[HN Gopher] Armed with traffic cones, protesters are immobilizin...
___________________________________________________________________
Armed with traffic cones, protesters are immobilizing driverless
cars
Author : Physkal
Score : 48 points
Date : 2023-08-26 13:39 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| anovikov wrote:
| [flagged]
| forinti wrote:
| A few years ago I wrote a short story on how people would force
| cars to stop in order to extort money from the passengers. I
| thought such a thing would first happen in Rio.
|
| It's inevitable, whatever the reason: if the car won't run over
| people or things, whoever wants to stop them will do so.
| the-dude wrote:
| You are being too modest : post the link!
| forinti wrote:
| It's in Portuguese, though:
|
| http://alquerubim.blogspot.com/2016/11/o-caos-imposto-
| pela-o...
| the-dude wrote:
| https://alquerubim-blogspot-
| com.translate.goog/2016/11/o-cao...
|
| 2050!
|
| The ordeal reminds me of Rome, which I visited as a
| teenager. I discovered if you didn't take a risk / put your
| life on the line, cars wouldn't stop at a zebra(crossing).
| shortcake27 wrote:
| You speak as if criminals don't already exist; as if it isn't
| currently possible to rob a house, or someone on the street, or
| a car stopped at traffic lights.
|
| If someone wants to commit a robbery there are already plenty
| of ways they can do it. I fail to see how autonomous vehicles
| would increase the rate of crime.
| influxmoment wrote:
| People will defend themselves. Robots taking care of people
| won't
| forinti wrote:
| It's one thing to rob someone, it's quite another to ask for
| five bob to get out of the way.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I'm selling bumper stickers that say "Self Driving Cars Have so
| soul". Just go to that phrase dot com.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| In twenty years it will be the subject of an article "can you
| believe how stupid people were back then".
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| So, they create traffic blockages as a sort of civic
| disobedience? How is this helping anyone? I guess they get to
| feel the thrill of outrage culture for a bit. And brag to their
| friends "I made a thousand people late for work!"
| BurningFrog wrote:
| [dead]
| Zigurd wrote:
| I think this particular protest is counterproductive. AVs will
| make public transit work a lot better and reduce traffic, make
| pedestrians safer, etc. But protest isn't meant to be
| convenient.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| > AVs will make public transit work a lot better and reduce
| traffic
|
| Or will reduce use of public transit & make traffic worse
| because the negative effects of traffic will be less felt &
| the cost of private transit via an AV will be lower
| htrp wrote:
| > AVs will make public transit work a lot better and reduce
| traffic
|
| AV adoption will probably be comparable to the effect of
| Uber. It'll create more traffic on the roads at the expense
| of gutting the public transit infrastructure and probably
| create significantly problems than it solves.
|
| On the bright side, parking may become cheaper.
| klyrs wrote:
| The goal of AVs is to undermine high-density public
| transportation in favor of privately owned low-density
| transportation. The approach is to beta-test murder-capable
| robots amid unwilling living humans. That will neither reduce
| traffic nor make pedestrians safer.
|
| Counterpoint: pedestrians may be made safer by blockading the
| roads with unwitting AVs.
| slavik81 wrote:
| Once cars can drive themselves, parking lots no longer need
| to surround businesses since everyone will have a free valet
| that can drop you off and park your car in a distant lot. The
| parking lot surrounding the business can be redeveloped into
| more commercial or residential space. Ironically, self-
| driving cars may make commercial areas denser and more
| walkable.
|
| The parking lots for self-driving vehicles can also be
| significantly more dense than lots for normal vehicles.
| Current parking lots must reserve half the overall lot for
| aisles, since every car must be able to leave without any
| other vehicle moving. A parking lot for autonomous vehicles
| won't be limited by that restriction and can achieve a higher
| utilization of the space by filling the aisles with more
| vehicles.
|
| However, some people will probably decide to commute much
| longer distances when they no longer need to drive themselves
| and residential areas will probably end up sprawling even
| more than they do already.
| seadan83 wrote:
| Car ownership in the US today is really high (recently was
| over 90% [1])
|
| Why would 90% of people forego paying approximately $1~$5
| to travel a dozen miles in their already payed for car vs
| paying a taxi-cab like fare for an AV? I'm not sure how
| much it costs to go 10 miles in an AV taxi, but I'm
| guessing it's $20-$30.
|
| The effect of AVs with respect to strip malls and
| commercial spaces seems like it'll be a pretty low traffic
| flow.
