In a pivotal moment for the autonomous transportation industry, California chose to expand one of the biggest test cases for the technology.
Yeah…Great…
How about building public transport and not such stupid things?
Are these things in conflict somehow?
Yes, if there’s any chance in hell of self-driving becoming feasible at scale it will involve pre-defined routes, possibly with other sorts of monitoring systems, and new infrastructure/mandatory equipment for safe pedestrian crossing zones after the first handful of school kids inevitably get plowed down thanks to the obviously-not-quite-there-yet image recognition systems.
Likely we’d see some rollback to a more achievable goal of a city-funded fleet of robo-taxis running pre-defined routes with standardized equipment and maybe some years into it, when we realize traffic jams still suck, start thinking “hmmm… maybe we should’ve just improved our bus/rail systems…”
Cities are just as easily duped by guys like Elon Musk as any of these poor fuckers who died actually entrusting their lives to their shitty “autopilot” system. Especially when cities/officials stand to profit from kickbacks of various sorts. Don’t assume something like this won’t come at the cost of not investing in the obvious competing tech: public transport.
Indeed, we’ve had autonomous trains for 3 decades now, and without ‘AI’ to make things murky. Automation in airplanes and industry is also very advanced. The key to success is not in the software, but rather in overall system design.
They’re already in conflict everywhere. Infrastructure for cars robs public transit infrastructure blind in lots of government budgets. The only public transit category potentially benefiting from car infrastructure is buses, which are arguably the worst form of public transit to begin with, and still also require additional dedicated infrastructure to get any better (e.g. dedicated bus lanes).
“Self-driving” cars obviously require car infrastructure which already steals from public transit budgets both federally and locally, but if we add government emphasis on this technology and start to develop specific infrastructure for “self-driving” cars (walled off routes, communications appliances, etc.) then they’ll start taking even more of the budget.
And all of this for something that’s arguably much more braindead and useless and consuming of R&D dollars than the obviously more efficient, already technically possible forms of transit that could be built or expanded upon today.
Yes
Because one of them costs taxpayer money and the other one is just signing legislation? The two concepts aren’t even related other than that they are two different ways of getting to places.
Yeah because roads definitely don’t cost taxpayers a single dime. 🙄
Public transport has been around for many decades. The US infrastructure and now lifestyle / culture is not built for it and there’s not a great reason to think it’s suddenly going to catch on. Self driving cars have real potential in the US to have an environmental impact as well save many thousands of lives each year. I wish you were more excited about this.
Well, we’re not. There’s a reason you don’t see New York City jumping to adopt this tech, and it’s because they bothered to invest in a public transit system that makes cars obsolete for a lot of people. If we got decent public transit in more cities combined with an actually functional high speed rail system in this country, you’d see cars become obsolete for a whole lot more people.
This “lifestyle/culture” developed out of sheer necessity given the geographic size of this country and the complete failure to invest in mass transit. It can and must be changed, if we want our future to be viable at all.
While it is exciting, I can see both sides of the argument here. The infrastructure here in the US is built around cars so it would be much less effort to automate the existing infrastructure. On the other hand, things could be so much more efficient if we focused on trains and other public transport that excels at transporting a large amount of people. But that would take so much more effort and money to update the infrastructure.
Most SDCs in use currently are for public transport.
Self driving cars could actually be kind of a good stepping stone to better public transit while making more efficient use of existing roadways. You hit a button to request a car, it drives you to wherever, you need to go, and then gets tasked to pick up the next person. Where you used to need 10 cars for 10 people, you now need one.
well, LA is building out a lot of light rail as of late at least
Self driving cars are stupid. Invest in public transit instead.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
Exactly, don’t divert investment in public transportation because you want your own personal AI chauffeur.
Hey, dont you start talking shit about Randy.
You think public taxes and fees are being delivered to autonomous vehicle development?
That’s the original premise of this thread.
But also, yes, ultimately I think that’s the direction this would end up going:
The premise is that you’re just making shit up?
If you want to backtrack on your comment “perfect is the enemy of good” then you need to go up a couple levels in the thread and actually refute the original claim. I’m just replying your statement.
You’ll deliberately misinterpret my words no matter where I comment.
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Well where I live more and more people are choosing to not have cars because public transit covers their needs for transportation. People still get a drivers license, but don’t own a car. Car renting is big with a lot of streets having dedicated parking spots for them.
If those rental cars are going to be around, and if people want taxi apps because they don’t own a car then there’s two applications for self-driving tech.
Public transit is great, but it works best for dense areas along busy routes, and there’s always people who want to go direct without transferring, or walking to a station. Suburbs and rural areas won’t be relying on public transit, the activity is too low.
Self-driving cars lead to fewer deaths than human drivers, they will eventually be cheaper to insure than human drivers, and summoning a taxi without a person will be cheaper than one with one.
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regulators are grappling with how to control this rapidly developing industry.
Read: how to collect all these little black briefcases
As cool as the idea of self driving cars are, I don’t trust it not to become a future where script kiddies and novice hackers take control of vehicles and crash them for fun if AI gets involved.
Don’t even get me started on if a country had AI self driving cars and an enemy nation hacks the AI and sends directions that cause the car to end up damaging itself without you knowing. Or just uses it to cause all the vehicles in an area to crash and not be able to deploy airbags.
EVs are a crutch for the failed auto industry. Personal vehicles made life worse over time. This is an extension of that mistake. The people defending it are myopic and lazy.
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Personal vehicles made life worse over time.
When you guys are walking everywhere you’ll be regretting this insanity. Don’t bother responding, I’m not interested in your delusions and Lemmy.world has proven that real discussions are not possible here.
Lol this is such a weird sentiment to me. You realize many of us do walk everywhere, right?
This guy fkn gets it
Isn’t a self driving car just a train? We should build trans and trollies instead. The tech is already there and they carry more people.
Isn’t a self driving car just a train?
no, it is not… here is handy image to familiarize you with some basic differences
Could you like label them or something?
Excellent!
Sure thing!
I can’t get a feel for the perspective. Can we please get something to show the scale of these items?
well one weighs a lot of watermelons! the other one quite a less watermelons. does this help?
Thank you, very informative!
Absolutely
no a self driving car is much worse than a train
Well I know where I won’t be visiting in the near future.
Good. I’m sick of the fearmonger. “OH NO, THIS ONE CAR GOT IN A CRASH!!!”
Yeah, but humans crash too?
When I worked on Google’s Waymo project, we only had a small handful of our cars involved in any collision on public roads. And every single one of them was from a human driver running into the SDC. I dunno if that’s changed since I left, but even in the early stages, SDCs are remarkably safe compared to human drivers.
And every single one of them was from a human driver running into the SDC
Yea, me too. I’m such a good driver, others are crashing into me every day…
