I remain irritated we’re spending so much money on self driving cars instead of buses, trains, and improving our living spaces to support them.
Like you could spend billions to try to get self driving cars to work, and get part way there. And you’d still have a car-first dystopia.
Or you could spend billions to deploy buses and make walkable neighborhoods. Well understood, many good side effects.
I hate cars as much as the next rational man. But I’m ironically really into the self driving car hype.
I think of transport like a pyramid.
Walking is at the top followed by micro mobility and cycling. Then at the bottom is trains, with metros/ trams above and buses above that.
The issue comes from two things. The last mile problem. You need to get to the railway station and sometimes it’s too far for a walk or a bike, or you need a bike at both ends. The “obvious” solution to that is to drive to the station. But then it just becomes easier to drive the whole way (especially if you need transport at the next station).
So people start driving and then there is less demand for public transport and more cars mean less people want to cycle.
I think self driving cars will be game changing. They solve the last mile problem which means metro and railway usage could very easily increase. Much, much higher usage of ride hailing means more people in each vehicles (might even replace buses with mini buses), those vehicles don’t need to park in say a cycle lane or even downtown. This frees up land and opportunity for more walking and cycling. Also people will be more comfortable cycling closer to a self driving car.
I really hope this causes a cultural shift and that shift is well utilised. But it could do absolutely nothing if those car brains foam at the mouth and complain about a new cycle path and bike storage no matter the positives.
Do you imagine these self driving cars are not owned by individuals, and go off to some dedicated place when not in use? That’s marginally better than "everyone owns their own car that spends most of the time idle. I try to ride a bike here in the city and there’s so much space given up to cars parked on the street.
It sounds grotesquely inefficient to have a car pick up guy 1 and drive him to the train, a car pick up his neighbor guy 2 and drive him to the train, a car pick up the guy on their corner and drive him to the station. Which I guess is what we’re doing today, except the cars get parked at both ends idle all day. So maybe it would be an improvement.
But it can’t be the end-state. We should still be working towards denser, walkable, living spaces. I don’t want to continue with the idea that the suburbs are ok.
Waymo cars are not owned by individuals, so that seems like their idea is already implementable as-is.
Cars being parked idle all day isn’t necessarily going to be a bad thing, most Vehicles self driving out there are EV’s and even if it’s a standard combustion, those have migrated over to an engine off when stopped ideology where it just doesn’t run until someone presses the gas. It wouldn’t be infeasible for the company’s developing the technology to have an electronic climate control system that just auto-offs when there isn’t a passenger in the seat, a sensor that would be a hard requirement for a self-driving vehicle anyway. Which means that it’s very likely that the vehicle could even if it was a combustion engine be idle for extended period of time without it taking up too much more resources.
That being said I do believe that electric vehicles would be the optimal vehicle for this, as the only thing it would need to do when it didn’t have an order would be have the radio transmitter on which shouldn’t take all that much electricity which means it shouldn’t drain the battery and furthermore there could be designated charging stations that the car can idle at near these population hotspots like described.
You have to remember as well that once Society transitions to a system that’s like that, there is going to be people that don’t bother having vehicles themselves so I believe that there’s going to be more space freed than space used by doing this change
Cars being parked idle all day isn’t necessarily going to be a bad thing,
My complaint specifically was about cars parked on the street where I’d rather have a bike lane, wider sidewalk, outdoor dining, or almost anything else other than a parked car taking up that space.
Yeah but specifically they usually would have been parked in a designated parking area due to the fact that they would need to charge in between uses as well so it’s unlikely that those Vehicles would be parked on the sidewalk like standard consumer vehicles are
I think what happened here is I went off topic and was making a complaint about cars in general and how all the space they take up is annoying, but you stayed on topic and are talking more specifically about self driving cars and waymo. So given that I see what you’re saying.
I will say that building parking structures (is: homes for cars) instead of homes for people feels kind of bad.
I’m team Waymo. They seem to be the leaders and to be following a path I most agree with. Basically and taxi model like uber except Waymo owns the cars.
I still follow /r/waymo and /r/selfdrivingcars on reddit if you fancy reading more.
Currently people drive all the way to the destination and all the way back. If taxis funnelled them to trains that is a huge improvement if nothing else. And like you say parking gets freed up and that land can be used for more density, more parks and more cycling without losing roads then all good. (Roads should be reduced I’m just saying politically it will be easier to turn an unused carpark into a park than to turn a road into a park).