|
| Asked another way, how many people take conventional taxis
| (being Uber/Lyft, or a legit taxi) today to go such places?
| It seems like the prices are similar, why then would the
| lack of a human driver make an AV taxi that much more
| attractive (like, to the point where the 90% of car owners
| decided to stop driving their own car, which is far cheaper
| - and then this pattern plays out for long enough that the
| parking lot situation changes!
|
| [1] https://www.forbes.com/advisor/car-insurance/car-
| ownership-s...
| Zigurd wrote:
| The US car fleet is also unusually old. If transit worked
| better, using AVs or not, it's a pretty good hypothesis
| that people keeping old cars on the road would find using
| better transit saves them money.
| slavik81 wrote:
| Nothing I described requires giving up ownership of the
| vehicle. All that is needed is for it to be able to
| navigate to and from the parking lot by itself, and to
| move spots when requested by the parking lot's computer.
| FreshStart wrote:
| ? The size of the pipe does not change, the substance in it
| does not get much more denser or faster.. I just don't see
| it. Maybe in combination with a turn towards public transport
| as ride & drive..
| ajuc wrote:
| > AVs will make public transit work a lot better and reduce
| traffic, make pedestrians safer, etc
|
| Highly doubt it.
|
| 1. if you have a regular car you get from point A to B, park,
| do sth, go from B to A. If you use AV it has to go from point
| X to A, take you to B, go do sth else at Y, you do your
| thing, it has to go back from Z to B and take you to A.
| Instead of using the road from A to B and back you're using
| the road from X to A, from A to B and back and from Z to B
| (going from B to Y counts for the other customer so I don't
| add it). It uses road LONGER per passanger - so traffic will
| be WORSE and it will use MORE fuel. It will save some parking
| space tho.
|
| Basicaly AVs (and taxis/ubers etc.) trade parking space for
| road space and fuel. You can't reduce traffic by driving more
| :)
|
| 2. it will only make pedestrians safer if it drives
| conservatively, but from what I've seen by AV advocacy is
| people want AV cars to interface with each other and use that
| to cut the safety margin for efficiency. That's an inherently
| American idea that assumes people don't walk so you can just
| change cars and everything will be fine :)
|
| It would make pedestrians inherently less safe (because AVs
| become a train basically - you cannot suddenly stop 1 AV
| because other are behind it and they assume it won't suddenly
| stop).
|
| If you want a city in which every street is effectively a
| rail track and every pedestrian crossing is a train crossing
| with all the disruption to pedestrians and others - do this.
| Otherwise just use public transport and bikes, please - all
| the benefits and more, for fraction of cost, and it's
| healthier. Moving individual people in huge cars just doesn't
| scale, no matter who drives them.
| ghaff wrote:
| As someone who lives far enough out of the nearest major
| city that I don't really pop in casually for a meal or
| drink. (It's very doable but I end up being on the road for
| a good two hours total around whatever activity I'm doing.)
|
| An AV wouldn't be free to travel that distance but I would
| absolutely do that and other activities requiring 1+ hour
| drives each way more frequently if I didn't need to do the
| driving myself.
| ajuc wrote:
| I mean you could just use public transport?
|
| I lived in a small village 40 minutes from a big city
| half my life. There are buses going every 30 minutes each
| way between around 06:00 and 20:00. They cost under 1 USD
| per trip. Lots of people use them - kids going to
| schools, people commuting for work, grandmas who don't
| have driving licence. I probably used them over 1000
| times through my life.
|
| That city isn't even that big - 350 000 people. And the
| buses are profitable. Why can't cities over million
| people afford public transport is beyond me.
|
| BTW notice how old people who can't drive still might
| want to go to a cinema/theater/doctor/whatever without
| asking their family or paying for a taxi. It's a huge
| benefit to everybody that these buses are available. I
| doubt you can get AV profitable transporting 1 person
| where buses transport 10-20 people.
| ghaff wrote:
| The only public transit option for me is commuter rail
| which would require me to drive to and park at the
| (relatively) nearby station. (I'm well outside the city's
| local bus and subway transit system.) It takes 60-90
| minutes to go the 50 miles depending upon whether I need
| to connect to the subway at my destination or not. It
| runs no more frequently than hourly and the last couple
| of trains at night are more like 90+ minutes apart. It's
| utterly impractical to take in for an evening event.
