Does 'Coning' Self-Driving Cars Protest Tech Industry Impacts? (npr.org) 145
In July "Safe Street Rebels" launched the "Week of Cone" pranks (which went viral on TikTok and Twitter). TechCrunch called it "a bid to raise awareness and invite more pissed-off San Franciscans to submit public comments" to regulatory agencies.
But NPR sees a larger context: Coning driverless cars fits in line with a long history of protests against the impact of the tech industry on San Francisco. Throughout the years, activists have blockaded Google's private commuter buses from picking up employees in the city. And when scooter companies flooded the sidewalks with electric scooters, people threw them into San Francisco Bay. "Then there was the burning of Lime scooters in front of a Google bus," says Manissa Maharawal, an assistant professor at American University who has studied these protests.
She points out that when tech companies test their products in the city, residents don't have much say in those decisions: "There's been various iterations of this where it's like, 'Oh, yep, let's try that out in San Francisco again,' with very little input from anyone who lives here...." Waymo is already giving rides in Phoenix and is testing with human safety drivers in Los Angeles and Austin. And Cruise is offering rides in Phoenix and Austin and testing in Dallas, Houston, Miami, Nashville and Charlotte.
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, members of Safe Street Rebel continue to go out at night and stalk the vehicles one cone at a time.
They're apparently bicycling activists, judging by their web site, advocating "for car-free spaces, transit equity, and the end of car dominance." ("We regularly protest the city's thoughtless reopening of the Upper Great Highway to cars by slowing traffic to show just how unnecessary of a route this road is.") Their long-term goal is to expand the group "to the point where we can make a city for people to safely walk, bike and take public transit, not a city dominated by cars..." The last half-century has been a failed experiment with car dominance. They bankrupt our cities, ruin our environment, and force working people to sacrifice an unacceptable amount of their income to pay for basic transpiration. It is time to end car dependence and rethink our streets around public transit, walking and bikes.
Their demands include unredacted data from self-driving car companies about safety incidents (and a better reporting system) — plus a mechanism for actually citing robotaxis for traffic violations. But they also raise concerns about surveillance, noting the possibility of "a city-wide, moving network observing and analyzing everything."
Their web page says they also want to see studies on the pollution impact of self-driving cars — and whether or not AVs will increase car usage. They support the concerns of San Francisco's Taxi Workers Alliance about the possibility of lost jobs and increased traffic congestion.
And they raise one more concern: Their cars are not wheelchair accessible and do not pull up to the curb. Profit-driven robotaxi companies see accessibility as an afterthought. Without enforcement, their promises for the future will likely never materialize. Paratransit and transit are accountable to the public, but Cruise and Waymo are only accountable to shareholders.
But their list of concerns is followed by an exhaustive list of 266 robotaxi incidents documented with links to news articles and social media reports. ("The cars have run red lights, rear-ended a bus and blocked crosswalks and bike paths," writes NPR. "In one incident, dozens of confused cars congregated in a residential cul-de-sac, clogging the street. In another, a Waymo ran over and killed a dog.")
NPR's article adds one final note. "Neither Cruise nor Waymo responded to questions about why the cars can be disabled by traffic cones."
Thanks to Slashdot reader Tony Isaac for sharing the news.
But NPR sees a larger context: Coning driverless cars fits in line with a long history of protests against the impact of the tech industry on San Francisco. Throughout the years, activists have blockaded Google's private commuter buses from picking up employees in the city. And when scooter companies flooded the sidewalks with electric scooters, people threw them into San Francisco Bay. "Then there was the burning of Lime scooters in front of a Google bus," says Manissa Maharawal, an assistant professor at American University who has studied these protests.
She points out that when tech companies test their products in the city, residents don't have much say in those decisions: "There's been various iterations of this where it's like, 'Oh, yep, let's try that out in San Francisco again,' with very little input from anyone who lives here...." Waymo is already giving rides in Phoenix and is testing with human safety drivers in Los Angeles and Austin. And Cruise is offering rides in Phoenix and Austin and testing in Dallas, Houston, Miami, Nashville and Charlotte.
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, members of Safe Street Rebel continue to go out at night and stalk the vehicles one cone at a time.
