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Nah what you luddite. You seem more concerned about maintaining artificial jobs and stifling progress to “prevent people getting rich off of it”. Having a 100%

Nah what you luddite. You seem more concerned about maintaining artificial jobs and stifling progress to “prevent people getting rich off of it”. Having a 100% automated driving system will fix traffic. It will be better for the environment. It will give us back more time in our day.

jprete 3y ago
No, it actually won't. There is nothing that a driver would do that an automated taxi would not, because both the driver and the automated taxi are optimizing for their ability to give as many rides as possible for as much money as possible. The main reason to think their behavior would differ is on the margins where drivers have to go home and sleep and robotaxis do not. But that really makes it likely that a robotaxi service will keep its cars out 24/7 except for maintenance. The other reason to believe drivers and robotaxis will behave differently is if you think drivers are leaving money on the table, or robotaxis will. And Silicon Valley simply does not leave money on the table. I'd be more ready to believe the drivers do. There's another other factor here: when you make cars more available and more convenient, people are more likely to take them. So robotaxis will probably increase, not decrease, road usage, if only because they never need to sleep, eat, or go to the bathroom. They will just repeatedly get a fare, drive the fare, and go do whatever they do to be idle. Which, in many cities, is going to be "wander the streets" or "take up parking spots in the city center". EDIT: I had responded to this without reading the OP article. The article has some good discussion of the kinds of secondary effects that are likely to cause robotaxis to increase road consumption.
- mortureb 3y ago
  I said all vehicles. If they’re all automated, they can all talk to each other and effect all those changes.
  - jprete 3y ago
    Do you think that people would be on the road _less_ if everyone were using taxis instead of personal cars? If so, why? What's the actual reason why robotaxis reduce the demand, or consumption, of road miles?
    - mortureb 3y ago
      Of course. If automated driving was the only way you could get around it would make no sense to get your own vehicle.
      - xethos 3y ago
        Now you've just alienated two groups: environmentalists that realize cars are bad for the environment, and car people that are interested in driving their own unique vehicles. The former you were never going to get, but the latter could concievably have been on your side about getting bad drivers from behind the wheel. You've gone from "People won't have to drive", to "People cannot drive". And the latter will likely play poorly in rural areas.
        mortureb 3y ago
        Probably. I can see the only automated car rule being for freeways only or large urban areas only and it would still make a significant difference. Or maybe the automated vehicles get their own two lanes on the freeway. Many ways to go about this while still being effective.
        taylodl 3y ago
        I'm not interested in providing a public subsidy to Uber. If they want two lanes of the highway dedicated to their vehicles then they can pay for two lanes of the highway dedicated to their vehicles. I expect their road tax to be considerably higher per mile.
        xethos 3y ago
        > or large urban areas Please tell me your plan is not to have the cars speed up where all the pedestrians are
      - jprete 3y ago
        This doesn’t answer my question, which was about road miles per person, not private car ownership.
rpgwaiter 3y ago
The problem of "but my pointless job!" Always has the second part missing, which is "the economy is down a payng job and the displaced family still needs food on the table". If the government offered to meet people's basic needs in these situations (no, the current unemployment system is not sufficient), I bet the complaints would stop. Hell, I bet the Luddites from back in the day wouldn't have minded the technological progress if they had their needs met otherwise.
- MBCook 3y ago
  There’s a new book about them. They weren’t anti-tech. They were workers who saw the first industrialization destroying their safe well paying jobs at home that gave them autonomy and replaced it with them having to be generic low paid cogs in a very dangerous factory they had to commute to with no say over their working conditions. They wanted a say over their destiny. Some autonomy. A share of the benefits that came with technology instead of all the downsides with 100% of the upside going to the rich owners. Any of that sound familiar to things workers complain about today? From the podcast 99% Invisible: Blood in the Machine https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/blood-in-the-machine https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/blood-in-the-machine
- mortureb 3y ago
  Yes, but the take away from this for me I’m glad they didn’t get their way. There are going to be growing pains and sometimes you lose, I mean it could be me tomorrow but technology needs to keep progressing!
MBCook 3y ago
> Having a 100% automated driving system will fix traffic. How? If we replace every car driven by an individual with a car driven by machine… you’re left with the same number of cars. Just as much traffic. Still need all the roads. And parking lots unless the cars drive more to avoid parking. Better for the environment? I don’t see it. Every car taken off the road (including EVs!) is less polluting. Less fuel. Less maintenance. Less pavement needed. Less particle emissions from wearing down tires. Moving people to walking, bikes, busses, subways, whatever is better than individual cars. More time in your day because you’re not driving during your commute? What if we set things up so you don’t have to commute so far? Or at all. Either one would be better even with automation driving for you. Between the pandemic’s changes in traffic patterns and seeing other cities around the world change I’ve come to the realization we could have so much more than what we have today but with robots driving for us. We can ask for more. We can change more than one thing at once. And what we do doesn’t have to be decided by a tech company just doing something. That may not be the best policy. It may be a waste of money. It may be a real part of the solution! We can want more. Instead robotaxis are clogging streets and blocking ambulances and we’re celebrating “progress”.
- mr_toad 3y ago
  > How? If we replace every car driven by an individual with a car driven by machine If all vehicles - not just cars - were driven by machines and connected to a network then there are many optimisations that they could be doing. For example you could get rid of traffic lights, yielding rules, even lanes. Cars could travel much faster if they didn’t have to worry about reaction times. For example cars could go through intersections at full speed or close to it, timing it so they passed between each other. Cars could actually merge onto freeways and change lanes at full speed without some jerk trying to block them. You wouldn’t have slow drivers in the fast lane.
  - jprete 3y ago
    Those are the kinds of optimizations that work very well in theory and are an absolute nightmare in practice. You're talking about a system where one kid running into the road could cause a chain collision of dozens of cars that were counting on rushing the intersection at high speed. Or, alternatively, could end up with the kid getting hit at 45 miles an hour, with extremely fatal and destructive results.
taylodl 3y ago
Once you've figured out how to make me whole for the cars and motorcycles I've invested in and can no longer use because of a 100% automated driving system then we can talk. If you don't have a solution for that then you can just sit down and STFU.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  Large metros are already incredibly punishing on car users. NYC is the king of this in the US. I don't think the residents there give a shit that your old, pre automated communicating driving system no longer works there.
  - taylodl 3y ago
    Large metros have been punishing on car users for decades. However, they have not mandated you can't use your car. They've simply made it very expensive and inconvenient for you to do so.

