7 ms·

Self-Driving Cars will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it) [video]

42 points by mbs159 2y ago

schiffern 2y ago
Despite big promises in the title, the thesis is just - self-driving cars aren't perfect yet (trots out the usual double-standard headlines which get zero attention when humans do them all the time) - our cities were already destroyed by poorly-designed infrastructure, and self-driving cars don't suddenly fix that (something which was never promised or expected?) - whenever you mention reducing millions of human-caused traffic fatalities, use a sarcastic tone of voice Disappointing. I had much higher hopes going in. He says it himself: self-driving cars are just cheaper taxis.
- jerlam 2y ago
  I usually like this channel's content, but this video is a hour-long strawman argument.
- vendiddy 2y ago
  Thanks for saving me the time.
- throw0101d 2y ago
  > He says it himself: self-driving cars are just cheaper taxis. Which can lead to more traffic (@21:07). Which can encourage more resources to be moved from people to vehicles (@32:37). More traffic can increase pollution (@38:05), both particle and noise, even with EVs because tire wear, road wear, and brake wear (even with re-gen) generally increase with higher vehicle weights/masses. He then contrasts London (Ontario) and Utrecht (@43:28), and how even given their similar beginnings and similar populations, the decisions each made on how to design things made one more human-habitable and the other one less.
  - schiffern 2y ago
    More traffic = more transportation services provided, so your first point isn't inherently bad. I agree we should invest in more walkable infrastructure (your second point), but that doesn't happen for many reasons, and AVs can also assist that process by eg removing parking spaces and making buses cheaper. The remaining noise and pollution concerns call for building robotaxis that are quieter and lighter-weight, which seems to be what's actually occurring. I admit his shallow dismissal of mass traffic fatalities as "marketing" and "corporate profits" immediately destroyed all credibility in my eyes. Millions of grieving parents aren't helped if some video 'dunks on' tech companies with irrelevant non-argument quips, what actually helps is (controversial opinion) to stop the killing. AVs are the only realistic path to that world.
    - throw0101d 2y ago
      > More traffic = more transportation services provided, so the first point isn't inherently bad. And as he points out (@29:56), more traffic would mean a push for more roads, which is inefficient and wasteful: it takes over a dozen lanes of highway to move less people per hour than a signal lane-width of subway. E.g., (@32:11) more car traffic caused the elimination of the trolley/tram/streetcar on the Brooklyn Bridge so that another car lane could be added which decreased the services provided: > If the job of the Brooklyn Bridge is to move people between the two boroughs, the reallocation of space from transit to cars has been disastrous. In 1902, one year before the photograph was taken, the Brooklyn Bridge moved roughly 341,000 people a day across all its modes, according to the Federal Highway Administration. It hit its peak capacity a few years later, with 426,000 people using it each day in 1907. > Today, 125,000 motor vehicles cross the Brooklyn Bridge each day [PDF], as do roughly 4,000 pedestrians and 2,600 cyclists. For the bridge to carry as many people as it did at its peak, each of those cars would need to carry more than three people, but they do not. In 1989, when the city counted around 132,000 motor vehicles crossing, the FHWA estimated that 178,000 people crossed the bridge daily. * https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2011/04/11/the-efficient-past-and-wasteful-present-of-the-brooklyn-bridge https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2011/04/11/the-efficient-past-an... Every mode of transportation needs space to operate, and by focusing on cars for private transportation it has decreased route capacity compared to every other mode, even walking: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Passenger_Capacity_of_different_Transport_Modes.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Passenger_Capacity_of_dif... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_capacity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_capacity > The noise and pollution concerns call for building robotaxis that are quieter and lighter-weight, which seems like what's actually occurring. Noise is a function of speed, so any vehicle travelling >50 kph will cause noise: is there a desire to restrict speeds? If we're going with EVs for our future, the mass of the batteries for a given range can hardly be reduced. > I admit his shallow dismissal of mass traffic fatalities as "marketing" and "corporate profits" immediately destroyed all credibility in my eyes. And his other point (@13:02) that if American road designs were similar to (e.g.) Swedish road designs there would be a 80% drop in fatalities with current technologies? No (possibly) pie-in-the-sky tech needed. Perhaps there could be benefits to autonomous vehicles (AVs), but mass traffic fatalities can be reduced now if the actual desire is there, e.g., Hoboken, New Jersey, has had zero traffic deaths over the last seven years: * https://apnews.com/article/hoboken-zero-traffic-deaths-daylighting-pedestrian-safety-007dec67706c1c09129da1436a3d9762 https://apnews.com/article/hoboken-zero-traffic-deaths-dayli...
