Driverless cars were the future but now the truth is out: they’re on the road to nowhere::The dream of these vehicles ruling the roads remains just that. Focusing on public transport would be much smarter, says transport writer Christian Wolmar
Self driving cars have always been a solution to the wrong problem.
The problem isn’t really “I don’t want to steer this car”. It’s “I want to fast+safe+cheaply get from where I am, to where work/school/fun is”. So you could spend billions on machine vision and car tech to try to accomplish that, and maybe you will eventually. Or you could invest in historically proven solutions that have incredible side benefits like public transit and better zoning. Because having your self driving car cart you around suburban sprawl is still going to suck. Living spaces that are built for humans first instead of cars are better on like every metric.
I heard this guy going on about this amazing machine a company had invented to sequester carbon. They were not happy when explained that a tree does the same thing and they grow like crazy just about anywhere.
We already know what we need to do but people don’t want to do it.
We already know what we need to do but people don’t want to do it.
That’s the thing that gets me about AI solving global warming or whatever. You think a computer telling you that you have to get off oil is going to make a difference?
Soon it’snot going to be we don’t want to do that it’s we are going to have to.
Also if you look at happiness. We do want that some people don’t know that, some don’t know it’s possible and some people have been outright lied to.
Unless you can take a dead tree and prevent it from decaying, you’re just moving around carbon and not actually sequestering it. We would basically need to grow billions or plants and turn them into coal/oil and then just leave those fuels sitting around. Good luck with that.
Uhhh, I think you’re confused on what carbon sequestration is.
The primary source of green house gas isn’t deforestation, it’s fossil fuels pulled up out of the ground.
Yes, you can think of trees as solar-powered CO2 crystalization, so more trees, more CO2 removed. The problem though is that this is a temporary solution. When trees die and rot or burn (forest fire), they ultimately release most of that CO2 back into the atmosphere. Even worse, that carbon may be released as methane instead, if it decomposes anaerobicly.
There’s only so much biomass the earth can sustain to naturally store carbon. The page you link is correct in that we definitely shouldn’t make the problem even worse by reversing what carbon the biomass does store.
But it is in no way the solution to putting carbon we mined out of the earth back into the earth. Well trees as a carbon sequestration did already happen: it just took millions of years for buried biomass to be turned into oil and coal.
I didn’t propose a solution. I simply corrected wrong information presented by the other user. Trees sequester carbon, even if with volatility, as explained in the links.
I agree, it’s not a solution.
You missed part of the problem. It’s actually,
“I want to fast+safe+cheaply get from where I am, to where work/school/fun is, and I want to do it without sharing transportation with anyone else who might be sick, annoying, crazy, or a member of an ethnic group or economic class I don’t care for”
The good solutions for transit do not account for how much people hate being around each other. My city has phenomenal bus infrastructure, that often gets you to your destination faster than driving. But people drive anyways, because there are sick people and crazy people on the bus.
You’re not wrong, but I don’t really think society should bend too far to the whims of it’s most antisocial members.
Like, if they don’t want to share the bus with a black person they can leave. And I don’t want to subsidize their selfishness by ceding space to cars, for example.
Also that’s a bit of induced demand, probably. People drive because it’s easier. Take away the subsidies or internalize the costs of driving, and people’s habits will change.
The problem is not that driverless cars won’t be viable. The problem is the same as several other tech developments where a few startups promise tech that hasn’t matured yet, taking in billions of ‘stupid’ money from investors who are greedy but not knowledgeable about the underlying viability of what can realistically be done in a decade.
One hundred years from now? Driverless cars will be old news, so common or maybe even surpassed with something newer. But investors want a 10 year explosion of cash, not a 50 year investment.
One hundred years from now, it’ll probably mostly still be cars. Aerotaxis for the rich, maybe
Aerotaxis for the rich already exist: helicopters, Gulfstream, etc.
Or a 747 with everything inside gold plated if you’re a Saudi Prince.
Can’t land a helicopter at the club without a bunch of pansies whining about “public safety”, as if a few heads on the street is such a big deal.
Aerotaxis would still be aircrafts.
I don’t know why people imagine that making an aircraft the shape of a car suddenly landing would be as simple as going to a parking lot.
It’s just a joke, friend.
Air taxis are sometimes helicopters or quadcopters, and while they aren’t parking in parking lots for cars, but could still end up landing in what equates to a parking space. In New York City, they are already presenting plans to expand an air taxi hub on a pier in lower Manhattan to transport people and goods to and from the city, and it looks like a bunch of parking spaces with a logistics facility attached.
Hahahahah.
You cut off a few pansy heads and everyone gets all upset.
A century from now humanity’s population will be lucky to number in the 6 digits.