They're apparently bicycling activists, judging by their web site, advocating "for car-free spaces, transit equity, and the end of car dominance." ("We regularly protest the city's thoughtless reopening of the Upper Great Highway to cars by slowing traffic to show just how unnecessary of a route this road is.") Their long-term goal is to expand the group "to the point where we can make a city for people to safely walk, bike and take public transit, not a city dominated by cars..." The last half-century has been a failed experiment with car dominance. They bankrupt our cities, ruin our environment, and force working people to sacrifice an unacceptable amount of their income to pay for basic transpiration. It is time to end car dependence and rethink our streets around public transit, walking and bikes.
Their demands include unredacted data from self-driving car companies about safety incidents (and a better reporting system) — plus a mechanism for actually citing robotaxis for traffic violations. But they also raise concerns about surveillance, noting the possibility of "a city-wide, moving network observing and analyzing everything."
Their web page says they also want to see studies on the pollution impact of self-driving cars — and whether or not AVs will increase car usage. They support the concerns of San Francisco's Taxi Workers Alliance about the possibility of lost jobs and increased traffic congestion.
And they raise one more concern: Their cars are not wheelchair accessible and do not pull up to the curb. Profit-driven robotaxi companies see accessibility as an afterthought. Without enforcement, their promises for the future will likely never materialize. Paratransit and transit are accountable to the public, but Cruise and Waymo are only accountable to shareholders.
But their list of concerns is followed by an exhaustive list of 266 robotaxi incidents documented with links to news articles and social media reports. ("The cars have run red lights, rear-ended a bus and blocked crosswalks and bike paths," writes NPR. "In one incident, dozens of confused cars congregated in a residential cul-de-sac, clogging the street. In another, a Waymo ran over and killed a dog.")
NPR's article adds one final note. "Neither Cruise nor Waymo responded to questions about why the cars can be disabled by traffic cones."
Thanks to Slashdot reader Tony Isaac for sharing the news.
A big stop-sign in your rear-window is better (Score:5, Funny)
Just saying.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If you do that, and someone gets in an accident .. that's reckless endangerment and negligent homicide.
Re: A big stop-sign in your rear-window is better (Score:2)
Re:A big stop-sign in your rear-window is better (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, did you put the red octagon to deliberately and willfully stall the self driving cars with disregard as to how it would get handled by not only the self driving cars but also human drivers? The law says any deliberate action that is making the roads unsafe is reckless. The self driving cars have the legal right to be there -- and, not that it is relevant here, the self driving car company is not willfully reckless because they take actions to protect the public safety as much as foreseeable. If you don't like it, take it up with the relevant authority.
Re:A big stop-sign in your rear-window is better (Score:4, Insightful)
The red octagon is just a free expression of my artistic creativity.
There will be a court case to determine if that's true or not. You can present evidence of this idea, but it won't be accepted automatically by the court. And your posting history here will be presented as evidence.
Re: (Score:2)
True, there would be no actual court case. You would settle at the first notion of a lawsuit, because you would know you couldn't afford to fight it and you would certainly lose because your intent was obviously malicious.
Re:A big stop-sign in your rear-window is better (Score:5, Informative)
Until the dmv specifically bans such I am free to do so.
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that the law works this way. It does not. The law is fungible, and open to interpretation. This is why we have judges and juries instead of checklists.
It's set up this way intentionally, in order to prevent people from pushing the limits of what it covers. Skirting the law by, for example, endangering all the people behind your car when you put a facsimile of a stop sign in your rear window. This may not be explicitly illegal, in that there is no law which forbids this specific action by name, but it is still illegal.
Laws should not be flexible (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that the law works this way. It does not. The law is fungible, and open to interpretation. This is why we have judges and juries instead of checklists.
That is not at all how the law works.
Judges and juries are there to determine whether the *evidence* is sufficient to be considered a breach of law, and to afford flexibility in sentencing. The law is supposed to be clear and precise.
We're having a big problem in this country right now because the law is being stretched to cover cases that a plain text reading don't allow. The idea that we can stretch laws to cover some cases, but don't bother in other cases, and the whole idea of prosecutorial discretion is tearing us apart.
We need to get back to the rule of law.
Not obscure interpretations or framing of the law that makes common actions illegal.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The law is specific enough. Deliberately and recklessly interfering with traffic is illegal. I mean, how about theft? Do you want to law to specific every possible item that can be stolen in order to make robbery illegal? The law doesn't specify for example that taking someone else's shoes is illegal .. it only says that taking someone else's property is illegal. And same with murder, the law doesn't specify the manner in which someone causes a death, if you deliberately cause someone's death it is murder r
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Exterior car modifications have been thoroughly legally tested.