|
| (And it's about $30 round-trip with parking; I do take it
| in the rare times when I'm going in for the day to work
| because driving in and back at rush hour is awful.)
|
| The commuter rail is "fine" but its schedule doesn't
| really work outside of commuting hours--and even that is
| significantly worse than pre-COVID.
| ajuc wrote:
| Yeah for me it was like 500 meter walk to the bus stop :)
| And bus stops were every 2 km or so :)
|
| I'm wondering why there are no such buses where you live?
| It it a matter of population density, different road
| network architecture (here most villages are build along
| the roads so you can put bus stops every 1-2 km and
| you'll get enoguh passangers to get by), or just a
| chicken-and-egg problem of customers not being used to it
| so it's not profitable if you create it?
| ghaff wrote:
| There is a small regional transit system that covers the
| grocery store, Walmart, train station, and I'm not sure
| what else. My sense from seeing it at the grocery store
| is that it's mostly for seniors and others who can't
| drive. It covers the nearby ~40K population pair of
| cities.
|
| The surrounding towns--one of which I live in--are pretty
| rural, or at least exurban, with a very limited
| commercial tax base and generally don't even have
| sidewalks outside of the town centers. We'd have neither
| the density/demand or the budget to have a public transit
| system.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >> And the buses are profitable.
|
| Highly unlikely.. They may have been covering operational
| costs with out factoring in Capital costs.
|
| >>kids going to schools,
|
| Around here Kids go on School Busses, not public
| transport, I have never seen or heard of a child here
| using a City bus to go to school. Many schools do not
| even have a public bus stop near them, often a few blocks
| away
|
| >>I mean you could just use public transport?
|
| Nope, never. I prefer not to spat on, robbed, or other
| ways harassed.
| ajuc wrote:
| They are strictly private enterprises and aren't
| subsidized. There was a national transport company that
| was subsidized, but it was slowly losing customers after
| communism fell in 1989 because it was inflexible and used
| big 40-person buses instead of small 20-person vans on
| every route. Now the national one was privatized and only
| runs very few long-distance routes in some parts of the
| country, most routes are handled by small companies that
| have a few vans each.
|
| The city buses going inside the big cities are
| centralized and often subsidized tho.
|
| > School Busses, not public transport,
|
| School buses are a form of public transport, we have them
| too, but kids go to various schools - some to the nearest
| one, some to a bigger city further away (I commuted to a
| primary school 5 km away and then high school 40 minutes
| away - and mostly used regular buses) - it wouldn't make
| sense to restrict these buses to kids only and then have
| separate buses for other people. Why drive 10 people when
| you have 20 seats and enough potential customers to fill
| them?
|
| > Nope, never. I prefer not to spat on, robbed, or other
| ways harassed.
|
| Why is this accepted? If people spit at others in a mall
| or a cinema would you just accept that it's a thing, or
| would the society do sth to stop it? It's not rocket
| science - the driver just has to call police and drive to
| meet them at nearest stop. In 90s we had huge problems
| with crime (20% unemployment at one point so you can
| imagine) yet public transport wasn't any less safe than a
| mall or cinema - what was unsafe was walking in the wrong
| hood after dark ;)
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>They are strictly private enterprises and aren't
| subsidized.
|
| I guess this is a deviation of definition, "public
| transport" in the US is government run, regulated, and
| subsidized by government. There are no private "public
| transport" in the form of local buses, trains, etc. They
| are either quasi government run (amtrak) or directly
| government run "Transportation Authority" often run by
| city or state governments.
|
| Airlines are private though at this point HEAVILY
| subsidized as most airports are government run, and they
| get bailouts all the time...
|
| I can not think of a single mass transportation system in
| the US that is not either directly owned by the
| government or HEAVILY subsidized by government
|
| >>Why is this accepted?
|
| Good question...
| cozzyd wrote:
| University shuttle systems, shuttles to industrial parks,
| megachurch parking shuttles, theme park transit...
| phpisthebest wrote:
| None of the universities with in a 100 mi of me have
| their own shuttle busses, they all utilize the local City
| Owned public buses they do not have their own bus
| network. they might rent some during a sporting event but
| it not "public transport" it would be ticketed event
| holders... Further almost if not all of the universities
| are "public" and should be consider quasi government as
| they have their own police dept's, and are heavily
| subsidized by the government
|
| >>shuttles to industrial parks, megachurch parking
| shuttles, theme park transit.
