10 ms·

Everybody here is discussing the car and the cyclist, but I don't see anybody considering the possibility that the intersection design is unsafe. That there is

• sschueller 3y ago
  Self driving cars are a misguided attempt to make driving safer when the underlying issue isn't necessarily the driver.
  • aubanel 3y ago
    I think the end goal of self driving cars is simply to let people do something else than drive. Safety is only a condition for this to happen.
    • sschueller 3y ago
      There is a better solution for that: Public transportation.
      • Denvercoder9 3y ago
        Public transport solves an overlapping but distinct problem area, and it's not always a feasible solution. Think of e.g. cargo, disabled people that require door-to-door transport, or areas and times where operating public transport isn't viable.
      • a-french-anon 3y ago
        > Public transportation > Safety Pick one. Danger doesn't come only from other vehicles.
        • edgyquant 3y ago
          No idea why the downvotes. In my city (Seattle) there has been a dozen violent attacks in the last few months ranging from a couple being beaten with a hammer, a stabbing to a gun shooting. You aren’t likely to be beaten with a hammer while driving your own car that’s for sure
          • sschueller 3y ago
            You can get car jacked with your baby in the backseat.
          • kjkjadksj 3y ago
            In California chp has been dealing with a spat of road rage related shootings. Can’t get into one of those on the bus. These games don’t win arguments when you can cherry pick stories like this from both sides.
          • Mawr 3y ago
            Because it's an incredibly US-centric POV. Of course public transport will be unsafe if 95% of the population drives, leaving only the marginalized groups to use it. You won't get beaten with a hammer in your car, you'll just be driven into by a 16yo on his phone or a drunk driver. Neither should be driving in the first place, but there are no viable alternatives to cars, so we've just got to deal with it.
          • fmobus 3y ago
            Quick Google search tells me 28 people lost their lives due to traffic in Seattle in 2023.
        • B56b 3y ago
          It just comes mostly from other vehicles, or are 42,000+ people also being killed each year while taking public transit?
      • bheadmaster 3y ago
        [dead]
      • quonn 3y ago
        And by better you mean that you prefer it. Because obviously most do not prefer it, otherwise they would use it. Various countries in Europe have a dense network of public transport that you can use - often unlimited all around the country - for less than 50 Euros per month. Given the choice, most would take cars, especially outside of dense cities.
        • Mawr 3y ago
          Better = more efficient. People in aggregate don't have any preferences actually. They just want to get to their destination in the cheapest/most convenient way, which is mostly dictated by what has been designed to be that way. If you design everything around the car, then obviously choosing the car will be the most convenient; it's hardly a choice at that point. There is only one country that isn't completely drunk on cars that I know of - the Netherlands - and even then it's only barely so. The bar is on the floor.
      • inglor_cz 3y ago
        Even public transportation would benefit greatly from reliable self-driving. Shortage of bus/tram/train drivers is a major bottleneck all across Europe, especially in places where they just can't offer competing wages and lose their drivers to the richest cities of the EU. Rural Bulgaria will never be able to pay their drivers as much as Vienna or Munich can. Not even third of that, the economic gap is just too big. Many of the current drivers are in their 50s and 60s and with the bad demography of the continent, situation is likely to worsen in the near future. With self-driving buses, you would be able to add more connections, as shortage of drivers would cease to become a factor, plus the cost of running the service per km/mile would be reduced with the salaries going away from the budget. Today, even a flu epidemics will mess up the reliability of the system. If one in five drivers calls in sick, canceled services will skyrocket. Nothing like waiting on a desolate windy stop in subzero conditions for half an hour only to find out that the bus just didn't arrive, period. Been there, done that. (A perfect way to fall sick too, by the way.)
        • vertis 3y ago
          It's definitely becoming more common, I'm pretty sure some of the Paris Metro is now driverless (or remote driver).
        • rangestransform 3y ago
          at least in north america, the public transit labour cartel will shut down any attempts to automate public transit; notably, the NYC MTA blocked subway one-person train operation with automatic train protection. It'll be a good day when private AV services force public transit to finally get costs under control (who am i kidding, they'll just tax AVs to shovel more money to the unions)
      • tsukikage 3y ago
        It's better for some metrics - number of passengers moved per vehicle, fuel efficiency etc. What it isn't optimal for is getting from origin to destination without walking and without waiting. If I am carrying heavy/bulky things or I am less mobile than average, walking to the nearest public transport stop isn't great, and every change of transport is painful. Waits are also long basically anywhere that isn't the center of a densely populated city, and add up with every change of vehicle. Eventually, a public transport based solution to travel ends up using "find ways to travel less" as a component. The existence of direct door-to-door transport with cargo space, however it is achieved (cars, self-driving, carshare, taxis...) is needed to close these gaps, and therefore I do not see it ever going away. Societies need to make the other forms of transport attractive enough that, given access to direct door-to-door transport, they still remain a viable choice.