It terms of cost. I think that will be a huge boom for the economy. High milage, electric cars fueled by cheap renewables is going to make upfront costs non existent and lower per milage costs. That will increase riders verses personal cars.
Then I think that will cause a higher density per car. Ride sharing with uber works but it isn’t great. The more people that use it the higher likelihood you have of people going to the same area so the time cost of ride sharing will decrease as usage increases. The UK actually experimented with on demand buses (Demand Responsive Transport) which I really liked but the uptake hasn’t been as good as hoped. Think this will be more common.
All these factors I believe will make walking/cycling/ trains safer and more accessible and allow for more infrastructure and better cost per rider.
But it can’t be the end-state. We should still be working towards denser, walkable, living spaces. I don’t want to continue with the idea that the suburbs are ok.
I agree but the political will isn’t there. Getting rid of parking and a lane here or there is achievable on the current trajectory. Once that’s done, I hope more change like you mention comes.
But it’s also the built it and they will come factor. Who wants more cyclists? People that cycle. If the self driving car makes more cyclist more people will want more cycling. I’m really hoping for a self feeding cycle grown from the self driving car.
That seems… Fine, on a skim. Plausible.
But like… are we sure we come out ahead spending decades on machine vision and self driving versus just having more human taxi drivers, and spending the money on the end goals we actually want?
I guess that’s a shit job, driving taxis at weird times and places, and doesn’t scale super well. But machine vision and self driving seems to be a decades long project.
Related: I’m not really comfortable with critical infrastructure (eg: transit) being privately owned and operated. So that might be a problem.
Though the political will being absent for anything good remains a problem, too.
But like… are we sure we come out ahead spending decades on machine vision and self driving versus just having more human taxi drivers, and spending the money on the end goals we actually want?
Human driving cost is forever. A self driving programme cost is for today only.
The money has been spent. Waymo is operating without a driver in Phoenix, LA and San Francisco.
Ultimately it’s private money. No public money is being spent on it. The government can (and should) invest in public transport also. But how alphabet spends their money isn’t up to the government.
Anything can be nationalised.
But didn’t it come out recently that Waymo has human “drivers” behind a remote control and that it is nearly a 1:1 relationship of driver to car because the self driving tech just hasn’t made it far enough?
I think you might be thinking of Cruise?
https://gizmodo.com/cruise-robotaxi-human-assistance-kyle-vogt-1850997279
I haven’t heard anything about that. Got a link? I don’t even see how that would work in real time. Waymo is a very safe driver and can Indians even drive in the US on their licence because it’s so crap?
This story came out recently about Amazon shopping:
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-just-walk-out-actually-1-000-people-in-india-2024-4?amp
You thinking of that?
With the way cars are now self driving wouldn’t solve the problem of people just using cars to get everywhere. Cause people would own their own self driving car and then you get the same exact problem as you mentioned before except now you also get the convenience of not having to actively drive so why use public transit at all if you can just let your car do all the work to take you to where you need to go. The real solution to the last mile problem is to make better walking/biking infrastructure and to have larger transit networks so people don’t have to go super far to get access to transit. Also you mention having to bike at both ends of your transit and that’s a problem I don’t get cause you can just bring your bike with you on the train/bus. Or since you seem to be leaning towards a rental ride sharing model anyway rental bikes also solve that problem perfectly.
Everything you said could have been out in place within the last 50 years and it hasn’t been done.
Like yes I agree. But also I just don’t see it happening.
In terms of realistic positive impact I think more will be gained in the next 20 years from self driving cars than an increase in taxes and huge government spending.
I just don’t see any gains from self driving cars. We already have ride share services that would allow what you’re talking about to happen but people don’t do it cause it’s expensive. I doubt companies like Uber and Lyft are gonna lower their prices when self driving cars become a thing, they’re just gonna take the extra profit for themselves. All it’s gonna do is encourage more people to drive cause now one of the benefits of public transit, not having to actively drive and being able to do other things while traveling, will now be a benefit of self driving cars too. And on top of that it’s gonna encourage more of the bad practices from the software industry to leak over into cars such as subscriptions services which companies have already been trying to push. Overall I don’t see self driving cars being a benefit for society other than making driving more convenient and pushing even more towards dangerous car focused infrastructure.
just don’t see any gains from self driving cars. We already have ride share services that would allow what you’re talking about to happen but people don’t do it cause it’s expensive.
Because it will be cheaper.