|
| none of these are public transportation, they may be
| "mass transportation" but they are not generally open to
| the general public, they are for the use of people going
| to or in those private properties, further most do not
| even travel on the public road system or pickup from
| "public" places, they are moving people from parking lots
| to entrances.
|
| poor examples
| mcpackieh wrote:
| AVs, like Uber, will give the affluent class in cities an
| alternative to public transit (and inconvenient personal car
| ownership), thereby reducing the pressure from this
| politically influential segment of society to keep mass
| transit clean and safe, and with good schedules and routes.
| Mass transit quality drops to the detriment of the majority,
| further reinforcing the affluent class's reliance on cars,
| creating a vicious cycle of destruction.
| jacquesm wrote:
| No, AVs will _increase_ traffic. The only thing that holds
| traffic back from yet another explosion is that it requires a
| licensed driver to operate a vehicle. If that requirement
| goes away there will be much more traffic than there is
| today. Kids, packages, empty cars sent from one spouse to
| another...
| xyst wrote:
| The fact that a single car can even cause this much harm is a
| sign of a much larger problem: car centric transportation is
| NOT scalable.
|
| They are testing this crap in TX and the roads here are shit,
| worse after/during rain events. Have seen multiple times where
| a traffic light goes out or the lines are not legible and the
| "autonomous" vehicle just sits there with its hazard lights on.
| cozzyd wrote:
| I would say the driverless cars are making the blockages, if
| they're not able to deal with this totally predictable light
| vandalism
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Vandalism is illegal, I hope these companies open up civil
| action against these protestors individually for lost
| revenue, and costs
| cozzyd wrote:
| Sure and so is speeding, double parking, not stopping at
| stop signs and failing to signal, but the cars still have
| to deal with that.
|
| I'm not condoning the protestors but failure to deal with
| this (and other similar things... Minor mechanical trouble,
| birds shitting on sensors, brushing snow off windshield) is
| a real problem for autonomous cars.
| blurker wrote:
| [flagged]
| dandellion wrote:
| Most accidents have human drivers, shouldn't they protest
| those if they're so concerned?
| blurker wrote:
| Well yes, and many do! Most cities now have vision zero
| movements in part because of this.
| seadan83 wrote:
| > And brag to their friends "I made a thousand people late for
| work!"
|
| Seems like the protestors are not required for this to happen:
|
| > The city's transportation agencies documented several
| incidents where driverless cars disrupted Muni service. During
| the night of Sept. 23, five Cruise cars blocked traffic lanes
| on Mission Street in Bernal Heights, stalling a Muni bus for 45
| minutes. On at least three different occasions, Cruise cars
| stopped on Muni light-rail tracks, halting service.
|
| Meanwhile, these additional things are happening:
|
| > San Francisco firefighters were battling a two-alarm
| apartment blaze on the corner of Hayes and Divisadero streets
| during a recent Sunday morning when a driverless Cruise car
| entered the active firefighting scene and nearly ran over fire
| hoses on the street.
|
| > Firefighters at the scene stood in front of the car to try to
| get it to stop, but the autonomous vehicle came to a halt only
| after one of them smashed the Cruise car's front window amid
| the chaotic effort to put out a fire that displaced 25 people,
| according to city transportation officials.
|
| > A Cruise vehicle came to a stop after nearly colliding with a
| Muni N-Judah train at the intersection of Carl and Cole
| streets. The Cruise car blocked light-rail tracks in both
| directions for close to seven minutes.
|
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2023/self-driving-cars/
|
| > A passenger in a driverless Cruise vehicle suffered injuries
| on Thursday after the vehicle was struck by a San Francisco
| fire truck that was responding to an emergency call.
|
| > Now, the California Department of Motor Vehicles has
| requested the autonomous vehicle company cut its San Francisco
| fleet in half, following this latest incident. Cruise told KTVU
| the company will comply with that request.
|
| https://www.ktvu.com/news/cruise-robotaxi-with-passenger-cra...
| blurker wrote:
| One of the four commissioners (John Reynolds) of the California
| Public Utilities Commission who voted to approve the expansion
| previously worked at Cruise [1]. I'm not sure about the others'
| backgrounds, but that's already 25% of the vote with a conflict
| of interest.
|
| - https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66478070
| plandis wrote:
| I'm not sure having a board comprised without industry experts
| is a good idea.
| voz_ wrote:
| SF is a nimby backwater
| dang wrote:
| Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments.
| xyst wrote:
| If the unmanned vehicles with multibillion dollar AI can be
| impeded by a $12-15 traffic cone.