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
  This dismissal doesn't do justice to the content of the video. There are a lot of other points made, including: - Self driving cars are not a pipe-dream, the tech is developing and will be in every city in the future, this can't be ignored - There is a real danger that they will destroy the fabric of our cities - They will increase, not decrease, the number of cars on the road and the use of road space - As cars shift electric, gas taxes will be less effective at "charging for usage" of road space, and other means will be necessary, or else AVs will treat the cost of occupying road space as zero, and circle endlessly. - Despite hype that AVs won't need parking space, they will, because people will still want to own private cars and need to park them, and robotaxis will compete for response times and so will need to stay available close to high-demand areas - As AV companies gain adoption and become more available, city design may warp such that AVs may even become required to use roads or get around at all. There's a strong potential for the AV industry to lobby for changes to road infrastructure to favor AVs, including banning human-driven vehicles and increasing speed limits or removing them altogether. This may even go to the point of fencing off streets from pedestrians, because otherwise it would be too easy for people to step in front of vehicles (forcing them to brake). This is not unprecedented based on how quickly the auto industry reshaped laws, standards, and infrastructure to favor automobiles in the 20th century. - AV companies are likely to spread American driving practices and road culture to other countries, because AV tech is mostly developed in the US. - AVs may make it more difficult for cities and countries to update road rules, because of the burden it would put on AV companies to keep up with rule changes, and AV companies might successfully lobby against this. Cities will come under pressure to become more uniformly like Phoenix AZ, in order to be more AV-friendly, rather than AV companies putting in the work to localize their tech to work in every city. - There is a risk that AVs will displace other forms of public transit which are better for the environment, for pedestrians, for land use, and for the surrounding areas - By reducing the perceived cost of spending time in traffic, AVs will encourage people to commute longer distances, resulting in more traffic, infrastructure costs, and emissions overall - The AV lobby has suggested that AVs help mobility-impaired people, but public transit and walkable streets would help these people better than AVs would It's a long video, but I do think there are a lot of points that are worth deeply thinking about, especially for anyone here who might be involved in developing this technology.
- fragmede 2y ago
  > self-driving cars are just cheaper taxis. From a business perspective, why on Earth would you price it dramatically cheaper? Especially when you have to recoup R&D costs, need to show investors a profit, customers have already shown a willingness to pay market price, and maintenance on the cars and the in-car customer service agents isn't free? And we see that today in the app - Waymo is often more expensive that Lyft or Uber.
  - mitthrowaway2 2y ago
    In the long run, if there is competition, it should drive down costs. If the sensors / compute hardware / software costs more than the labor of a human driver then self-driving vehicles won't be viable, but the bet these companies are making is that it will, and in the long run, those costs will be amortized. And if the costs of offering a robotaxi service are lower than a human-taxi service, and if AVs are not a monopoly, then the price will eventually end up cheaper as well.
- dkobia 2y ago
  I too normally like this channel but a few minutes in and it started to sound whiny. Encouraging “coning” was pretty low. It is starting to become pretty obvious that the many benefits of progress in this area overwhelm minor grievances.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - mcv 2y ago
    > Encouraging “coning” was pretty low. Not at all. It's a great yet simple demonstration of how these cars have no idea about the complexities of traffic situations.
- mcv 2y ago
  > He says it himself: self-driving cars are just cheaper taxis. That's not what he's saying, that's what he's refuting. When taxis are driven by different people competing against each other, taxis are cheap. When they're controlled by a single tech company that controls the entire market, they'll cost as much as the tech company can get away with. But he makes a lot of other good points too; that it will mean even more cars on the road.