        • deleted 3y ago
          [deleted]
      • lupusreal 3y ago
        I can drive to work in twelve minutes. If I humor the premise of a bus that stops in front of my home and also my workplace, which is unlikely to ever exist no matter how much money is thrown at public transit, it would still take several times longer than driving myself because there are numerous other homes and businesses between which the bus would stop at. Using a bus would mean I have to wake up earlier, and therefore fall asleep earlier, and also get back later. It would mean less time at home with my family. I suppose next you'll say that I should be living in walking distance of my job, like my life and indeed entire communities should be structured around employers like during the industrial revolution. God forbid you ever want to change your job, you'll have to hope the new one is next door or you'll be moving your family... more likely you're locked into your current job which is just the way employers would like it. The normalization of cars were a huge win for labor, but the anti-car crowd always ignores this. I guess being locked into my job and at the mercy of public transit is meant to be compensated by the benevolence of The Party who will surely have my back? No thanks.
        • desas 3y ago
          That escalated quickly.
          • badgersnake 3y ago
            Indeed, the lizard people are already marching across the flat earth I guess. They'll be here for us soon.
        • vertis 3y ago
          If you can drive in 12 minutes surely the walk itself isn't that long. Public transport is never going to be able to compete over a short distance. I used to commute 1.5 hours each way on the train from Wollongong to Sydney. The alternative drive takes the same or longer, depending on traffic. Hundreds and hundreds of people do this trip every day (and the equivalent from Newcastle). Another period of my life was living in Brunswick (MEL) and working in Richmond (MEL). Drive 40 mins to 1 hour, train including 5-6 min walk at both ends 44 mins. I can read on the train though. Every situation is going to be different. When the public transport is as bad as most US cities I'm not surprised that people don't want to take it, but with European/UK and Australian public transport you're almost certainly better off commuting that way (excluding things like carrying goods, or mobility issues).
      • pmontra 3y ago
        There is no public transportation that can bring me home after saying goodbye to friends at 1 AM in a big city and having to drive one hour to my home in a little town. There is no such public transportation even during the day unless I want to spend 2 to 3 hours on a mix of metro, train and bus. And I don't have many choices about the time to leave. You could say that it's flawed to live in the countryside and/or have distant friends but my point is that public transportation on fixed lines will never reach every place at every time, especially where people are spread thinly. Taxis can do that, self driving cars can maybe drive their cost down. I could do without my own car if I could summon a public transport car at a whim anywhere I am to go anywhere I want.
        • eloisius 3y ago
          There isn’t in the US, dominated by urban design built for cars, but in many societies it’s entirely possible to have drinks until late and then safely get home via transit.
          • matthewfelgate 3y ago
            In some areas of some countries.
          • ghaff 3y ago
            >saying goodbye to friends at 1 AM in a big city and having to drive one hour to my home in a little town I doubt there are a lot of places where you're replacing that scenario with public transit.
            • tsukikage 3y ago
              ...but it's certainly feasible. I've been on the 1am to Abergavenny from Cardiff, and no-one on that train is in any state to drive.
            • School-Cotton 3y ago
              At least in New York you could make this work if your little town is on a metro north line. The last trains do leave after 1 AM I believe.
      • matthewfelgate 3y ago
        Oh naff off.
      • edgyquant 3y ago
        It being a better solution is your opinion and not one a large number of people agree with. I for one taking hate public transportation and avoid it at all costs.
        • fmobus 3y ago
          It is more efficient though. But if you say you want to avoid at all costs, and assuming there are more people like you out there, maybe we should just start _charging that cost_.
          • cloverich 3y ago
            What do you mean by efficient? When I lived in Austin, we lived in a neighborhood where the (only) train picked up, and it dropped me off 5 blocks from my office downtown. It was an extraordinarily pleasant period of my life. But even then, in ideal conditions, it still took longer than driving, and I had to time my departures to avoid waiting 15-30 minutes at the station. I'm definitely in favor of re-designing our cities and infrastructure to support that kind of lifestyle; I believe most people would prefer it if they experienced it. It seems inevitable from a carbon stand point. But I'm skeptical it will ever be more efficient?
            • Symbiote 3y ago
              They might mean energy efficiency or time efficiency (reading a book etc on the train). Or maybe construction energy efficiency, which in Austin is presumably a sunk cost. Note a 15-30 minute wait is what I have to endure at night (21.00 to 01.00) if I want to travel to/from the suburbs of Copenhagen on a weekday, similar population to Austin. On Friday and Saturday nights each line runs every 20 minutes all night.
            • fmobus 3y ago
              It's more efficient for society as a whole. Public transit simply moves more people using less space and less energy, causing fewer deaths, while also being more equitable to boot. And your comment noted, it's a godsend for the mind. I've moved to a country with public transit and haven't commuted by car in the last 5 years. Daily driving was destroying me.
    • amelius 3y ago
      > I think the end goal of self driving cars is simply to let people do something else than drive. ... while still being subjected to random g-forces. Make me a robot that cooks meals, then I would actually save time.
    • alemanek 3y ago
      There are other benefits of self driving cars. For example average utilization of a self driving car would be at least an order of magnitude greater than non-self driving one. Think about how much time a car spends parked and waiting to be used. With greater utilization we should have a lower absolute number of vehicles that are replaced more frequently. This would lead to less polluting and better maintained vehicles since they would all be fleet owned/operated in this scenario. How cool would it be to have the public transit of the future be a point to point, any point, transit system using an army of electric minivans (minibus in urban areas).