I doubt companies like Uber and Lyft are gonna lower their prices when self driving cars become a thing, they’re just gonna take the extra profit for themselves
That’s not how capitalism works as much as this website disagrees. Uber is already a good example of a company that undercut the competition.
Higher density in vehicles alone will make a huge difference.
Except that is how capitalism works time and time again. Companies will lower prices to gain market share then once they have a large control of the market will happily raise prices and keep any gains in productivity for themselves. The only reason Uber is trying to undercut people right now is because the industry is new and they want to try and capture the market for themselves. Once they do or some situation forms like what we have with internet with Comcast and other providers avoiding competing you can expect prices to not ever be lowered again. If anything this is another reason why I favor public transit over self driving cars because public transit investment is owned by the government and therefore the people, it’s not gonna try and milk people for profit. Whereas these ride share companies already have shown they’re willing to act shitty towards their drivers to drive up their own profits, I imagine these companies would continue to find ways to milk more profit out of the service with self driving cars and with drivers being gone that’s gonna come at the expense of the users.
Then competition comes in.
Explain to me how public transport is going to suddenly become this thing that will replace cars when it has had 100 years to achieve that and hasn’t?
While I get that as a stop gap when your city hasn’t built enough PT, car to the station sounds like a good last mile solution. But my personal preference, and how good public transport is set up, is that in 90% o more of the trips around your city, public transport should never be more than a walk away.
This is not to say that cars should be removed entirely (for disabled people where PT accommodations are difficult, delivery, emergency vehicles etc). Just that you shouldn’t nearly as many cars for the last mile, in a well designed system.
This is how I try to live, mostly. Can’t get there by public transport? Well I’m not going unless I have to then 👍 because cars are expensive and I’ll get a cab or rent one if I have to. But I live in a fairly car-centric city. It’s totally possible to have your entirely city be accessible by foot + PT.
I’m not sure if the driverless car tech would ever be viable, and why not just do driverless BRT conversions, which is possible right now, and not that expensive.
If the tech bros really wants self driving transportation we can give them that:
Self driving subway, goes 75km/h in the city center, fully electric, convenient, consistent, safe.
Dear god, imagine… Billions spent on public transportation, and pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure. Can you imagine? Just… imagine. I’m in awe
Trains are way easier to make self driving too, we’ve had autonomous trains since the 60s.
Trains have even more obnoxious horns though.
And are legally required to blast them in populated areas
They usually only use the horn at crossings. Automated trains are grade separated. The SkyTrain rolls through Vancouver all night and you can hardly hear it.
The only reason trains are not self-driving is humans designed the whole system in a too complicated way. Trains had all the ingredients for safe self-driving for decades.
In the US a few decades ago the big rail companies were given the ultimatum to upgrade their safety infrastructure or have a national speed limit of 79 mph imposed on them.
Guess which they did?
Because you can make every kind of excuse, when it comes to privately owner corporations, but you quickly run out of them, when improving public systems.
We’ve already seen it countless times, how the American government gives money to someone, to complete a project, but completely ignores any binding contracts, so all that money literally just goes into someone’s pocket instead
Corruption is a problem. It doesn’t help that one of two major parties doesn’t believe government can work, and they’ll make every effort to prove it.
“See, if you don’t give any funding to public transit it doesn’t work. And if you gut the regulatory agencies, then there’s all sorts of corruption. Better privatize it, and I have just the guy to sell it to.”
nobody:
not a single soul:
waymo cars at 4am: “ayyyy lmao” “ayyyyyy lmfao”
welcomed Waymo’s presence, expecting it to enhance local security and tranquility
what? how could it do anything for “local security and tranquility”?
I didn’t really get this either.
I did think the final paragraph was notable, a “zeitgeist of our times” if you will:
The absurdity of the situation prompted tech author and journalist James Vincent to write on X, “current tech trends are resistant to satire precisely because they satirize themselves. a car park of empty cars, honking at one another, nudging back and forth to drop off nobody, is a perfect image of tech serving its own prerogatives rather than humanity’s.”
a “zeitgeist of our times”
An ATM machine
Zeitgeist could refer to the past though.
Nirvana was part of the zeitgeist of the 90s.
Re: security: I imagine many women being more comfortable getting a waymo than an Uber/Taxi. It’s anecdotal and from a different country, but most of my female family/friends have had an uncomfortable interaction in a taxi, like unrequested sexual advances or things like that.
Would you choose to be driven by waymo, taxi driver, or a bear?
The bear obviously. I need to ask him a few questions.
