5 ms·
As always, relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1958/ https://xkcd.com/1958/
by saghm 5mo ago
As always, relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1958/ https://xkcd.com/1958/
- spprashant 5mo agoWe do have people with real incentive to not allow self-driving cars to succeed.
- saghm 5mo agoAt the cost of a traffic violation though?
- sterlind 5mo agoI hope they succeed, for the sake of my mom who's legally blind and has dreamed about them for decades. but I'd be significantly more excited about self-driving if you could buy level-4 AVs that you can actually own.
- cogogo 5mo agoMe too but this feels like a step in a progression to being able to rent/share them.
- paulryanrogers 5mo agoAre cars really the best option? Could other public transit serve the same purpose? (I was once legally blind, still not a fan of cars myself. Though I understand the appeal when externalities are out of the picture.)
- michaelt 5mo agoCars aren't the best option, but you can drop self-driving cars into an existing car-centric society one car at a time, with the car buyers paying for themselves. Making a car-centric society meaningfully less car-centric requires the enthusiastic support of that society, along with competent political leadership, and probably a fair chunk of taxpayer cash too. Suburbs with huge lots make for long walks to the transit stop - but densifying those suburbs is not easy. I don't own a car; I travel everywhere by bicycle and public transport - but the public transport I use was all built in the 1850s. Some time between then and now my society reorganised into a form that has a lot of difficulty delivering public transport projects.
- runarberg 5mo agoThis is a false alternative, because robocars do not exist, while public transit does exist but simply hasn’t been adequately implemented everywhere. Politicians (and grifters alike) like to point to a future technology to solve an existing problem only to delay existing solutions which they don’t want to implement, most often for political reasons.
- laurencerowe 5mo agoRobocars most certainly exist. They’re probably about 5% of car traffic in San Francisco. I’ve not taken one yet (taxis/ubers/Waymos are mostly impractical with a young kid in the US as you must use a car seat unlike in most European countries) but as a pedestrian they seem mostly a safer than other drivers. As a driver I expect they will eventually induce gridlock but the city can always create more bus lanes.
- runarberg 5mo agoRobotaxis ≠ robocars. The robotaxis that do exist only do so in very limited places using very expensive technology (including off-shored service center for intervention) that is not available for the public consumer markets.
- seanmcdirmid 5mo agoPortable booster seats are pretty small. I can’t see it working if you have a kid younger than the booster seat min though. Only a few states have strict rules here, Washington and California being a couple, although I think California has a taxi exemption.
- laurencerowe 5mo agoLiving in San Francisco I've not seen the taxi exemption for California anywhere. New York City taxis are exempt like most of Europe. My kid is too young for a booster city. It's pretty impractical to take a child seat or booster with you unless you plan to hire a car the other end. When I travel back to see my family in Europe I take the train from the airport. So we bus and Bart to the airport even though it would be much easier with luggage to take a taxi.
- drdaeman 5mo agoSurely, not until public transit networks covering literally everywhere regular roads can get you. Public transit is better, but building it outside of dense metro areas to the extent it becomes competitive is probably even more difficult than building a self-driving car.
- crubier 5mo agoDoes the Subway arrive at my door?
- dotcoma 5mo agoProbably not. If you need to walk a mile, that’s a feature, not a bug. Of course, if you need to walk multiple miles, that’s a different story.
- crubier 5mo agoWalking to the station isn't even the bad part. The bad part is then walking 3min in tunnels smelling like piss to get to the platform, then waiting 7min more for the train to arrive, then walk 3min more to get out of another piss-filled station. That's 10-15 of absolutely-not-enjoyable subway station.
- gs17 5mo agoWhile I enjoy going for a walk (and will gladly walk four miles as a leisure activity), I don't enjoy wanting to go somewhere and needing to budget an extra hour (or more) for the extra two miles of walking each way, possibly in bad weather. It's like saying the buses always running a half hour late is a feature because it gives you some time to read.
- dotcoma 5mo agoWalking a mile should take 15-20 minutes. If the streets are very busy, the pollution bad, the tunnels smell like piss etc, then that is the problem. Small amounts of moderate exercise every day are a lot better than going to the gym (by car, usually) for a hard workout. I’d rather read a book on the sofa, but you can’t walk while sitting on the sofa.
- seanmcdirmid 5mo agoIn the USA where transit in most cities sucks? Seattle is supposedly one of the best but you can’t get to work downtown most days without being harassed by a fent zombie.
- nearlyepic 5mo agoI really don’t know who told you that Seattle has one of the best transit infrastructures in the country, lol. It’s not even close to New York or Chicago, nor any of the forward thrust cities (DC, Atlanta). Hell, the light rail isn’t even as good as Portland.
- runarberg 5mo agoI suspect they may be thinking about growth here, since Seattle’s system has had a very impressive growth, and is improving at a rate no other city in the USA comes close. So in other words Seattle for sure has one of the best transit policy in the USA, however New York for sure has a much better system. I do disagree with you vehemently about Seattle’s light rail being inferior to Portland’s. That may have been true 10 years ago, but it for sure is not true today, especially after the East link opened earlier this year. That said, Your parent is wildly off the mark (and honestly quite reactionary) in describing harassment from fentanyl addicts. Such harassment is extremely rare, and in the few cases where it does happen it is a failure of public health policy, not transit and accessibility policy.
- gs17 5mo ago> and is improving at a rate no other city in the USA comes close. As long as you weren't hoping to take a train to Ballard in your lifespan.
- gs17 5mo agoSeattle's is only one of the best if both ends of your trip are on the light rail. The drug addicts are also much less of an issue than a lot of media makes them seem. I'm not sure what would happen if I tried to shove my way through the crowd at 12th and Jackson, but mostly those "zombies" aren't paying much attention to passersby.