|
| This might be a sign that autonomous vehicles in highly dense,
| and urban areas is a huge fucking mistake.
| influxmoment wrote:
| I'm not sure if the cars are the problem. Many things can be
| disabled with malicious vandalism. We can ban automated
| elevators because people can put a stick in them and break them
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Wait until they end up in the bay like Lime scooters.
| lexandstuff wrote:
| You can impede manned vehicles with traffic cones in exactly
| the same way. Randomly put them on roads, and people will stop,
| causing traffic jams. Throw them under the wheels of moving
| cars, and people will crash and likely die.
|
| Allowing people to drive 2-tonne death traps around dense urban
| areas seems like a bigger mistake.
| gedy wrote:
| This is another reason it's probably a bad idea to do this type
| of technology company and testing in a place like San Francisco.
| It's not surprising companies like this end up in Texas, etc.
| petee wrote:
| Instead they would be peppered with bullet holes; I doubt these
| cars would be warmly welcomed in TX either, at least until the
| experimentation phase is over
| pengaru wrote:
| Once enough of a city's inhabitants become adversarial towards
| robotaxis, the technology is _done_ _for_. Their only means of
| long-term success is if the people cooperatively tolerate their
| existence on the roads.
|
| If you need a security guard in every vehicle to defend it, you
| have a driver.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Driverless cars will eventually be safer and more efficient
| than human drivers. They'll respond faster in emergencies. They
| won't be drunk or stoned. They won't exceed speed limits. They
| won't rev or honk angrily.
|
| But to reach that point, we've got to accept a
| learning/development process that will involve some risks and
| some annoyance.
| blurker wrote:
| > They won't exceed speed limits.
|
| Uhh, about that...
|
| > Tesla allows self-driving cars to break speed limit, again
|
| - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/16/tesla-
| all...
| cozzyd wrote:
| I feel like I should be able to file a class action lawsuit
| against Tesla if the cars are programmed to speed.
| petee wrote:
| No we don't have to accept that. Experimentation belongs in a
| laboratory, and all these companies can afford to build
| private, controlled environments, they just don't want to
| spend the money.
|
| The time to find out your car does not stop for emergency
| vehicles, is not during an emergency. Yet here we are
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| > Jam tomorrow
|
| However it is very likely that self driving is in some sense
| AGI complete - in other words to get to the goal may require
| something just as generally intelligent as humans, not least
| as driving in a city is a social interaction problem as much
| as a routing problem.
| stale2002 wrote:
| Inhabitants are going to become increasingly _pro_ driverless
| car though, not anti.
|
| Consumers like good products.
|
| And driverless cars are a good product, as evidenced by the
| literally free taxi service that is just being given out to
| many people in SF right now (but will still be cheaper than
| regular taxis when it goes mainstream).
| pierat wrote:
| > Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their
| users; then they abuse their users to make things better for
| their business customers; finally, they abuse those business
| customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then,
| they die.
|
| That's the process of "Enshittification" by Cory Doctorow.
| And it's blatantly obvious by your comment that we're in
| stage 1, "good to their users".... except people LOVE free
| shit. But no techbro gives shit away for free. This is 'buy-
| in' and training data.
|
| It ONLY gets worse from here.
|
| And 100 cars on the road is still 100 cars on the road, even
| if only carrying 100 people. It's a waste of energy, waste of
| resources, and climate-destroying by fact of all that asphalt
| and resources to make said cars... all so you don't have to
| ride in icky 'public transit', cause that's what the "poors"
| take.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > except people LOVE free shit. But no techbro gives shit
| away for free.
|
| Self driving cars are cheaper than regular taxis to run.
|
| The incentives are aligned.
|
| The whole point is that self driving cars will be cheaper
| than regular taxis.
|
| This isn't some crazy complicated social media business
| plan. Instead the business plan is simply.
|
| Costs of running taxis go down, therefore complete with
| regular taxis with lower prices.
|
| So yes, this is all good for consumers.
|
| And not everything can be refuted by referring to a pitty
| viral article that doesn't apply to the right industry.
|
| > all so you don't have to ride in icky 'public transit
|
| Cars aren't going away. There will be lots and lots of
| places that still use cars, for a very long time,
| regardless of how much additional public transit funding a
| couple cities add.