The absolute worst case for a red octagon is a token fine and a fixit ticket. There is absolutely zero chance of a court case, criminal charges or any such thing for paint job with a red octagon.
And unless the local dmv code covers things like red octagons I wouldn't even be pulled over.
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"it only says that taking someone else's property is illegal."
The stop-sign in my rear-window is my property, I want to install it in my garage to know when to stop before hitting the wall.
Re:Laws should not be flexible (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly, this is indeed how the law works and you're aware of this. You just don't want it to work that way.
There are a couple of legal ideals which are in opposition to one another. One is impartiality, this notion that the law should be applied to everyone and every infraction in a predictable way without bias or sentiment. And the other is justice, or the notion that the law should punish the guilty and protect the innocent, so that infractions by villains should be treated harshly, while infractions committed in good faith should be treated lightly. We want the law to do both of these things, to be both just and impartial, but they contradict one another. So we try to find a balance, and it's never going to make everyone happy.
Re:A big stop-sign in your rear-window is better (Score:4, Insightful)
The dmv code is quite explicit and 100% clear. These sorts of things have already been tested.
Unless the dmv in the state I'm driving in explicitly bans a red octagon or has rules thar could _clearly_ cover my red octagon then I am absolutely perfectly with no doubt 100% legal to red octagon my car.
There will be no lawsuits or charges or courts or any such thing. And the typical worst case for most dmv violations of equipment is a fine and a fix it ticket.
You guys who think someone is doing hard time or paying huge fines for a red octagon are nuts.
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"The dmv code is quite explicit and 100% clear. These sorts of things have already been tested.
Unless the dmv in the state I'm driving in explicitly bans a red octagon or has rules thar could _clearly_ cover my red octagon then I am absolutely perfectly with no doubt 100% legal to red octagon my car."
If one wanted to influence the traffic, one would just pull a black bag over a REAL stop-sign.
Re: A big stop-sign in your rear-window is better (Score:3)
This is the difference between English common law (typical throughout the U.S.) and French style law (also found in the U.S., but just Louisiana). Under common law, specific laws don't need to be written; judges can re-interpret laws how they see fit (and those interpretations can be appealed).
Re:A big stop-sign in your rear-window is better (Score:5, Insightful)
That's as stupid as saying the law doesn't specifically ban shoving a bullet into somebody's heart at high velocity.
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The red octagon is just a free expression of my artistic creativity.
Oh that wouldn't fly. You are accountable for the consequences of your speech. The "shouting fire in a crowded theater" for example. In the wrong context, that could even confuse a human driver, but even without that, deliberately trying to influence self-driving cars would be that same sort of harmful speech.
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Re:A big stop-sign in your rear-window is better (Score:4, Informative)
Re: A big stop-sign in your rear-window is better (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Laws do not have to explicitly name every little thing to be enforceable. For example, the laws against theft do not specify nor need to specific every object one can possibly steal. They only need to define ownership, theft, and the penalties for varying levels of theft.
Many Slashdotters have a bizarre and unrealistic idea of how laws work. This grade school level idea of the law is just not how it works.
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Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Does the criminal code specify a felony or a misdemeanor for painting my car with arbitrary red shapes?
Do you think I'll get 5-7 and out in 3 for good behavior for a red octagon on my back panel?
Thankfully, few slashdotters are lawyers because you guys wouldn't graduate law school much less pass the bar anywhere.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: A big stop-sign in your rear-window is better (Score:2)
DMV code probably isn't critical in a civil case where injuries are involved. if you did something unusual and it resulted in harm that may be enough for a very costly ruling.
Re:A big stop-sign in your rear-window is better (Score:5, Informative)
You are ignorant and wrong, it's illegal. You will find you have a law similar to this where you live:
No person shall place, maintain or display upon or in view of any street any unauthorized sign, signal, marking, light, reflector or device which purports to be or is an imitation of or resembles an official traffic control device or railroad sign or signal
Re: (Score:2)
And I'll add for the really obtuse that traffic signs are one type of 'traffic control device' under law, along with signals; road design and marking; and barriers or channelizers.
You cannot place or imitate any of those under law.
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"No person shall place, maintain or display upon or in view of any street any unauthorized sign, signal, marking, light, reflector or device which purports to be or is an imitation of or resembles an official traffic control device or railroad sign or signal"
I doubt the law meant the inside of my car by 'placing'.