- panick21_ 2y ago
  Talk about not actually listening. You are scratching the surface ignoring everything else in the video. > zero attention when humans do them all the time Literally his whole channel is about the problems with humans. This one video is about AVs. That it doesn't get more headlines in general is part of the problem. The more important point that you ignore, is that we already know how to make things much saver. > and self-driving cars don't suddenly fix that (something which was never promised or expected?) Except the companies and all the fans who constantly claim that self driving will be better then all public transport and solve future urban problems. To say that nobody makes such claims is just a strange ignoring of reality. And you again, ignore the deeper point that self-driving cars reenforce these problems and potentially make things worse. > - whenever you mention reducing millions of human-caused traffic fatalities, use a sarcastic tone of voice Not sure what your point here is. The point of the video, partly is that we can already reduce the traffic deaths by far cheaper means then AV and nobody cares about that. So all these claims about the amazing benefits (that hasn't been delivered) is mostly just hiding that what these companies really want is profit and the politicians want campaign benefits from these companies, rather then improve safety in the city. Again, the point being that AV as currently sold and advertised re-enforce existing problems, rather then solve them. > He says it himself: self-driving cars are just cheaper taxis. He didn't say that. He said, 'at best they are cheaper taxis', but at worst the have many non-beneficial impacts on society. And more important, there are simply better solutions.
KenSF 2y ago
My neighborhood is shown in this video multiple times. Number of times I have seen an AV act dangerously? Zero. Number of times an SUV has hit me while I was legally in a crosswalk lifting me off my feet and throwing me through the air? more than zero. Number of times I have seen an AV parked in the box on a red light? Zero. Number of times I have seen a human parked in the box on a red light? All the time, every frackin day. Are AVs perfect? Nope but they might already be safer drivers than the median driver in SF. There have been 310 pedestrian deaths in SF over the past 10 years. Number of deaths the NHTSA has attributed to full self driving vehicles? Zero.
- thegrim33 2y ago
  Given there's over a million registered vehicles in SF, and only ~300 fully autonomous vehicles in SF, if there's only 310 pedestrian deaths over the past 10 years, with all else being equal, you'd definitely expect the vast majority of those deaths to be from normal vehicles, given that there's you know, over a million of them, and only ~300 AVs. As AVs are .0299% of the vehicles on the road, all else being equal, they'd account for .00929 deaths per year. You can't really point at the lack of deaths at this point as proof of anything.
  - KenSF 2y ago
    According to the DMV of CA in 2023 there were 453,180 including motorcycles and trailers. Most vehicles are used very little or not at all where as autonomous vehicles are used most of the time. Also, the NHTSA numbers are for all AVs everywhere in the US so your astonishingly numbers precise are way off. Still, as a pedestrian, I am pretty happy the AVs are not parking in the crosswalks all the time.
  - bestnameever 2y ago
    I doubt everything is equal. AVs are likely driving many more miles on the road each day than the majority of other vehicles.
  - aeternum 2y ago
    You need to look at per mile driven rather than just number of vehicles because the AVs are much higher utilization. The states confirm that per mile driven, AVs are much safer. Also anyone that has walked near one can easily tell. The AVs actually yield to pedestrians, especially if you step near the crosswalk unlike many SF drivers.
bakemawaytoys 2y ago
So the solution to traffic congestion and pedestrian deaths is not “make better cars”
- CHB0403085482 2y ago
  Yes. The solution is to have urban places built for people, not cars.
onetokeoverthe 2y ago
So much invested on removing humanity from the driver's seat.
tim333 2y ago
Self driving cars could make public transport better by filling in when the trains and busses don't go where/when you want. I know you can get regular taxis but they are kind of expensive and a hassle.
more_corn 2y ago
I had an autonomous vehicle almost hit me. It didn’t understand to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk when turning at a light. I walked into their office and reported it (there’s no other mechanism that I know of). They shrugged it off. Autonomous vehicles can be done safely, but nobody and nothing is perfect so without robust error correcting and reporting systems they’ll never be safe.
amai 2y ago
"We don't need driverless cars, we need carless drivers."
ktosobcy 2y ago
"It seems what we really need is not driverless cars, it's car-less drivers!" Cities are for people and not for cars!