|
| And yes, this means that cars self driving are a benefit.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| It's 100 fewer cars having to park, idle and unused, for
| hours a day. Also, it could lead to thousands of fewer cars
| in existence if that single AV is even moderately used. I
| think that might make the tech a net win.
| blurker wrote:
| > as evidenced by the literally free taxi service that is
| just being given out to many people in SF right now.
|
| You realize that it's only free while they test and it's not
| going to be free forever, right? In fact, the protests are in
| response to a decision which allowed the companies to start
| charging for driver-less rides, so that is already changing.
|
| Hard to say which way people will go overall. I personally am
| no longer a fan of driver-less cars. I used to be but now I
| see it as a doubling down of car-dependence. I could see a
| nasty rebound effect [1] through increased convenience and a
| lot of other negative consequences if cities adapt their
| infrastructure to cater to those vehicles. History repeating
| itself for "automobile progress." A possible second coming of
| demolishing our cities and neighborhoods to make way for
| cars. Yeah I know most if not all of the arguments for how
| the technology will just fix all the problems and make
| everything about cars better, I used to make those arguments
| myself. I don't believe them anymore.
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebound_effect_(conservation)
| stale2002 wrote:
| > You realize that it's only free while they test and it's
| not going to be free forever, right
|
| You realize that the whole point of self driving taxis is
| that they are cheaper to run than regular taxis, and that's
| how they will compete right?
|
| > I used to be but now I see it as a doubling down of car-
| dependence
|
| Ok, so you just don't like taxis in general then.
|
| That's fine, but it changes nothing about the idea that
| self driving taxis are strictly better than regular taxis.
|
| > I could see a nasty rebound effect [1] through increased
| convenience
|
| Oh the irony of this statement.
|
| At the very beginning of you post, you talk about how the
| benefits of self driving cars are temporary, and yet now
| you admit that the problem is that they are _too_ good.
|
| I am glad that I have convinced you that self driving cars
| are such a benefit, such a popular consumer product that
| everyone will love, so much so that it will cause problems
| because of just how useful they are!
| seadan83 wrote:
| You're putting a lot of words in the parents mouth.
|
| >> I used to be but now I see it as a doubling down of
| car-dependence
|
| > Ok, so you just don't like taxis in general then.
|
| That was not the point. One of the general arguments for
| AVs is that it will reduce car-dependence, that we're all
| going to be able to live car-free and AVs will shuttle us
| around in hyper efficient transport systems.
|
| If the way we get there is by having a taxi service that
| is 70% cheaper, I don't see how that follows. I agree
| with the parent, the claim that AVs are a ticket out of
| car dependence seems like a bill of goods.
| stale2002 wrote:
| My claim was that self driving taxis are better than
| regular taxis because they are cheaper.
|
| The person responded by using arguments that they don't
| like a car driven society.
|
| That does not contradict my point that self driving taxis
| are better than regular taxis.
|
| Furthermore they admitted that self driving taxis are
| more convenient, which further supports my point.
| pmontra wrote:
| I don't know the details. I assume that's the driverless taxi
| service. Is it going to stay free forever or are they giving
| the service for free to make people get familiar with it and
| then they'll set a price?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| You just need law enforcement.
|
| Not a core SF strength, but there are many other cities.
| innagadadavida wrote:
| This is a huge regulatory failure and not just a technology
| problem. These cars can be networked and a human can monitor
| and override when exceptional situations arise. Amazing to see
| how billions of dollar of VC money, tech bros, government
| bureaucrats all get this so spectacularly wrong after working
| on the problem for decades.
| pierat wrote:
| Id prefer really mass transit, rather than shitty monopolized
| personal corporate transit through a techbro company.
|
| And we need to de-personal-vehicle-ize. It's already killing
| us.
| skepticATX wrote:
| Exactly. I don't mind AVs, but we don't need them clogging up
| the core of our cities. Cars have their place. But let's
| build real transit in our cities.
|
| I also worry about a future in which we can't own cars, but
| public transit has been mostly done away with in favor of
| privately owned AV companies.
|
| In the present, here in Austin Cruise is regularly blocking
| streets at night. The tech works great...until it doesn't. I
| wish they'd stop alpha testing at our expense.
| samstave wrote:
| Yes! And the bay areas transit system is one of the biggest
| jokes in the country.
|
| I am getting so incredibly jaded at pretty much every single
| thing the us systems do.
|
| It's a joke.
|
| -
|
| And I don't think the Bay Area is going to be a walkable
| smart city any time in the near future.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| People prefer invidual vehicles because they are much more
| convenient and comfortable.