Re: A big stop-sign in your rear-window is better (Score:2)
Probably not. But do you suppose the word "or" means something?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I already put up, I cut and pasted right from law where I live, other states and cities have similar. You are the ignorant person that needs to shut up. Your stupidity and ignorance about an illegal act are not a point of view.
You cannot display an imitation of traffic control device. You cannot display an imitation of emergency or law enforcement markings or lighting.
Re: (Score:3)
I did that, actual law.
You are the one going blah blah blah about an illegal act.
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Re:A big stop-sign in your rear-window is better (Score:5, Informative)
See, for example, the law in California [ca.gov] (the most populous state in the United States) on this matter:
Re:A big stop-sign in your rear-window is better (Score:4, Insightful)
I stand corrected about your californian laws (although I do still suspect that it wouldn't be applicable to a small sign in the rear of a car, which any human would dismiss trivially, but an AI would not due to perspective processing limitations)
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Although it's probably not been tested in court yet, if your sign looks like a stop sign and is fooling a driver - including an autonomous driver - and an officer decided to cite you, the court might decide that your "stop" symbol "is an imitation of, or resembles, an official traffic control device". That leaves the element if the reason you have the sign on the back of your vehicle is to "attempt[s] to direct the movement of traffic" (which is in fact what you are intending to do) and the prosecutor may h
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I stand corrected about your californian laws
Stop sign imagery is controlled in just about every state. For instance if you buy a surplus school bus and they leave the sign on it, in almost every state you are obligated to cover, repaint, or remove it (variously). But I think that you will find that every state expects you to a) honor and obey road signs and their intents, and b) not put up fake road signs, especially with the intent to deceive people into believing they are real ones. I'd even go so far as to put some money on that, because I've done
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I did watch Boston Legal too! (but admittely I thought it was Star Trek...)
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Cite the legal ruling banning signage on a car
In which jurisdiction?
I'll accept nothing less.
You'll accept nothing with your false pedantry. A real pedant would have asked for a more specific citation.
Stupid (Score:2)
It is stupid... but at least they aren't poisoning our waterways this time.
Transit equity? (Score:3)
They're apparently bicycling activists, judging by their web site, advocating "for car-free spaces, transit equity, and the end of car dominance." ("We regularly protest the city's thoughtless reopening of the Upper Great Highway to cars by slowing traffic to show just how unnecessary of a route this road is.") Their long-term goal is to expand the group "to the point where we can make a city for people to safely walk, bike and take public transit, not a city dominated by cars..."
(Emphasis mine)
Does anyone know what "transit equity" is?
Re: Transit equity? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing.
It's jealous people lashing out at the wrong things.
Take their photos, put them on "Do not hire" lists, and forget about them.
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Maybe it's a street like this [wikipedia.org] where each form of transit has equal priority.
Re: Transit equity? (Score:2)
Your "private driveway" is what any normal street looks like in Europe.
Re:Transit equity? (Score:5, Insightful)
They kinda spell it out right there "to the point where we can make a city for people to safely walk, bike and take public transit, not a city dominated by cars..."
The concept is based around the fact that on average it costs $10,728 per year to own a car (https://www.forbes.com/advisor/car-insurance/car-ownership-statistics/#cost_to_own_a_car_section) so if your city is built around car ownership it wouldn't be considered equitable.
Now, you can believe that or not but that's the idea. I think it does have some merit in urban metro areas though when you look at US cities versus metro's in Europe and Asia where there is robust public transit systems and a lot more options for bikes.
Fact is there is really only one city with comparable public transit (NYC) and some that are pretty good (Chicago, DC) but for many it's all but a requisite to own a car.
Re:Transit equity? (Score:5, Insightful)
They kinda spell it out right there "to the point where we can make a city for people to safely walk, bike and take public transit, not a city dominated by cars..."
The concept is based around the fact that on average it costs $10,728 per year to own a car (https://www.forbes.com/advisor/car-insurance/car-ownership-statistics/#cost_to_own_a_car_section) so if your city is built around car ownership it wouldn't be considered equitable.
Now, you can believe that or not but that's the idea. I think it does have some merit in urban metro areas though when you look at US cities versus metro's in Europe and Asia where there is robust public transit systems and a lot more options for bikes.