42 points by mbs159 2y ago

Despite big promises in the title, the thesis is just - self-driving cars aren't perfect yet (trots out the usual double-standard headlines which get zero attention when humans do them all the time) - our cities were already destroyed by poorly-designed infrastructure, and self-driving cars don't suddenly fix that (something which was never promised or expected?) - whenever you mention reducing millions of human-caused traffic fatalities, use a sarcastic tone of voice Disappointing. I had much higher hopes going in. He says it himself: self-driving cars are just cheaper taxis.

jerlam 2y ago
I usually like this channel's content, but this video is a hour-long strawman argument.
vendiddy 2y ago
Thanks for saving me the time.
throw0101d 2y ago
> He says it himself: self-driving cars are just cheaper taxis. Which can lead to more traffic (@21:07). Which can encourage more resources to be moved from people to vehicles (@32:37). More traffic can increase pollution (@38:05), both particle and noise, even with EVs because tire wear, road wear, and brake wear (even with re-gen) generally increase with higher vehicle weights/masses. He then contrasts London (Ontario) and Utrecht (@43:28), and how even given their similar beginnings and similar populations, the decisions each made on how to design things made one more human-habitable and the other one less.
- schiffern 2y ago
  More traffic = more transportation services provided, so your first point isn't inherently bad. I agree we should invest in more walkable infrastructure (your second point), but that doesn't happen for many reasons, and AVs can also assist that process by eg removing parking spaces and making buses cheaper. The remaining noise and pollution concerns call for building robotaxis that are quieter and lighter-weight, which seems to be what's actually occurring. I admit his shallow dismissal of mass traffic fatalities as "marketing" and "corporate profits" immediately destroyed all credibility in my eyes. Millions of grieving parents aren't helped if some video 'dunks on' tech companies with irrelevant non-argument quips, what actually helps is (controversial opinion) to stop the killing. AVs are the only realistic path to that world.
  - throw0101d 2y ago
    > More traffic = more transportation services provided, so the first point isn't inherently bad. And as he points out (@29:56), more traffic would mean a push for more roads, which is inefficient and wasteful: it takes over a dozen lanes of highway to move less people per hour than a signal lane-width of subway. E.g., (@32:11) more car traffic caused the elimination of the trolley/tram/streetcar on the Brooklyn Bridge so that another car lane could be added which decreased the services provided: > If the job of the Brooklyn Bridge is to move people between the two boroughs, the reallocation of space from transit to cars has been disastrous. In 1902, one year before the photograph was taken, the Brooklyn Bridge moved roughly 341,000 people a day across all its modes, according to the Federal Highway Administration. It hit its peak capacity a few years later, with 426,000 people using it each day in 1907. > Today, 125,000 motor vehicles cross the Brooklyn Bridge each day [PDF], as do roughly 4,000 pedestrians and 2,600 cyclists. For the bridge to carry as many people as it did at its peak, each of those cars would need to carry more than three people, but they do not. In 1989, when the city counted around 132,000 motor vehicles crossing, the FHWA estimated that 178,000 people crossed the bridge daily. * https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2011/04/11/the-efficient-past-and-wasteful-present-of-the-brooklyn-bridge https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2011/04/11/the-efficient-past-an... Every mode of transportation needs space to operate, and by focusing on cars for private transportation it has decreased route capacity compared to every other mode, even walking: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Passenger_Capacity_of_different_Transport_Modes.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Passenger_Capacity_of_dif... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_capacity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_capacity > The noise and pollution concerns call for building robotaxis that are quieter and lighter-weight, which seems like what's actually occurring. Noise is a function of speed, so any vehicle travelling >50 kph will cause noise: is there a desire to restrict speeds? If we're going with EVs for our future, the mass of the batteries for a given range can hardly be reduced. > I admit his shallow dismissal of mass traffic fatalities as "marketing" and "corporate profits" immediately destroyed all credibility in my eyes. And his other point (@13:02) that if American road designs were similar to (e.g.) Swedish road designs there would be a 80% drop in fatalities with current technologies? No (possibly) pie-in-the-sky tech needed. Perhaps there could be benefits to autonomous vehicles (AVs), but mass traffic fatalities can be reduced now if the actual desire is there, e.g., Hoboken, New Jersey, has had zero traffic deaths over the last seven years: * https://apnews.com/article/hoboken-zero-traffic-deaths-daylighting-pedestrian-safety-007dec67706c1c09129da1436a3d9762 https://apnews.com/article/hoboken-zero-traffic-deaths-dayli...
mitthrowaway2 2y ago
