6 ms·

This is incredible news. In the next 10 years more and more transportation will shift to self driving and save thousands of lives and prevent many more injuries

by zk 3y ago

This is incredible news. In the next 10 years more and more transportation will shift to self driving and save thousands of lives and prevent many more injuries. Already in San Francisco waymo's are and feel much safer than human driven rideshare.

matsemann 3y ago
While autonomous driving helps a bit on safety, that's just one of the many issues with the car dependence in our society. It might even expand the issues, if it ends up with less people using public transport and relying on these kinds of things.
- wilg 3y ago
  Unfortunately self-driving seems to be an easier problem to solve than improving public transit policy anywhere in the U.S.
- skybrian 3y ago
  For longer travel, a convenient way to get to the bus or train station might make public transit more popular.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Ya, smaller door to transit center transportation is something we can even begin to consider once autonomous driving works. Like how old retired PLA soldiers used to drive tuktuks from Beijing subway stations to your apartment in the 1990s for a 5 mao or one kuai.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
  Waymo is public transport, but you mean mass transit. People don't use mass transit because it sucks, blaming other modes of public transit doesn't cut it. The design and implementation of it is what keeps people from using it. The good news is automated vehicles will add flexible options for new types of public transport that are between single-trip taxies and mass transit and will lower costs to all kinds of public transit.
  - hiddencost 3y ago
    It sucks because we don't fund it. Europe does fine.
    - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
      I hate the comparisons to Europe, because they're apples to oranges. I've been in European cities and I totally agree, it's a joy to be able to take public transit and/or walk everywhere. But most European cities were built long before the car. Older US cities (Boston, NY) have great public transit/walking options, though I agree deferred maintenance is taking its toll. But if you look at cities designed around the car, for many of them it's just prohibitively expensive to add things like light rail or subways now. Austin TX will be adding more light rail, but the price tag keeps exploding and the route keeps getting shorter. I'd be curious if anyone could point to any city that was built around the car where they subsequently made substantial public transit improvements that carry more than, say, 10% of commuters.
      - BadHumans 3y ago
        Amsterdam and Paris used to be both be very car dependent. Here is a video about Amsterdam before they shunned cars. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI5pbDFDZyI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI5pbDFDZyI
      - coalteddy 3y ago
        US cities love their cars. Not even in city centers do they prioritize pedestrians over cars. That has nothing to do with apples or oranges. It's a priority thing and not costs. There is no reason to need cars in city centers. Makes cities ugly, loud and dangerous compared to europe or asia.
    - renewiltord 3y ago
      Almost everything where people ask for "more funding", that service is junk and adding money just means you go from getting junk for cheap to getting junk for expensive. I've seen zero cases of it going from junk to even mediocre. I've seen numerous examples of junk going from cheap junk to expensive junk, especially in US public services. The "more funding" is always allocated towards existing rent-seekers. And my opinion with getting junk is that if I'm getting it, I want to be paying as little for it as possible. As a quick test for what you feel, try this. You read a headline that says "This city school received the most government funding of any school in the US". Do you think that school is "great" / "mediocre" / "crap"? My personal immediate inclination is that the school is probably shit.
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  My biggest objection with cars is parking them. It's wasting space dedicated to inefficiency. Self driving cars have much less use for parking garages in the middle of the city, so I think it's a net-positive.
- LordDragonfang 3y ago
  It's not an either-or situation, one helps the others. AVs more or less solve the last-mile problem with public transportation - if you don't live on a transit route, or the one you live near is infrequent, taking it can be infeasible. But also, it directly helps one of the major pain points of transit logistics - you cannot effectively respond to demand by scaling up/down the size and quantity of busses when you have human drivers that expect to have regular routes and regular hours. In contrast, you can have a whole fleet of electric short/medium/large busses which spend most of their time idling at the charge stations (which reduces maintenance costs) and go in and out of service as the daily traffic demands it, even pre-emptively going to a destination hub during off-peak times to await peak one-way demand (e.g. busses going to loiter downtown at 3/4ish to wait for all the businesspeople going back to the suburbs)
konschubert 3y ago
Maybe one day, when the last human driver is banned, I’ll be able to ride my bike without fear.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
1970-01-01 3y ago
I made a similar observation just yesterday. SAE level 5 will reset our current understanding of parenting to where it was 30 years ago. Groups of children will be able to safely travel around town without adult supervision.