Fact is there is really only one city with comparable public transit (NYC) and some that are pretty good (Chicago, DC) but for many it's all but a requisite to own a car.
These are driverless taxis. More such taxis might result in less private cars.
So doing this achieves the opposite of their stated goal
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Absolutely agree, I think there is a case to be made that driverless taxis could be a way to get some public transit in American cities where it's difficult to get the infrastructure installed.
That said I think there are some fair criticisms of that idea:
Driverless taxis at this moment are all private enterprise, not publicly owned or operated like many train, tram and bus systems. They *could* but I think a proposal like that would go a long way.
Will these taxis operate at a cost and schedule similar to p
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Will these taxis operate at a cost and schedule similar to public transit? Will those costs be regulated?
Is that really the measure of success? Taxis are not mass transit.
Taxis cost more than mass transit, always have, always will. In some cases the costs are regulated
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Driverless taxis may not, when they are refined and deployed at scale, cost more than mass transit. Several factors play against traditional mass transit:
Re:Transit equity? (Score:4, Informative)
The driver is basically the biggest cost driver of taxi transit though. Getting it down to one driver is part of why busses can be more economical than Taxis.
Go to EV autonomous taxis though? A couple of them hauling around a couple people each might actually be cheaper than a lightly loaded bus. With AI route decisions, you could even maybe have a mix all the way from a small car to a large bus, and route stuff to get people to their destinations expediently and at lowest cost.
So grandma needing to go to the optometrist might take a bus to get there, but because she gets out at an odd time, gets a car for the way back because it's no longer prime commuting period.
Figures: $40k for a bus driver, [salary.com] annual salary. $20/hour. Plus benefits, probably raising it to $30/hour.
Bus: $550k (fed.gov pays for most of it) [liveabout.com], average lifespan 12 years: $46k/year, assuming 12 hours of use/day: $10.50
Fuel and other stuff: $13/hour.
If you can buy autonomous cars for, say, $50k, that's 11 cars for the cost of a single bus. Theoretically can carry 55 people, when busses can hold 40-80. Plus the largest single cost(driver) is gone.
While I'd still use the bus if I can get it to, say, half capacity, below that it might be better to use cars and vans.
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If you can buy autonomous cars for, say, $50k, that's 11 cars for the cost of a single bus. Theoretically can carry 55 people, when busses can hold 40-80. Plus the largest single cost(driver) is gone.
Your math as presented is only a teeny tiny part of the story. At some times the buses transport only a few people, at other times they are packed over capacity with people standing. But the cars will also have similar conditions. The buses cause perturbations that the cars don't, by affecting traffic on major thoroughfares. But the cars will do the same thing on a larger number of smaller streets instead. They will have to double park to pick up passengers from inside of their homes in many neighborhoods.
T
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They will have to double park to pick up passengers from inside of their homes in many neighborhoods.
Not if all the cars are gone because robo-taxis are cheaper and more convenient.
Also, the cars are probably EV, not gasoline. So they are getting much more than 15-20 mpg. I mean, you're deliberately going for worst case scenario, as that isn't even hybrid mileage. Nwhen I looked it up, city busses average 3.4 mpg, not even 4.(DOE figure)
And NG isn't all that clean up against electric.
Tires are rubber, not plastic. The greater weight of the bus means more shedding, as it is a factor of weight.
A factor yo
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These are driverless taxis. More such taxis might result in less private cars. So doing this achieves the opposite of their stated goal
There are lots of goals shared by people trying to promote non-driving transportation options. One of them is to reduce the number of car miles traveled. This is an important goal because of tire dust. Over 50% of marine microplastics are made up of it. Even if you reduce transportation costs by reducing car ownership, you're still not solving all of the problems that proliferation of automobiles causes.
Insisting on accommodation of alternatives to cars is a rational stance.
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So in other words, "transit equity" is bullshit.
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It basically translates to Communism
Re:Transit equity? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah... the problem with these "Safe Street Rebels" asshats, all of their ilk, and even the city government itself, is that they are monomaniacally focused only on punishing people for driving and making it ever more difficult to do so (Removal of parking, moving parallel street parking to the outside of the bike lanes, removing traffic lanes entirely, eliminating right turns on red, closing roads like the great highway, et cetera.). The notion of actually building a world-class mass transit system that would be a fully-functional substitute for driving and make people actually *WANT* to give up their cars is so low on the agenda that I think the entire concept is totally foreign to them. Having actually seen mass transit done right (Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, and even NYC is decent) I can honestly say that if it were implemented correctly I would cheerfully give up my car and ride the rails to and fro nearly every day, only renting a car on the occasional weekend for camping and other trips.