This dismissal doesn't do justice to the content of the video. There are a lot of other points made, including: - Self driving cars are not a pipe-dream, the tech is developing and will be in every city in the future, this can't be ignored - There is a real danger that they will destroy the fabric of our cities - They will increase, not decrease, the number of cars on the road and the use of road space - As cars shift electric, gas taxes will be less effective at "charging for usage" of road space, and other means will be necessary, or else AVs will treat the cost of occupying road space as zero, and circle endlessly. - Despite hype that AVs won't need parking space, they will, because people will still want to own private cars and need to park them, and robotaxis will compete for response times and so will need to stay available close to high-demand areas - As AV companies gain adoption and become more available, city design may warp such that AVs may even become required to use roads or get around at all. There's a strong potential for the AV industry to lobby for changes to road infrastructure to favor AVs, including banning human-driven vehicles and increasing speed limits or removing them altogether. This may even go to the point of fencing off streets from pedestrians, because otherwise it would be too easy for people to step in front of vehicles (forcing them to brake). This is not unprecedented based on how quickly the auto industry reshaped laws, standards, and infrastructure to favor automobiles in the 20th century. - AV companies are likely to spread American driving practices and road culture to other countries, because AV tech is mostly developed in the US. - AVs may make it more difficult for cities and countries to update road rules, because of the burden it would put on AV companies to keep up with rule changes, and AV companies might successfully lobby against this. Cities will come under pressure to become more uniformly like Phoenix AZ, in order to be more AV-friendly, rather than AV companies putting in the work to localize their tech to work in every city. - There is a risk that AVs will displace other forms of public transit which are better for the environment, for pedestrians, for land use, and for the surrounding areas - By reducing the perceived cost of spending time in traffic, AVs will encourage people to commute longer distances, resulting in more traffic, infrastructure costs, and emissions overall - The AV lobby has suggested that AVs help mobility-impaired people, but public transit and walkable streets would help these people better than AVs would It's a long video, but I do think there are a lot of points that are worth deeply thinking about, especially for anyone here who might be involved in developing this technology.
fragmede 2y ago
> self-driving cars are just cheaper taxis. From a business perspective, why on Earth would you price it dramatically cheaper? Especially when you have to recoup R&D costs, need to show investors a profit, customers have already shown a willingness to pay market price, and maintenance on the cars and the in-car customer service agents isn't free? And we see that today in the app - Waymo is often more expensive that Lyft or Uber.
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
  In the long run, if there is competition, it should drive down costs. If the sensors / compute hardware / software costs more than the labor of a human driver then self-driving vehicles won't be viable, but the bet these companies are making is that it will, and in the long run, those costs will be amortized. And if the costs of offering a robotaxi service are lower than a human-taxi service, and if AVs are not a monopoly, then the price will eventually end up cheaper as well.
dkobia 2y ago
I too normally like this channel but a few minutes in and it started to sound whiny. Encouraging “coning” was pretty low. It is starting to become pretty obvious that the many benefits of progress in this area overwhelm minor grievances.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- mcv 2y ago
  > Encouraging “coning” was pretty low. Not at all. It's a great yet simple demonstration of how these cars have no idea about the complexities of traffic situations.
mcv 2y ago
> He says it himself: self-driving cars are just cheaper taxis. That's not what he's saying, that's what he's refuting. When taxis are driven by different people competing against each other, taxis are cheap. When they're controlled by a single tech company that controls the entire market, they'll cost as much as the tech company can get away with. But he makes a lot of other good points too; that it will mean even more cars on the road.
panick21_ 2y ago
Talk about not actually listening. You are scratching the surface ignoring everything else in the video. > zero attention when humans do them all the time Literally his whole channel is about the problems with humans. This one video is about AVs. That it doesn't get more headlines in general is part of the problem. The more important point that you ignore, is that we already know how to make things much saver. > and self-driving cars don't suddenly fix that (something which was never promised or expected?) Except the companies and all the fans who constantly claim that self driving will be better then all public transport and solve future urban problems. To say that nobody makes such claims is just a strange ignoring of reality. And you again, ignore the deeper point that self-driving cars reenforce these problems and potentially make things worse. > - whenever you mention reducing millions of human-caused traffic fatalities, use a sarcastic tone of voice Not sure what your point here is. The point of the video, partly is that we can already reduce the traffic deaths by far cheaper means then AV and nobody cares about that. So all these claims about the amazing benefits (that hasn't been delivered) is mostly just hiding that what these companies really want is profit and the politicians want campaign benefits from these companies, rather then improve safety in the city. Again, the point being that AV as currently sold and advertised re-enforce existing problems, rather then solve them. > He says it himself: self-driving cars are just cheaper taxis. He didn't say that. He said, 'at best they are cheaper taxis', but at worst the have many non-beneficial impacts on society. And more important, there are simply better solutions.