- ojgjoe 5mo agoPaul Ryan Rogers, You are still clearly blind to reality. Much of the world requires a car. Maybe someday it won't, but today it absolutely does.
- paulryanrogers 5mo agoDo you think personal attacks will convince others of your argument?
- f6v 5mo ago> Could other public transit serve the same purpose? Population density plays a big part. People think of Europe as a public transportation paradise, but a car makes your life easier outside Berlin, Paris, and other major cities. I live on the edge of Copenhagen and public transportation sucks the further you go from the downtown since the major city turn into a giant suburb really fast. Yes, people bike, but many do drive a car.
- viking123 5mo agoIn America the public transport is used by "youths" so normal people are forced to use cars.
- runarberg 5mo agoCan I ask why you prefer that some future technology will solve her problem when actual solutions (such as access vans; public transit; etc.) already exist? And before anyone points this out, if your local government does not offer these solutions that is a political choice of your local politicians. Plenty of local governments all over the world (even in dictatorships) are able to provide these, and changing the policy of your local government should in theory be easier then to roll out technology that does not exist.
- ctoth 5mo agoI'm blind. I wish to hop in a robocar and drive from Denver to go visit my folks back home in Florida. Is the Denver Access-A-Ride going to take me? Which public transit is available?
- runarberg 5mo agoI preemptively addressed this. Not providing access is a political choice. The airports/train stations/bus stations in both Denver and Florida should have assistants ready to guide you to your flight/train/bus and the Colorado government could have an agreement with Florida to share services with residents of either state. If they don‘t, there was a political choice not to, which can be changed. If there is no public transit available... well... neither are robocars, but only the former is a political choice.
- ctoth 5mo agoFlight? I want to drive. I want to bring my cat and bring some stuff back from my dad's house. My parents just drove up here to visit me, I would like to do the same. Not take a train. Not take a plane. I want to hop in a robocar and drive to Florida. The same thing that every other person with a car can do whenever they want to. Freedom.
- runarberg 5mo agoI have a hard time imagining how driving a car is freedom but hopping on a bus is not. In my mind a car is a liability in ways the bus is not. You have to insure your car, find parking, get a license, you cannot drive drunk, your license plate is tracked, etc. etc. vs. a bus which you can just hop in (as drunk as you want) fall a sleep or whatever and when you arrive the bus just drives away and you don’t have to think about it ever again in your life. For me that is true freedom.
- dzonga 5mo agothat xkcd is always funny - but there's a white lie in it e.g on motorcycles in areas where you are allowed to ride median. there's instances of drivers actively tryin' to kill you by swerving onto the median when they see you comin'.
- nsvd2 5mo agoIt surprises me that any municipality would make that legal, seems dangerous.
- HNisCIS 5mo agoIt's actually safer-ish. First: terms. Filtering is good, involves moving slowly through stopped traffic between the cars, usually under 20mph differential. Splitting is less good, that involves weaving between cars at speed and is actually dangerous. Some of the worst accidents are rear endings where drivers (not paying attention) just run you over while stopped in traffic. This is offset by accidents where people do the stuff you're worried about but when it's practiced correctly that's not as big of a risk and generally leads to less catastrophic accidents than rear endings. It's also just kinda dumb to force a class of vehicle that can get out of traffic jams to instead sit in them
- ang_cire 5mo agoI started riding in AZ, which does not allow splitting. I now live in CA, which does. The actual justification for it is valid, but mostly outdated: Older and less powerful motorcycles often have air-cooled engines, and if you sit idling in them in e.g. a traffic jam, they will absolutely overheat and die (at best). Newer and more powerful bikes are liquid-cooled, and do not have this issue (though the driver overheating is another very real issue). My personal take is that most riders who use bikes to commute are too reckless, and lane split at speed rather than doing so more safely. 25 mph or below, in fully-stopped traffic, is relatively safe. Ditto for <=35 in a 10-20 mph flow. Each of those gives you a relative stopping distance of about 50 feet, which is 3 or fewer car lengths, which is easy to account for. 60 in a 25mph flow OTOH isn't lane splitting, it's just weaving through traffic recklessly, hoping to God that no one in the next 20 cars lengths merges or drifts at all.
- culi 5mo agoWaymo was a target during the anti-ICE protests because of Google's collaboration with ICE. In addition, Waymo is seen as a symbol of the gentrification problem. Agree or disagree with it, my point is that that xkcd doesn't take into account political motivations
- seanmcdirmid 5mo agoProtesters block human cars as well as the only difference is that the Waymo driver doesn’t get frustrated and are pretty patient. So protesters need to physically damage the car to make their point, which is a tricky proposition with all the cameras it has (but face masks are common on both sides these days).
- culi 5mo agoExcept in this case, damaging cars belonging to Google—a collaborator with ICE—is the point. It's more comparable to people who were damaging Tesla vehicles or the Tyre Extinguishers in the UK than the very common tactic of halting traffic/economic activity to threaten "business as usual"
- seanmcdirmid 5mo agoProperty damage is just hooliganism, thugs make an excuse for it no matter if that’s what they feel like doing. The eventual result of America falling into chaos will be countries like China having nice stuff like self driving cars (because they don’t tolerate thugs) while the us doesnt.
- defrost 5mo agoPerhaps sometimes a simplistic take like this is true - people destroying just for the sake of destruction and indifferent to the target. However when destruction is targeted toward specific brands or toward infrastructure being used for specific purposes such takes can no longer be true.
- fatata123 5mo ago[dead]