Instead, we have MUNI... fucking MUNI. It's all of just *SIX* lousy lines (Plus the "historic" F and cable cars which only tourists use.) that are only useful for going to and from work, only if you work downtown in SOMA or the FiDi, and only if you live in certain neighborhoods; with quite large swaths of the city not served by real metro lines at all, but just making do (even more poorly than the areas with real MUNI lines) with busses. Very little of MUNI are proper subways, and none of it is elevated. Instead, the vast majority of it is at street level, where it competes with vehicles and pedestrians. The published schedule is inadequate, especially outside of the morning and evening commuting hours. The operators treat the timetables as mere suggestions at best, more often simply ignoring or refusing to adhere to them entirely. the bus drivers are even worse about meeting their deadlines than the metro operators. And management steadfastly refuses to enforce the timetables or punish the malingerers for their incompetence and dereliction of duty at all.
And that's just the routes and timetables aspect. MUNI also can't be bothered to clean or maintain their vehicles. So even if the routes do work for you, and the operators are willing to do their jobs that day, you never know what that smell or substance be when you step on to one, or if the doors will crap out and stop the train on its route... again. But you definitely want to touch as little as possible and (even before COVID) carry hand sanitizer with you. Plus there's (the lack of) safety. I'm a big guy and can project a "don't fuck with me" impression on the crackheads, junkies, and bums. But since the SFPD is just as incompetent and unwilling to do their jobs as MUNI itself, if I were female or small and twinky I'd probably not ride it all except in a good sized group of friends I trust.
And what about expansion, you might ask. Well, it just took MUNI an entire decade to extend the T 3rd all of two miles to Chinatown. And that's when they deign to expand at all. For the 49 and 38... both of which are overused, under provisioned, and desperately in need of replacement with subways... in their inadequate wisdom, they've decided not to even to bother to try; but have come up with some whackadoodle "bus rapid transit" bullshit notion that they promise will be just as good as any rail line... really... honest!
Now, we do also have BART and Caltrain which, despite their own issues, are run by people significantly more competent and diligent than the assclowns at MUNI. But their routes and stops are even more limited, and of less use for getting around the city, than MUNI's.
So basically, "Safe Street Rebels" can get bent and go fuck off and die in a fire so far as I'm concerned. What we need is to terminate and blacklist each and every MUNI employee, manager, and director; then poach a bunch of JR and/or MRT people to rebuild the damn thing and introduce and enforce a culture of people actually doing the jobs they were hired for.
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They're just anti-human communists. They hate private property because they are too poor to ever afford any.
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For 30 years I lived a full car-free life. I rented when I needed to for work or an IKEA run or whatever, but day-to-day travel was by foot or pedal or transit. That was in a town of 60,000, San Francisco, Honolulu, and Los Angeles. It wasn't until moving to an exurban area with narrow roads and an insufficient shoulder for cycling that I gave up and finally bought a car and got a Costco membership.
Those 30 years without a car made buying a nice house possible. I wish more places made it practical to live t
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The concept is based around the fact that on average it costs $10,728 per year to own a car
A transit ride in SF would be around $10 per trip, if it were funded fully from fares. So that's $20 per day, or around $600 per month. So it would be $7200 per year for ONE person.
That's already pretty close to the car price. But then we should look at opportunity cost. Bus drivers, transit workers and others can be employed much more gainfully, rather than shuttling people back and forth.
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Firstly, "if it were fully funded by fares" is a bad metric that is almost never used because transit systems cannot and should not be "funded fully from fares", secondly even in your example it's a savings of $3500 (in reality a monthly BART pass is $98/m) and thirdly if that is the case it's all the more evidence of the SF public transit failures.
A monthly pass in NYC is $132, in London its a maximum of £285 (lowest £184) In Paris it's €75, Tokyo it's $132/equivalent so it can and is done
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Firstly, "if it were fully funded by fares" is a bad metric
No. It's not. You can't compare costs when on one side you have to pay for everything, and on the other side the government distorts the market by providing subsidies.
Transit is nothing but a market-distorting tool. It promotes the never-ending density-misery loop.