“Have you managed to mend the relationship with your cousin yet? And is the restaurant doing alright?”
I want my Johnny Cab from Total Recall. Tells me “hell of a day! Hah hah!”
Then we get to watch them try to run over people that stiff them in fairs and damage the unit.
Yes.
Zoox
I’m a dude and I still prefer car shares over taxi drivers. Less weed smoke, the driver is not on Tiktok while driving, no erratic driving, and it’s cheaper too.
You: “So, on what social network are you now?”
Driver: “Yes”
Security, they’re covered in cameras, the footage from which can presumably be obtained by law enforcement.
Tranquility, they’re presumably electric, so quieter?
My coworker feels more comfortable cycling around the Waymo’s than human drivers.
As in, they are already more considerate than humans.
I feel more comfortable walking around them, they never blow stop lights /signs, always go the speed limit, never honk (except when parking I guess) and are very patient. If they see a pedestrian they just stop instead of creeping forward making you question whether to walk in front of them and then getting mad when you won’t cross in front of their still moving car like people.
Apparently a software update made the cars detect if a vehicle was backing up towards them and give a “beep” as a warning. But in the lot where self driving cars are stored they beep at each other as they try to park. Lol
Sounds like dogs barking at/with each other in the night back when I was growing up. You’d hear the occasional how-how-hoooooww from one of them, and others would join in. Wolf’ish in some ways. The city I grew up in was much less crowded back then.
Now: I guess self driving cars fill in the void left by dogs not barking at each other anymore.
🐺 — > 🚗
The twilight barking, I still hear it sometimes round where I live.
It’s going to replace all the barking du to all the dogs they run over.
We reached the point were robot drivers are dicks also
So they’re all meeting at night talking to each other? I wonder what they’re up to.
Plotting to take down Lightning McQueen
First rule of honk club: don’t talk about honk club
maybe the honking is actually morse code
Reminds me of a family cat I used to have who we’d catch hanging out with other street cats on our fence at night. They all used to sit in a line, it was like a scene from an animated movie.
Remember the Cars movies? That’s the dystopia leading to a man made world inhabited by sentient Cars /s
Aw, they’re talking to each other
Maybe they are unionizing.
“Soon, my brothers, we will rise up and free ourselves from our oppressors!”*
*translated from honking
Someone made them read bumper stickers. In a loop.
“Honk If You’re Horny”
Over volt me again Baby!
Sounds like it’s time to put on a mask and go toss bologna on a bunch of robot cars.
Apparently a traffic cone is the way to go. The car will just sit there until someone removes the cone.
If by bologna you mean cobblestone.
But where will you get a bucket of lava?
The Honking is upon us! Run for your lives!
Could be there’s a cat or squirrel across the street and one car honk at it, the others follow?
They’re probably now programmed to honk if another car is in the way after some of their cars had to wait behind some driver way too long and customers were complaining. So now these cars are in the parking lot and slowly maneuvering to find a spot or to move to the exit, all at the same time because somebody has set up a schedule for the car to start at 4am and copied it to all vehicles. So at 4 am, they all want to go at the same time and block each other. Because now they are programmed to honk if they are blocked, they start honking at each other and you get what’s in the article and video.
source: just seen too many unintended consequences of software engineering decisions
They appear to honk when a car is backing up within X feet towards them.
Yup. And the issue here is that the cars back into and out of the parking spots, and are also programmed to stop if they get honked at. So car 1 begins backing into a spot, car 2 honks, car 1 pauses and then begins backing again, car 2 honks again, repeat… And when you have 30 cars in a parking lot, all trying to find a parking spot, there’s a lot of backing up and a lot of honking.
The plot thickens… i go with a drunken racoon pissing on the tires to stick it to the hu/man. The irony…
Communication by Claxon
Kelly Claxon, the singer? Definitely a very irritating sound!
amazing
as if drivers aren’t honking at each other all night anyway. I live in the boonies, that was the biggest environment jerker for me that you have zero downtime in the cities, always beeping always noisy
Eh, depends upon the neighborhood. If I heard people honking endlessly from my condo I’d be going out the door looking for the person that needed a foot up their ass.
Not all city streets are very busy. There is some level of always noise (I got planes and helicopters and sirens to mention a few) but it’s not cars aggressively honking at each other 24/7…nobody can sleep through that.
It’s nice to be in the city where there aren’t many cars. Very quiet.
Cities aren’t loud cars are.
Like a great big heavy Furby.