jprete 3y ago

No, it actually won't. There is nothing that a driver would do that an automated taxi would not, because both the driver and the automated taxi are optimizing for their ability to give as many rides as possible for as much money as possible. The main reason to think their behavior would differ is on the margins where drivers have to go home and sleep and robotaxis do not. But that really makes it likely that a robotaxi service will keep its cars out 24/7 except for maintenance. The other reason to believe drivers and robotaxis will behave differently is if you think drivers are leaving money on the table, or robotaxis will. And Silicon Valley simply does not leave money on the table. I'd be more ready to believe the drivers do. There's another other factor here: when you make cars more available and more convenient, people are more likely to take them. So robotaxis will probably increase, not decrease, road usage, if only because they never need to sleep, eat, or go to the bathroom. They will just repeatedly get a fare, drive the fare, and go do whatever they do to be idle. Which, in many cities, is going to be "wander the streets" or "take up parking spots in the city center". EDIT: I had responded to this without reading the OP article. The article has some good discussion of the kinds of secondary effects that are likely to cause robotaxis to increase road consumption.

mortureb 3y ago
I said all vehicles. If they’re all automated, they can all talk to each other and effect all those changes.
- jprete 3y ago
  Do you think that people would be on the road _less_ if everyone were using taxis instead of personal cars? If so, why? What's the actual reason why robotaxis reduce the demand, or consumption, of road miles?
  - mortureb 3y ago
    Of course. If automated driving was the only way you could get around it would make no sense to get your own vehicle.
    - xethos 3y ago
      Now you've just alienated two groups: environmentalists that realize cars are bad for the environment, and car people that are interested in driving their own unique vehicles. The former you were never going to get, but the latter could concievably have been on your side about getting bad drivers from behind the wheel. You've gone from "People won't have to drive", to "People cannot drive". And the latter will likely play poorly in rural areas.
      - mortureb 3y ago
        Probably. I can see the only automated car rule being for freeways only or large urban areas only and it would still make a significant difference. Or maybe the automated vehicles get their own two lanes on the freeway. Many ways to go about this while still being effective.
        taylodl 3y ago
        I'm not interested in providing a public subsidy to Uber. If they want two lanes of the highway dedicated to their vehicles then they can pay for two lanes of the highway dedicated to their vehicles. I expect their road tax to be considerably higher per mile.
        xethos 3y ago
        > or large urban areas Please tell me your plan is not to have the cars speed up where all the pedestrians are
    - jprete 3y ago
      This doesn’t answer my question, which was about road miles per person, not private car ownership.

