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.
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.
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.
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'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.
🐺
🚗
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
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.
maybe the honking is actually morse code
"Eyyyy, I'm driverless driving here!"
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.
Nah, just a salt circle around it. It will think it is a full line.
Same thing we do with demons.
Communication by Claxon
Kelly Claxon, the singer? Definitely a very irritating sound!
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
Like a great big heavy Furby.
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.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