KenSF 2y ago

My neighborhood is shown in this video multiple times. Number of times I have seen an AV act dangerously? Zero. Number of times an SUV has hit me while I was legally in a crosswalk lifting me off my feet and throwing me through the air? more than zero. Number of times I have seen an AV parked in the box on a red light? Zero. Number of times I have seen a human parked in the box on a red light? All the time, every frackin day. Are AVs perfect? Nope but they might already be safer drivers than the median driver in SF. There have been 310 pedestrian deaths in SF over the past 10 years. Number of deaths the NHTSA has attributed to full self driving vehicles? Zero.

thegrim33 2y ago
Given there's over a million registered vehicles in SF, and only ~300 fully autonomous vehicles in SF, if there's only 310 pedestrian deaths over the past 10 years, with all else being equal, you'd definitely expect the vast majority of those deaths to be from normal vehicles, given that there's you know, over a million of them, and only ~300 AVs. As AVs are .0299% of the vehicles on the road, all else being equal, they'd account for .00929 deaths per year. You can't really point at the lack of deaths at this point as proof of anything.
- KenSF 2y ago
  According to the DMV of CA in 2023 there were 453,180 including motorcycles and trailers. Most vehicles are used very little or not at all where as autonomous vehicles are used most of the time. Also, the NHTSA numbers are for all AVs everywhere in the US so your astonishingly numbers precise are way off. Still, as a pedestrian, I am pretty happy the AVs are not parking in the crosswalks all the time.
- bestnameever 2y ago
  I doubt everything is equal. AVs are likely driving many more miles on the road each day than the majority of other vehicles.
- aeternum 2y ago
  You need to look at per mile driven rather than just number of vehicles because the AVs are much higher utilization. The states confirm that per mile driven, AVs are much safer. Also anyone that has walked near one can easily tell. The AVs actually yield to pedestrians, especially if you step near the crosswalk unlike many SF drivers.

bakemawaytoys 2y ago

So the solution to traffic congestion and pedestrian deaths is not “make better cars”

CHB0403085482 2y ago
Yes. The solution is to have urban places built for people, not cars.

onetokeoverthe 2y ago

So much invested on removing humanity from the driver's seat.

tim333 2y ago

Self driving cars could make public transport better by filling in when the trains and busses don't go where/when you want. I know you can get regular taxis but they are kind of expensive and a hassle.

more_corn 2y ago

I had an autonomous vehicle almost hit me. It didn’t understand to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk when turning at a light. I walked into their office and reported it (there’s no other mechanism that I know of). They shrugged it off. Autonomous vehicles can be done safely, but nobody and nothing is perfect so without robust error correcting and reporting systems they’ll never be safe.

amai 2y ago

"We don't need driverless cars, we need carless drivers."

ktosobcy 2y ago

"It seems what we really need is not driverless cars, it's car-less drivers!" Cities are for people and not for cars!