rpgwaiter 3y ago

The problem of "but my pointless job!" Always has the second part missing, which is "the economy is down a payng job and the displaced family still needs food on the table". If the government offered to meet people's basic needs in these situations (no, the current unemployment system is not sufficient), I bet the complaints would stop. Hell, I bet the Luddites from back in the day wouldn't have minded the technological progress if they had their needs met otherwise.

MBCook 3y ago
There’s a new book about them. They weren’t anti-tech. They were workers who saw the first industrialization destroying their safe well paying jobs at home that gave them autonomy and replaced it with them having to be generic low paid cogs in a very dangerous factory they had to commute to with no say over their working conditions. They wanted a say over their destiny. Some autonomy. A share of the benefits that came with technology instead of all the downsides with 100% of the upside going to the rich owners. Any of that sound familiar to things workers complain about today? From the podcast 99% Invisible: Blood in the Machine https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/blood-in-the-machine https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/blood-in-the-machine
mortureb 3y ago
Yes, but the take away from this for me I’m glad they didn’t get their way. There are going to be growing pains and sometimes you lose, I mean it could be me tomorrow but technology needs to keep progressing!

MBCook 3y ago

> Having a 100% automated driving system will fix traffic. How? If we replace every car driven by an individual with a car driven by machine… you’re left with the same number of cars. Just as much traffic. Still need all the roads. And parking lots unless the cars drive more to avoid parking. Better for the environment? I don’t see it. Every car taken off the road (including EVs!) is less polluting. Less fuel. Less maintenance. Less pavement needed. Less particle emissions from wearing down tires. Moving people to walking, bikes, busses, subways, whatever is better than individual cars. More time in your day because you’re not driving during your commute? What if we set things up so you don’t have to commute so far? Or at all. Either one would be better even with automation driving for you. Between the pandemic’s changes in traffic patterns and seeing other cities around the world change I’ve come to the realization we could have so much more than what we have today but with robots driving for us. We can ask for more. We can change more than one thing at once. And what we do doesn’t have to be decided by a tech company just doing something. That may not be the best policy. It may be a waste of money. It may be a real part of the solution! We can want more. Instead robotaxis are clogging streets and blocking ambulances and we’re celebrating “progress”.

mr_toad 3y ago
> How? If we replace every car driven by an individual with a car driven by machine If all vehicles - not just cars - were driven by machines and connected to a network then there are many optimisations that they could be doing. For example you could get rid of traffic lights, yielding rules, even lanes. Cars could travel much faster if they didn’t have to worry about reaction times. For example cars could go through intersections at full speed or close to it, timing it so they passed between each other. Cars could actually merge onto freeways and change lanes at full speed without some jerk trying to block them. You wouldn’t have slow drivers in the fast lane.
- jprete 3y ago
  Those are the kinds of optimizations that work very well in theory and are an absolute nightmare in practice. You're talking about a system where one kid running into the road could cause a chain collision of dozens of cars that were counting on rushing the intersection at high speed. Or, alternatively, could end up with the kid getting hit at 45 miles an hour, with extremely fatal and destructive results.

taylodl 3y ago

Once you've figured out how to make me whole for the cars and motorcycles I've invested in and can no longer use because of a 100% automated driving system then we can talk. If you don't have a solution for that then you can just sit down and STFU.

HDThoreaun 3y ago
Large metros are already incredibly punishing on car users. NYC is the king of this in the US. I don't think the residents there give a shit that your old, pre automated communicating driving system no longer works there.
- taylodl 3y ago
  Large metros have been punishing on car users for decades. However, they have not mandated you can't use your car. They've simply made it very expensive and inconvenient for you to do so.