      • itsoktocry 3y ago
        >For example average utilization of a self driving car would be at least an order of magnitude greater than non-self driving one. Why would this be the case? At least one order of magnitude? >This would lead to less polluting and better maintained vehicles since they would all be fleet owned/operated in this scenario. Ah yes, those meticulously maintained taxi and rental car fleets. >How cool would it be to have the public transit of the future be a point to point, What is preventing this today? Not the lack of autonomous vehicles. Ah yes, those meticulously maintained taxi and rental car fleets.
      • bluefirebrand 3y ago
        > How cool would it be to have the public transit of the future be a point to point I don't really see any benefit to this being public transportation. When people go out with their cars, they expect their car to be there when they are done. They expect to be able to stop at a store, buy some things, stop at another store and buy some more, leaving their first purchase in the car while they keep shopping. Making this work is less "public transportation" and more "short term rental" like Car2Go. Which was a shitty service that I hated using. If we get self driving cars, I am still personally going to want to buy my own, not rely on some public transportation fleet.
      • isthatafact 3y ago
        That logic falls apart if everyone buys a self-driving car, and then decides that a 2+ hour commute is not so bad because they can use it as a mini mobile living room+bedroom+dining room. An overnight car ride to the weekend house in a distant mountain region might become a common habit too.
  • TeMPOraL 3y ago
    They are not misguided. They are not there yet, but progressing steadily. There is nothing misguided in switching out a human for a machine that can do a job better, while keeping the job unchanged. Iterative improvement is the only thing anything ever gets done, and yes, that means we might first need to get drivers out of the streets before we're able to make more substantial redesign of the transportation fabric.
    • tpoacher 3y ago
      "[...] that can to the job better" is the key phrase here though. It's probably a bit misguided in the sense that, if the end-result further down the line is the "more machines than humans driving in the streets" (let alone zero humans), then it might have made more sense to iteratively change the infrastructure instead, rather than have machines try to work under infrastructure that is designed to be good for humans but bad for machines, and then try to "iteratively improve" under conditions that carry significant risk of injury. Brings Ford's quote on "faster horses" to mind. Imagine if we still required roads to be horse friendly, and expected our cars to go through mud and jump fences.
      • actionfromafar 3y ago
        But the roads and cars were iteratively improved in a co-evolving way. Early cars with huge wheels could traverse cow-paths and mud and weren't very fast. (And you opened fences. :-)
        • Draiken 3y ago
          Maybe it partially explains why cars hurt/kill so many people every single day? I agree with GP: automating everything and removing humans from the equation would be a much better solution. Unfortunately it's not practical because it's not profitable.
          • idiotsecant 3y ago
            Yes, its definitely a conspiracy and not because we can barely manage the non-intelligent infrastructure we have now.
  • npteljes 3y ago
    Self-driving cars are not an attempt to make driving safer, they are attempts to create commercially viable self-driving vehicles.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  • matthewfelgate 3y ago
    Most crashes are caused by the driver.
  • sporkland 3y ago
    Your comment is a misguided attempt to point out that even if we have safe cars we still have cars with all of their challenges around noise and other inherent dangers and problems. Hope you do better next time.
    • sporkland 3y ago
      Let me help you: "While I'm excited about the potential improvements to traffic safety, congestion and waste of life that self driving cars can bring. I still yearn for improvements to public transit and micromobility that can eliminate cars from the road altogether and yield major improvements in density, efficiency, safety and pollution (noise, tires)"
• billjings 3y ago
  It's a low traffic 4 way stop sign intersection. Low speed, probably a 25mph speed limit? If you're cycling, this kind of intersection is only dangerous if you fail to yield/stop appropriately to auto traffic. Which seems like might be what happened here, from the description.
  • lambdasquirrel 3y ago
    Maybe. Article says bicyclist was obscured by a truck. 17th street in Potrero is relatively quiet but that particular area often has cars coming off the freeway. It can be a maze to get through on bike. I wouldn't rush to make a judgment until we had a dashcam video.
    • Symbiote 3y ago
      That might well also mean the car was obscured to the cyclist.
  • vdaea 3y ago
    Some will come and tell you that cyclists have an innate right to ignore all traffic laws and that if you were in Europe the car will always be at fault.
    • Smeevy 3y ago
      Honestly, that seems so much more reasonable.
    • nick_ 3y ago
      Those pesky cyclists might even argue that traffic laws only exist in the first place because car drivers just would not stop maiming and killing people. Crazy cyclists.
    • badtomato 3y ago
      They do say that. Maybe the legal liability is on the driver, but that doesn't mean much. All behaviors together from everyone involved is what leads to accidents. If the cyclist feels that the law is all the protection they need to avoid being hit and enter an intersection without looking, or worse, assuming that someone will stop for them, then obviously the premise of their safety was flawed and they made a decision that lead to their death or injury. The accident happens no matter who gets the blame.
• ianleighton 3y ago
  This is a must-watch for everyone here commenting! 6 minutes dense with revelations.