by zk 3y ago

matsemann 3y ago

While autonomous driving helps a bit on safety, that's just one of the many issues with the car dependence in our society. It might even expand the issues, if it ends up with less people using public transport and relying on these kinds of things.

wilg 3y ago
Unfortunately self-driving seems to be an easier problem to solve than improving public transit policy anywhere in the U.S.
skybrian 3y ago
For longer travel, a convenient way to get to the bus or train station might make public transit more popular.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Ya, smaller door to transit center transportation is something we can even begin to consider once autonomous driving works. Like how old retired PLA soldiers used to drive tuktuks from Beijing subway stations to your apartment in the 1990s for a 5 mao or one kuai.
dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
Waymo is public transport, but you mean mass transit. People don't use mass transit because it sucks, blaming other modes of public transit doesn't cut it. The design and implementation of it is what keeps people from using it. The good news is automated vehicles will add flexible options for new types of public transport that are between single-trip taxies and mass transit and will lower costs to all kinds of public transit.
- hiddencost 3y ago
  It sucks because we don't fund it. Europe does fine.
  - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    I hate the comparisons to Europe, because they're apples to oranges. I've been in European cities and I totally agree, it's a joy to be able to take public transit and/or walk everywhere. But most European cities were built long before the car. Older US cities (Boston, NY) have great public transit/walking options, though I agree deferred maintenance is taking its toll. But if you look at cities designed around the car, for many of them it's just prohibitively expensive to add things like light rail or subways now. Austin TX will be adding more light rail, but the price tag keeps exploding and the route keeps getting shorter. I'd be curious if anyone could point to any city that was built around the car where they subsequently made substantial public transit improvements that carry more than, say, 10% of commuters.
    - BadHumans 3y ago
      Amsterdam and Paris used to be both be very car dependent. Here is a video about Amsterdam before they shunned cars. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI5pbDFDZyI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI5pbDFDZyI
    - coalteddy 3y ago
      US cities love their cars. Not even in city centers do they prioritize pedestrians over cars. That has nothing to do with apples or oranges. It's a priority thing and not costs. There is no reason to need cars in city centers. Makes cities ugly, loud and dangerous compared to europe or asia.
  - renewiltord 3y ago
    Almost everything where people ask for "more funding", that service is junk and adding money just means you go from getting junk for cheap to getting junk for expensive. I've seen zero cases of it going from junk to even mediocre. I've seen numerous examples of junk going from cheap junk to expensive junk, especially in US public services. The "more funding" is always allocated towards existing rent-seekers. And my opinion with getting junk is that if I'm getting it, I want to be paying as little for it as possible. As a quick test for what you feel, try this. You read a headline that says "This city school received the most government funding of any school in the US". Do you think that school is "great" / "mediocre" / "crap"? My personal immediate inclination is that the school is probably shit.
madeofpalk 3y ago
My biggest objection with cars is parking them. It's wasting space dedicated to inefficiency. Self driving cars have much less use for parking garages in the middle of the city, so I think it's a net-positive.
LordDragonfang 3y ago
It's not an either-or situation, one helps the others. AVs more or less solve the last-mile problem with public transportation - if you don't live on a transit route, or the one you live near is infrequent, taking it can be infeasible. But also, it directly helps one of the major pain points of transit logistics - you cannot effectively respond to demand by scaling up/down the size and quantity of busses when you have human drivers that expect to have regular routes and regular hours. In contrast, you can have a whole fleet of electric short/medium/large busses which spend most of their time idling at the charge stations (which reduces maintenance costs) and go in and out of service as the daily traffic demands it, even pre-emptively going to a destination hub during off-peak times to await peak one-way demand (e.g. busses going to loiter downtown at 3/4ish to wait for all the businesspeople going back to the suburbs)

konschubert 3y ago

Maybe one day, when the last human driver is banned, I’ll be able to ride my bike without fear.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

1970-01-01 3y ago

I made a similar observation just yesterday. SAE level 5 will reset our current understanding of parenting to where it was 30 years ago. Groups of children will be able to safely travel around town without adult supervision.