Driverless cars are going to be much better than driverful cars in cities since they follow the rules and behave predictably. But I do wish cities would get on board with the clear win of reducing the need for cars. SF is small enough that you could get anywhere pretty easily with an electric-assist bike if only there were sufficiently safe infrastructure. Combine that with better transit, and most people never need to use a car for daily life.
There's a very long tail here. I went car-less for a year and experienced the downsides pretty frequently. Carrying that damn stand mixer a few miles home sucked, going to events in nice clothes on warm nights wasn't great on a bike, getting groceries from far away or visiting ocean beach took way longer than it should, etc... I eventually gave up and just bought the car. Even though I didn't need it 90% of the time, many things became way easier with it.
If driverless taxi services become cheap enough, they can help with this. Let's build parking garages outside the core neighborhoods, and then remove street parking throughout the city.
That's 20 linear feet of space on nearly all our streets for sidewalks, bikes, restaurants, green spaces, or whatever else.
There's a lot of old people in SF who struggle to even walk to the end of a block for a bus stop. A society still needs some solution for picking Grandma up at her door and dropping her off at Thanksgiving.
> Driverless cars are going to be much better than driverful cars in cities since they [WILL] follow the rules and behave predictably
You missed this word. Presently they do not behave predictably and consequently sometimes do not follow the rules. That they might one day achieve these attributes is speculation.
>Driverless cars are going to be much better than driverful cars in cities since they follow the rules and behave predictably
This is a really niave take.
Sure they follow rules as well as any other computer but they're gonna be following a set of rules different than the human drivers around them. That's a recipe for a ton of minor accidents.
> Driverless cars are going to be much better that driverful cars in cities since they follow the rules and behave predictably
But on the other hand, city environment is very unpredictable and lots of other actors there don't follow the rules. It'll be great in long term, but transition will be really hard.
Shopping is hard without a car. You can only buy a few items at a time. This works great if you have local bodegas all over the place, but not so much if you depend on supermarkets.
Half of what keeps NYC pedestrians on the sidewalk is the fear of being run over by cars. If pedestrians know they can just safely cut in front of cars whenever they want, I fear the average speed in the city is going to drop from 12 to 6...
I wonder what happens when these cars get in an accident. I don't even mean in the legal sense. What happens in the immediate wake of an accident? Is there a note on the car about what the other driver should do? Is there a way for someone back in the office to communicate to the other driver on the scene? Does the other driver need to wait around until some human shows up?
I think the upside of this is that if you get hit by a self-driving car, due to the way the media behaves around self-driving accidents, you can be almost sure that they will deal with it professionally and pay off all damages if it's even remotely their fault.
They might not leave a note on your windshield but they would surely acknowledge the accident and as a company, would have to cooperate with any investigations. It's not some random dude that if they hit and run off you will never see them again.
ex-Cruise here. Cruise has an incident response team that trains for this. For a team that hasn't had any real-world accidents yet, they seemed pretty competent. They'll show up ASAP and take care of things.
Interesting. You’d definitely have some crash detection. A remote human operator could be assigned to take over when the car stops to drive around some obstacle in an unexpected situation. If a crash happened (whether or not it was remote controlled), you could have speakers/cameras/microphones allow the operator to communicate with bystanders until help arrives. Police would need to be called for a major accident, while for a fender bender you can probably just send a car with some security people to pay off the other driver and get them to sign an NDA, and drive the crashed car back to base.
Excellent question. And what if the other party, at fault or not, is not a driver? What if they are a pedestrian or a cyclist? What if they are alone, incapacitated and need medical help?
Now that would be an interesting job... working in a call center, talking to the police remotely about an accident that took place in a state you aren't even in.
I guess the same thing that happens when a pole falls down on your car? You report it to the authorities. You take pictures for the insurance, and file your claims?
> The pandemic has seen the killing of Americans on our roads accelerate to the fastest rate in 15 years. Less traffic caused people to drive like idiots. More speeding, drinking and drugs. Fewer seatbelts.
I found this fact to be extremely surprising. Based on looking at daily traffic patterns, I would have assumed that there are fewer deaths on the road this year than previous years.
It's a little strange that they didn't even mention in passing plans or even thoughts about single-passenger vehicles.
Because their sort of car-pool thing with no wheel or place for a driver is going to make people think twice at least with Covid right now. Maybe that's why Kyle's video is at the bottom and not mentioned in the article.
I feel like a big issue holding back small pod transport is the fact that vehicles are generally all designed for many passengers and 3000 pounds. And I think a big part of that is safety. The likelihood of death for a really small single passenger vehicle is just much greater with all of these massive cars on the road (generally with only one occupant).
In my mind there is room (especially in places like Texas) for new types of smart cities. And you can build them from the outset with autonomous single-passenger small pods in mind. In my scenario the regular vehicles would need to be parked away in a commuter hub and the transportation in the city would be fully automated. This will save a lot of energy with very small single passenger vehicles as compared to the 5+ passenger vehicles normally taken by individuals around town. And in this city there is no danger of the small pods running into a larger vehicle driven by a human since it's not permitted.