|
| People use mass transit because it's cheaper or because the
| circumstances make individual vehicles very inconvenient
| (e.g. not parking space and terrible traffic), not because
| they prefer it.
| seadan83 wrote:
| > individual vehicles very inconvenient
|
| I suspect individual vehicles is inherently inconvenient.
| The parking lot for Disneyland is an example, the traffic
| jams of any city with over 50k people in it are examples.
| Individual vehicles do not scale very well, and through
| extreme expense the US has built infrastructure to make
| individual vehicles as convenient as can be.
|
| > not because they prefer it.
|
| I would like to see data behind this. Driving for a commute
| is generally not enjoyable, it's time a person will not get
| back and meanwhile they have done very little productive
| other than perhaps listen to a podcast. OTOH when on a bus,
| someone else is worrying about the roads and plenty of
| people get significant work done, reading done, generally
| relax. I suspect most would prefer mass transit if it were
| more time efficient. Driving yourself is still a pretty
| killer option in most of the US as it's an extreme
| reduction in commute time due to lack of density and
| frequency in the mass transit network.
|
| *To clarify, the typical bus experience in the US can vary
| quite a bit. I commuted into Seattle for several years on
| the bus system. That is my experience, those trips were
| 99.9% fine experiences, it was quiet and essentially
| everyone was just messing around on their smart phones. The
| only really unpleasant part of the bus experience was there
| were not enough of them running such that the bus could be
| crowded and was a long wait between buses. That is a
| different experience for sure from the buses that run
| within downtown and riding those buses around 2pm when
| there are no commuters on them.
|
| My claim is that a well funded bus system is intrinsically
| more enjoyable for the same reason an AV is - because you
| can do something other than 'driving' while traveling.
| Zigurd wrote:
| The US is too lo-density for human driven buses to be better
| for the environment. AVs will enable a transit fleet of
| right-sized vehicles that respond to demand and can surge
| without a big labor force working split shifts.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Or it'll encourage people to live in a more dense area, if
| society no longer subsides the driving lifestyle.
| throwyawayyyy wrote:
| That's one ideal, sure. I don't see it though -- who's
| going to keep all these individual driving pods clean? How
| is access going to be gated to them? SF is a dense city,
| only New York has higher population density. Its BART and
| muni and bus service isn't bad, either -- and partly
| because it's such a pain to drive downtown, it gets used,
| and being used keeps it safe.
| delecti wrote:
| This is a story about San Francisco. SF has plenty of
| density for human driven buses to be better for the
| environment.
|
| AVs are not currently competing with human drivers in the
| use-case you say they'd be best at, they're clogging
| already dense cities with even more cars.
| pierat wrote:
| HAH that is one of the most ridiculous excuses... and is
| also directly refuted:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ
|
| ^^ "Not Just Bikes"
| Zigurd wrote:
| I have ridden commuter rail, aubways, and busses in New
| York, Boston, San Francisco, Amsterdam, London, Vienna
| and other places.
|
| While you have a point that "lo-density" is an
| oversimplification, only New York has the kind of density
| and frequency of service that make public transit really
| usable. Boston commuter rail sucks pretty bad, with a
| too-sparse schedule. BART from SFO to the city is OK but
| around town there are too few lines and stops. This all
| _could_ be fixed, but the fact is they suck compared to
| cities like Amsterdam where cycling has the
| infrastructure _and_ the critical mass to be safe (unlike
| London, for example).
| kiba wrote:
| There are plenty of area that could support mass transit,
| especially in cities.
|
| Even suburbia can be made more walkable.
|
| For example, walking to my local gas station isn't really
| that practical due to a lack of continuous sidewalks. It
| isn't that far but the path to the gas station can get
| pretty muddy at time.
|
| I once tried to get food at a fast food joint by walking,
| the lack of sidewalks is even more acute. Crossing several
| lanes of road felt pretty unsafe even when the traffic
| light is red.
| bluescrn wrote:
| > And we need to de-personal-vehicle-ize. It's already
| killing us.
|
| That's never going to happen. We've had personal transport
| ever since we tamed horses. And we can't really go back to
| horses.
|
| We just need to prioritise small personal vehicles powered by
| pedals and/or batteries, particularly in urban environments.
| We need to make more roads safer for them, and solve the
| storage/theft problems.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| It is happening for many young people (particularly in
| Europe). To own a car is becoming pretty unusual (and
| generally because of a specific need).