A monthly pass in NYC is $132, in London its a maximum of £285 (lowest £184) In Paris it's €75, Tokyo it's $132/equivalent so it can and is done for much, much cheaper than car ownership.
So these cities subsidize the failed urban lifestyle even harder. DUH.
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The economic output enabled by those cities mass transit systems more than pay for themselves. NYC has a GDP of $2.1T. The MTA moves almost 4m people everyday. If you don't think those items are related or enabled by eachother, i don't know man. There's a reason every almost major city in the world has robust, affordable public transit. It's a winner on nearly every front in terms of dollars in to dollars generated.
Also you need to back something up about "failed urban lifestyle" when it's pretty much th
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Re:Transit equity? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've always wondered why the government didn't ban the power loom. It put so many handloom workers at a great disadvantage, eventually putting them out of job. The government should also have put a ban on the "Big" refrigeration companies. These reckless companies put thousands of ice delivery men out of jobs, forever. Today these markets are dominated by the big clothing companies running on automated machines, churning out millions of meters of fabric and millions of refrigerators. Where is equity of opportunity here? Don't the handloom workers and ice men have a right to live in their own way? US should have always been one large amish-ish country. Forever.
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Corporate influence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Corporate influence (Score:2)
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I will concede that they might be safer in normal driving since they are less likely to be distracted than a human, but as soon as any situation outside of basic driving occurs, they are lost.
"Basic Driving" covers a lot of ground, but it absolutely includes "don't plow into emergency vehicles". That's one of the very first things you learn, in fact. Self-driving cars have not even got to the point where they can follow the very first rule.
LOL (Score:2)
We regularly protest...by slowing traffic to show just how unnecessary of a route this road is.
I don't think that is going to work the way they think it will.
Beta tester pedestrians (Score:5, Insightful)
The locals should vote differently.
Re: Beta tester pedestrians (Score:2)
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Maybe not enough of their neighbors actually care.
These two companies are not equal (Score:3)
There's a lot of axe grinding here. The axe grinders always lump the two companies together and ignore the fact that the vast majority of the problems people are complaining about are caused by Cruise vehicles, because that doesn't fit their agenda.
Re:These two companies are not equal (Score:4, Informative)
However, Waymo has not driven into wet concrete (as far as we know), so it has that over Cruise.
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Just today I had someone weaving in and out of neighbouring lanes, randomly speeding up and braking hard. I think they were a bit lost and couldn't decide where to go. Last weekend I saw a guy on the motorway ignore multiple "lane closing" signs, and then ignore the cones gradually blocking off his lane, until at the last moment he swerved to avoid hitting one.
Slow drivers are annoying, but preferable to fast and incompetent ones. Waymo has the right idea. If you are not sure, slow down.
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Wooden shoes (Score:2, Flamebait)
How do these vehicles react to other objects like, say, a shoe? Ideally a wooden shoe. If only there was a word for tossing wooden shoes at machinery to make it stop. Might have to borrow one from another language.
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Keep your hands off my sabot.
The right question (Score:2)
The right questions are always omitted.
And here it would be: "what is the baseline alternative?"
In other words: does "driverless" cars cause less deadly accidents and/or property damage compared to average humans?
Not looking at the most stupid AI events (don't worry there are many) and comparing them to the best drivers we can find.
And, if tomorrow, the average AI becomes significantly better than the average human in driving, would you think insurance companies will continue to allow "manual driving" like
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In particular, no two human beings will evaluate an event exactly the same way. This means a world filled with human drivers has a certain likelihood pattern which arises from millions of people acting in uncorrelated ways.
The world filled with robotaxis has a completely different likelihoo
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Yes, the robotaxis, from the same manufacturer will behave in the same exact way in the same exact situation.
But, this does not mean we can't compare them. We already do the same for groups of human drivers today (teenage drivers are issued higher insurance premiums than adults for example, even though there are reckless adults, and individual good teenage drivers).
And... robotaxis have the advantage of central learning. If they see a pattern one week, by the next one all of them would have learned to avoid
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Your scenario of central learning IS the cause of the cone vulnerability. Every car which gets an update f
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Exactly what moral right allows you to impose the average rate of traffic fatalities upon the most skilled pedestrians and drivers?
Nothing.
Just as we ask teenagers to pay higher premiums (guilty until proven innocent), we will ask the human drivers to shows impeccable driving records to get non-inflated insurance rates. But any reasonable insurance company will insist on having safety features (automated driving included) for the average ones.
