hours (4+4) spent in commuting, driving or not, is an entire life. This isn't a realistic concern, but something pulled out of a cyberpunk novel. You poor innocent child. Spent a couple of years of my life doing pretty much that, in crowded trains with a thousand others doing the same. Some did it for many, many years. It's a thing. (OK, I was lucky about where I worked and only had a 3-hr commute each way.) Related data point... my commuting choices were a) drive all or most of the way (saving 45 minutes to an hour each way); b) drive 15 minutes to a park-and-ride, take a commuter bus; c) drive 45 minutes to train station, take train in (extra 30 to 45 minutes each way, exta $$/mo). Often did (b) for practical reasons, much preferred (c) for comfort. Didn't do (a) too often. (d) "black car" (private driver) was an idle astronomically expensive dream. But if it was only a relatively small premium over normal car ownership? I and 100's of thousands of my fellow commuters would have given our left kidneys.
  • tmpz22 4y ago
    In the Bay Area in particular it is known commutes from Sacramento, Gilroy, and elsewhere happen. To say nothing of traffic and closures (devil's slide is STILL closed between Pacifica and Half Moon Bay) creating 3+ hour commutes from what google maps may indicate as < 2 hour commutes.
    • jjav 4y ago
      I've had a coworker who used to commute from Fresno to Palo Alto daily.
  • brightlancer 4y ago
    Respectfully, some people drink motor oil, that doesn't make it a realistic concern. I drove 90 minutes each way in/ around Atlanta and that was considered long; I had friends in NYC who were on the train 90 minutes each way and that was considered long. I can't think of anyone I knew who had 2 hours each way, every day. (Some days, yes, but not as the norm.) I do know folks who drive/ ride/ fly and then stay locally for some days, then commute back for the weekend or their WFH days. And most are for 2-3 hour driving commutes, not 4. I agree with them 8 hours a day of travel "isn't a realistic concern".
• runesofdoom 4y ago
  >8 hours (4+4) spent in commuting, driving or not, is an entire life. This isn't a realistic concern, but something pulled out of a cyberpunk novel. To paraphrase a certain fictional pirate captain, "You'd best start believing in cyberpunk dystopias... you're in one!"