| phpisthebest wrote:
| The biggest problem here is that they needed permission in the
| first place.
|
| We have completely inverted how society is suppose to work.
| Government should have to provide a clear, articulable
| justification to make something illegal
|
| People should not have to petition the government for permission
| to do something, if everything is defacto illegal with out
| government approval you no longer live in a free society
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > Government should have to provide a clear, articulable
| justification to make something illegal
|
| The roads are owned and paid for by the public, ergo the
| government can set rules for safety and maintenance. That seems
| clear and articulate enough to me.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| So then I take you oppose the protesters. because you can not
| have ti both ways, you can not claim to outsource your
| thinking to the government for your safety, who have approved
| this technology while at the same time opposing this
| technology.
| seadan83 wrote:
| This is a bad faith argument. Please review the hacker news
| discussion guide lines.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Not really relevant to my argument, but sure. I never asked
| to have it both ways - I don't like the technology, but
| they are allowed to be operating. Civil disobedience is
| also an American tradition, so I don't oppose it, nor would
| I oppose the police for enforcing the law.
| bendergarcia wrote:
| It's because corporations show time and time again to cut
| corners and do harmful things.
|
| Everything should be de facto illegal and companies should have
| to prove that it should be made legal through research and
| data.
|
| Things will move much slower but at this point I'd rather that
| than another Uber airbnb who "disrupts" the market but actually
| causes many negative externalities.
| dang wrote:
| " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37273980.
| blurker wrote:
| So do you think anything should be legal on the roads by
| default? I think there is a clear and obvious justification for
| why we don't let anyone drive anything on the roads: safety.
| Letting people test whatever they want on our roads is a risk
| to all other road users.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>So do you think anything should be legal on the roads by
| default?
|
| yes
|
| >>I think there is a clear and obvious justification for why
| we don't let anyone drive anything on the roads: safety.
|
| Safety, the drum beat of the authoritarians for all of human
| history. Safety is often used to limit freedom, rarely is
| safety the actual reason for laws and regulations, even rarer
| does safety increase as a result of the rules
|
| In this case there is no safety issue even being claimed,
| people are annoyed by them, they believe they take away from
| other public transit aka they are politically opposed to
| them, or a wide range of other non-safety issues.
|
| If there is a safety issue that actually endangers others we
| have many mechanisms to check that including legal liability.
|
| Further with safety you get in the "if it saves one life"
| debate as well. In short if safety was the only goal we would
| have no freedom at all, life is about risk management, not
| ensuring absolute safety. I have no desire to live in a
| "safe" society where safety first is the goal
|
| To misquote Mike Rowe.. "Safety Third... lots of things come
| before safety"
| ultrarunner wrote:
| I definitely agree with your point, but outdoor public spaces
| in the US are now primarily roads subject to extensive
| regulation. Despite what an ad for a new truck may try to sell
| you, driving is not part of free society.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| How is freedom to travel with out government oppression not
| part of a free society
|
| Keep in mind public roads, in the US, pre-date Automobiles,
| pre-date even the founding of this nation. and I think the
| idea that free travel upon public roads was not a core
| freedom would be a shock to the Founders
| BurningFrog wrote:
| This is the old "Rule of Law" vs "Rule of Men" question.
|
| In a Rule of Men system, you have to ask some gatekeeper for
| permission to do things. The gatekeeper will always ask for
| something in return for saying yes, one way or another.
| whoisstan wrote:
| Autonomous Trap 001 by James Bridle comes to mind
|
| https://jamesbridle.com/works/autonomous-trap-001
| johnea wrote:
| Man, how many articles are we going to see on this subject?
| pierat wrote:
| So instead of reading commentary masquerading as "news", here's
| the actual group doing this:
|
| https://www.safestreetrebel.com/
|
| https://sfba.social/@SafeStreetRebel
|
| (Note: news orgs don't want to send you outside their site, so no
| links for you on NPR, etc.)
|
| I think it would be fair to say this is a climate emergency
| response group, to protest getting personal transit off the
| roads, and start re-wilding millions of square kilometers of
| asphalt.
| petee wrote:
| Actually there is a link within the article, and most of the
| links leave npr.org
| kylecazar wrote:
| I do not like that they make open plans to slow down traffic,
| per the linked site.
| rafram wrote:
| > sacrifice an unacceptable amount of their income to pay for
| basic transpiration
|
| They could do with a proofreader.
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