We might not like it, but I am not sure how this can be avoided.
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This is literally exactly how car insurance works now.
If you are looking for laws to be supported by a moral right, you only have to look at the only one that matters in America: Might makes right. This nation was founded directly over the top of a number of other nations, including the one whose laws were the basis of the structure of our constitution. Morality doesn't come into play here, only manifest destiny. And it's the insurance companies' destiny to raid your wallet.
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Insurance companies do need reckless drivers and the fear of accidents to drive regulation and ultimately profit. So insurance companies are definitely taking a note of all of this driverless thing.
Impeding Traffic Is A Crime (Score:2)
They have admitted to crimes. Their organization is invalid. Protesting doesn't give you the right to break the law...and the law is the law. I don't like it...but if I have to follow a bunch of bullshit; then it needs to be across the board.
Reaction to article... (Score:5, Insightful)
Their cars are not wheelchair accessible and do not pull up to the curb. Profit-driven robotaxi companies see accessibility as an afterthought. Without enforcement, their promises for the future will likely never materialize. Paratransit and transit are accountable to the public, but Cruise and Waymo are only accountable to shareholders.
Right now they're all beta vehicles. I'm reminded of when I read that it'd be cheaper to give all the handicapped in NYC their own apartments for free, fully accessible, then to try to make all the apartments accessible. Not to mention that there's different needs for different handicapped people. My grandfather could walk, but not well. Most of the accommodations for wheelchairs would make things more difficult for him, not less. The stuff you need for a blind or deaf person is different than somebody with bad arthritis, which is different than a wheelchair.
Besides, how many wheelchairs are there out there needing service? Might it be cheaper, once these companies actually move past "experimental", to fund a service directly designed to service those in wheelchairs or other mobility restrictions such that self driving cars won't work?
Do we really need to transition up to huge vans on the 1/1k premise that somebody with a wheelchair might want one? Or can we make, say, 1% of vehicles are wheelchair compatible? Pulling up to the curb can also be "later". When you request a ride on the app, you mark "wheelchair", and a special wheelchair vehicle comes for you.
For that matter, how many in wheelchairs would need assistance securing their wheelchair in the vehicle? That might be a problem too...
But their list of concerns is followed by an exhaustive list of 266 robotaxi incidents documented with links to news articles and social media reports. ("The cars have run red lights, rear-ended a bus and blocked crosswalks and bike paths," writes NPR. "In one incident, dozens of confused cars congregated in a residential cul-de-sac, clogging the street. In another, a Waymo ran over and killed a dog.")
While cute, I'd like to see the rate of incidents that humans got into during that time... Of course, it'd be a lot harder to complain about robot vehicles if the incident rate ended up actually being lower than human drivers.
After all, I've seen plenty of human drivers run red lights, my mom was on a bus when a woman t-boned it and claimed "she never saw" the giant city bus, and I've had to dodge plenty of cars parked in bike paths and blocking crosswalks. All with human drivers. I haven't personally killed a dog, but know people who have. My tally is 2 deer and a bird. The bird just flew into the side of my car. Not even a window.
Their demands include unredacted data from self-driving car companies about safety incidents (and a better reporting system)
I wouldn't object to a better reporting system, but "unredacted data" sounds like it'd include stuff like people's names, which I think that we might WANT to redact for privacy issues. I'm willing to bet that the data they're after would end up being like most classified data - actually boring as all crap.
Transportation done right ? (Score:2)
Self-driving has a carbon foorprint (Score:2)
That on-board navigation system is like adding several kilowatts of power use. Doesn't come for free.
I wonder... (Score:2)
if red beer cups with white stripes painted around them stuck on the cars' hoods would do the same thing?
It certainly could save a lot of money...
Coninglingus (Score:2)
Coninglingus may not be morally right, but it can be fun.
Get a horse! (Score:2)
Leaving aside they say "transpiration" where they meant "transportation" and, thus, may be recognized as being far more stoned than most people...
Cars have been utterly revolutionary in changing our culture for the better and in reducing pollution. Back in the "good old days", your streets would have been covered in horse manure, along with the occasional dead horse. Now, I keep a car as a decoration, because I don't need it enough to actually keep it running, but that's because I can bribe my neighbors for
Fine these people (Score:2)
Just humans bullying robots, like in Asimov. (Score:2)
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