I am actually thinking some of these companies may be doing a redesign where the shared space of the pool cars are broken up into little airtight compartments. Personally I would prefer that even if there wasn't a pandemic.
There is actually so much to bear when it comes to relationship. No matter how good you are to them it doesn’t mean that they will treat you the same way. It's so sad to discover my woman whom I thought could be a back up but it seems I have been deceiving myself for months. I need to desperately know what she's been up to lately so I had to reach out to webhubghost (@) gmailcom who got so many truthful and amazing reviews on the internet to remotely get into her mobile phone. He got that done in a twinkle of an eye, the service was delivered perfectly I was able to see her whatsapp messages, call logs, text messages which was quite amazing and I figured she lied to me about all the money i sent to her and her mails were the worst I could ever imagine
It is incredibly courageous for Cruise to test this in SF. Perhaps the less crowded streets in SF is a good opportunity, but there are some tough street intersections to navigate. One example is the Townsend and 8th street roundabout near the Zynga office. It is a hodgepodge of cars, bikes, scooters, pedestrians all entering the roundabout at the same time. If there are any Cruise folks here, I am super interested in hearing their thoughts on handling an intersection like that. Also, SF has massively expanded biking infrastructure with quick builds throughout. These are incredibly well striped road, but you have to pay attention when the bike lane merges, especially while making right turns. I want to learn more on how Cruise can handle that
Oh yeah that's totally my response to a quiet road, "hey kids, not much traffic, pop those boring old belts". Come to that how much of the USA actually allows people to not wear belts ? Surely not much ?
I would guess that it is more like parents tell the kids to buckle up, but they will leave the driveway and get to the end of the street before they check that the kids bucked up.
What does the vehicle energy source have to do with whether the vehicle is driverless or not? Why does this article seemingly conflate driverless technology with clean energy technology? Congrats to Cruise — more driverless vehicles & greener vehicles are a great thing, but I could have done without the activism.
For some reasons investor type people tends to associate Lithium rechargeable battery with automation. Probably an inference from the fact that SDC stack prefers hybrids with linear acceleration, or could be another Kool Aid ingestion.
Why is this allowed on public roadways and not confined to a lab until reasonable levels of safety (either via developmental process or time-in-service) can be demonstrated and verified by a regulatory agency? FAA wouldn't let fly a self-proclaimed 'safe' and fully autonomous aircraft around national airspace without such assurance. Why is this different?
[+] [-] rtlfe|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlotOfReading|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlmorton|5 years ago|reply
That's 20 linear feet of space on nearly all our streets for sidewalks, bikes, restaurants, green spaces, or whatever else.
[+] [-] Talanes|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bigbubba|5 years ago|reply
You missed this word. Presently they do not behave predictably and consequently sometimes do not follow the rules. That they might one day achieve these attributes is speculation.
[+] [-] throwaway0a5e|5 years ago|reply
This is a really niave take.
Sure they follow rules as well as any other computer but they're gonna be following a set of rules different than the human drivers around them. That's a recipe for a ton of minor accidents.
[+] [-] justapassenger|5 years ago|reply
But on the other hand, city environment is very unpredictable and lots of other actors there don't follow the rules. It'll be great in long term, but transition will be really hard.
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|5 years ago|reply
Not with the amount of ML, particularly DNN, involved.
[+] [-] jedberg|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oh_sigh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slg|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dheera|5 years ago|reply
They might not leave a note on your windshield but they would surely acknowledge the accident and as a company, would have to cooperate with any investigations. It's not some random dude that if they hit and run off you will never see them again.
[+] [-] y0ssar1an|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shajznnckfke|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] umeshunni|5 years ago|reply
I found this fact to be extremely surprising. Based on looking at daily traffic patterns, I would have assumed that there are fewer deaths on the road this year than previous years.
[+] [-] jseliger|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kart23|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rtlfe|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilaksh|5 years ago|reply
Because their sort of car-pool thing with no wheel or place for a driver is going to make people think twice at least with Covid right now. Maybe that's why Kyle's video is at the bottom and not mentioned in the article.
I feel like a big issue holding back small pod transport is the fact that vehicles are generally all designed for many passengers and 3000 pounds. And I think a big part of that is safety. The likelihood of death for a really small single passenger vehicle is just much greater with all of these massive cars on the road (generally with only one occupant).
In my mind there is room (especially in places like Texas) for new types of smart cities. And you can build them from the outset with autonomous single-passenger small pods in mind. In my scenario the regular vehicles would need to be parked away in a commuter hub and the transportation in the city would be fully automated. This will save a lot of energy with very small single passenger vehicles as compared to the 5+ passenger vehicles normally taken by individuals around town. And in this city there is no danger of the small pods running into a larger vehicle driven by a human since it's not permitted.
I am actually thinking some of these companies may be doing a redesign where the shared space of the pool cars are broken up into little airtight compartments. Personally I would prefer that even if there wasn't a pandemic.
[+] [-] theresa45|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] glaucon|5 years ago|reply
Oh yeah that's totally my response to a quiet road, "hey kids, not much traffic, pop those boring old belts". Come to that how much of the USA actually allows people to not wear belts ? Surely not much ?
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