Gregory's ServerAre self-driving cars a fanciful pipe-dream or are they the future of transportation?
I don't know, but there's one thing I am sure of though: they're currently on track to fundamentally destroy the fabric of our cities.
 48 comments
@CIMB4 @notjustbikes this comes across as pretty extreme, for example can you imagine NYC or any big cities without any taxis at all? Why can't we have great transit and taxis both? Maybe the video will explain but I don't have high hopes @semitones I will also give the video a watch, but - and full disclosure I work in the AV industry - a robo-taxi is so much better than a traditional cab or Uber. You don't have to worry about your "driver" being tired, or distracted, or just an irresponsible inattentive person whose last driving instruction was 30 years ago. Plus you'll never hear "young woman attacked by robo-taxi driver late at night." They're clean, reliable, and very, very safe. @gogojack @semitones There was a short story in the New Yorker a few years ago about ways in which self driving taxis could go wrong. The problems wouldn’t be the same as now but there a plenty. See also the MIT paper on the gridlock that taxis that roam when they are empty to avoid parking fees would cause. @MartyFouts @semitones My job is to deal with those problems. There are challenges, to be sure, but mostly it's hours of boredom because the cars are so competent. I compare it to the time I was doing traffic reports for radio stations. The number of accidents that happen every day in a major metropolitan area is staggering. If i wasn't a fatality or a major road closure I had to skip it because there just wasn't time to report everything. @gogojack @semitones You might want to read the story. The problems in it are not the technical stuff that you deal with but rather the social consequences. @semitones @CIMB4 @notjustbikes I can, as I have spent time in cities with good transit. But soon I won’t have to because many European cities, led by Paris, are becoming completely car free, at least in their central districts. @notjustbikes   @notjustbikes oh wow, that was a slighty depressing doom future lookout. I was not ready for that. I also noticed that how the busy bike intersection in Utrecht works, looked quite similar to the autonomous car simulation from Texas.  @notjustbikes The self driving car of the future is a Novabus or Mercedes bus. not for some dudebros in silicon valley. For everyone. @notjustbikes interesting, depressing, but not sure I am convinced of the reasoning. In this dystopian future you can go fast through cities… but why would you want to do that? You go to a city, its shops, its cafes. So the AV needs to let its passengers out, needs to slow down and park, get to the other side of the fence… mixed traffic entails. Once people step out of the AV they need to put on the tracker so AV’s can spot them, impacting both users and non-users? @ristkof literally the same argument could be made for urban freeways, and yet they were built. @notjustbikes but they are generally speaking through wasteland, not through possible destinations? @notjustbikes what I try to imagine is… per your own example shops won’t be feasable in the cities anymore… where will they go? Do you imagine it’ll all be giant Walmarts on freeways then? That’d mean cities would dissolve altogether?  @uint8_t @notjustbikes ok... maybe I lack imagination, but if the destinations, the shops, the restaurants, the bars, the churches, the playgrounds, … have all turned into wasteland, then where do the cars go to? That’s what I can't wrap my head around. In this dystopian future… are they exclusively in remote giant shopping malls? Is that what is being predicted here, that the cities will become shopping malls? @ristkof I guess you've never been to an American city? The poorer neighbourhoods were the ones that had the highways driven through it. I envision the same thing happening with AVs. Some streets will become AV highways, others will not. The AVs will take people from their condo towers and gated communities and drop them off at malls, office buildings, and lifestyle centres. There will be no way to get between these places without an AV, but the city will still have nice places for the rich. @notjustbikes It's true I have not much experience with US cities, and that I have a hard time imagining why you would want such a lifestyle, even when you can afford it, financially and/or ecologically. That being said, I still don't understand how AV's will change the equation. Accelerate the already present tendency? Also in European cities (where I live)? Why have European cities not become like American ones then? I think of AV's more as reinventing trains in the dumbest possible way.  @ristkof @notjustbikes In Europe we have a lot less space, so while the post-war US invested into building massive urban sprawls, our governments invested into tower block districts that look less appealing on photos, but are way simpler to connect via public transport. Also our petrol was always way more expensive than in the US, making the car less appealing. @ristkof @notjustbikes no. They are in the center of the city. At least here in Berlin. @ristkof @notjustbikes @beckobert @notjustbikes completely and absolutely agree! Thanks @notjustbikes for that! self-driving taxis will eventually be mandatory - the only legal option. know why? because the passengers cannot control it. will robotaxis take you to your desired destination? or to where elon musk wants you to go?  @notjustbikes  Yowza, that went 0-100 real quick. You know, if I was being deliberately obtuse to the thesis of your video, I would say that the end scenario could again evolve. The cars could be coalesced into bigger longer cars for efficiency and savings on battery, air resistance and electronics. They could run on pre defined schedules based on known demand patterns. You could even replace the rubber tires and the asphalt with steel tires and tracks for better efficiency. @notjustbikes self driving cars just roaming around the city to avoid having to pay for parking is something I also through about but never saw mentioned anywhere else. Good to see it explored in the video!  @notjustbikes You're probably right, because you've got a lot more expertise on this subject than I do, but my first thought about their impact on cities would be that they would eliminate the need for parking lots. I'll definitely watch the video, though! (Can't right now.)  @notjustbikes The transportation chapter of Project 2025 seeks to implement now what you predict in the fiuture: shift focus from public transit to ride sharing services (except it also wishes to return focus to fossil fuel cars away from electric cars due to oil industry donors who purchased the president. @notjustbikes When you compared Utrecht against London, I though London UK. You always use "Fake London" to describe your birth place in NonTario. It wasn't until the image of a Eatons store shopping mall that I realised you were using "London" instead of "fake London".  @notjustbikes I live in West LA and we have Waymo's here. I bike almost everywhere in West LA and so i regularly interact with them Lets just get it out of the way, they are already like 100x better than human drivers. Even if we kept cars and cities the same and replaced cars with Waymos, cities would instantly get 5-10x better for cyclists and pedestrians. I have LITERALLY never had a bad interaction with a Waymo on my bike or walking, they see EVERYWHERE and always drive perfectly safely  @notjustbikes I always look forward to your take on these topics, and I usually find myself nodding along with just about everything you say. One thing I was curious about, though: I noticed Tesla didn’t come up, even though their approach to autonomous driving is pretty unique, and many would say they’re ahead in certain areas. With their recent announcements about the Robotaxi and plans to green up city spaces, it feels like they’re making some moves that could impact the industry...? @sahibdsv @notjustbikes They are not ahead in any areas. They are just way more shameless about their lying. @notjustbikes also what if the software in one of the AV freezes? Then there’s a chance of a crash which creates even more traffic.  @notjustbikes Self driving cars are following the example of the Stone Soup folk story. If we just adjust the infrastructure a little bit… @notjustbikes I hope that we can use some of the lessons from 80 years ago because we know the tactics and results will be similar to what happened before. The fact that many people are now pushing back against cars is helpful, as are all the jokes about "we have autonomous cars, they're called buses". Not saying it'll be easy, but at least we have past experience to draw on this time @notjustbikes this topic would have been an excellent submission for the National Traffic Engineering Congress in The Netherlands. Please save it for next years edition! https://www.nationaalverkeerskundecongres.nl/paper-indienen @notjustbikes 🥺 oh yes. (The retraining American self-driving cars for Europe aspect). I (growing up in Germany) found it hard at times to get used to living in Italy due to the difference in *unwritten* road laws. (Let alone my frustration about figuring out the differences in written law). One might hope it scales better to teach a new country to all cars once instead of every single driver.And easier to ship European driving on an American AV than shrinking the truck to fit our streets,but 😩  @notjustbikes Řízení auta bylo svého času sport. Motoring. Když se mi nechce řídit, tak si říkám že provádím motoring. Jako ve dvacátých letech. @notjustbikes Also, for the time being, you might want to avoid travelling to SF, LA and Phoenix. I don't think Waymo will be too happy about this one...  I don't know where anyone got the idea that anyone thinks autonomous cars will solve traffic problems. |
@notjustbikes car people when they accidentally invent trains