And we will all be merged with cars.
It is because the tech is dumb. All cars should exist on a network together like ants don’t make them respond to bullshit other people do it will never work and it will always make mistakes with judgement.
Or you know just give me fucking trains and trolleys
“ Artificial intelligence is a fancy name for the much less sexy-sounding “machine learning” “
This article is just a plug for this guys book and if the quote above from the article is anything to go by then I doubt the book will be anything more than a poorly researched 300 page opinion piece.
Yeah I’m mega anti-car and not at all optimistic about self-driving but this article says very little of substance.
I wouldn’t bet against self-driving cars even now. It’s fairly clear that existing AI technology is insufficient, but we’re seeing such rapid progress in that field that a more advanced AI that can drive might be invented relatively soon.
A perfect self-driving car is still way worse than a robust public transportation system. People are starting to catch on to the fact that cars are pretty fucking annoying/dangerous and hoping on a train/bus is less stressful. By the time self-driving is completely ready a significant portion of people are not going to want them.
Sure, but a public transportation system only vastly improves the lives of millions of people. How is that supposed to increase the bottom line of the car monopolists etc, eh? Nobody’s thinking how their selfish demands of “a comfortable life for the majority of people”, “a livable planet for future generations” or “letting the bottom 99% of the world’s population have a little money too” affects the richest few individuals on the planet - they might have to refrain from buying another couple dozen yachts or villas each year! Won’t somebody think of the poor, poor billionaires!
Driving itself is stressful for some people but I’m not sure how simply being in a self-driving car is worse than being on a bus. I can see how public transportation might be cheaper than a self-driving taxi but I don’t see how it might be better if price isn’t an issue. Why would someone prefer a method of transportation that (1) isn’t directly door-to-door (2) runs on someone else’s schedule (3) is often much slower than driving and (4) has to be shared with strangers over a method of transportation that has none of those disadvantages?
how simply being in a self-driving car is worse than being on a bus.
That’s easy:
You don’t have a good self-driving car (yet).
Your comparison is: either being on public transport or on a level2/3 autonomous car, where you still need to watch traffic at all times and be ready to take over the steering anytime on very short notice. That is proven to be even more stressful than driving a normal car.
And that’s going to be your choice for these next 100 years or so.
If only there were a way for people to take an automated vehicle from A to B safely and consistently.
Shame no one has ever designed one of those before.
And it’s a damn shame no one has ever designed such a thing on multiple occasions only for it to be shut down by bullshit dreams of a nonsense technology only devised to maintain a transport monopoly that depends on people spending the equivalent of a small house every 10 or so years.
Funny how, if we had weight and trip class segregated traffic infrastructure, walkable cities, car-free areas, etc. Then we would probably already have several successful self-driving taxi companies. As indeed, a point A to point B exclusive use highway would definitely be cheaper for mid and low density traffic areas than trains. But since everyone insists travel to be from front door to front door, then the transport network is just too complex and dangerous for the machines to deal with.
since everyone insists travel to be from front door to front door
When it is wet and cold outside and you have a week’s groceries for the family, nobody wants to walk for awhile with all that crap in the cold, then get into a public transit system, then walk even further at the destination, again having to hold all their crap in the wet and cold. Is the transit system going to let one wheel a cart into it? Because I can’t hold the week’s groceries for my family with just my arms in a single trip.
There are millions of families in Tokyo (and other cities too) who don’t own a car, and manage to get their groceries without one.
It can be done.
But yeah it usually involves getting groceries more than once a week.
If we could rethink everything from scratch we could probably easily solve that use case.
Of course the hard part is changing from what we have now to whatever better solutions exist.
Like, things would be better if suburbia wasn’t just an ocean of houses with sparse islands or shops. If every house was in a community with most of the basics reachable by foot… But how tf do we get to that?
Strong Towns baybeeeee. As far as I know they recommend starting from the town center and working outwards.
You can’t fix a suburb without demolishing it but you can revitalize areas that we’re built pre-cars. Allow mixed use development in the town center with bike lanes and public transportation. Remove parking minimums and other unnecessary barriers to development. These types of development bring in much more higher revenue which can then be reinvested into further changes.
Iterative change is possible, don’t give up!
Yeah, the solution to that is to have local groceries shops where you can go shopping on foot or just with a simply grocery cart walking less than 10 minutes. The idea that you have to haul several tonnes of food from 20+Km away is stupid.
Add: I find laughable how, whenever anyone makes this kind of comments, there comes out of the woodwork the whiny manbabys who assume that it argues for taking away their cars. Read again, never did I suggest to take anyone’s car away, I’m making suggestions towards a better city, better living and better infrastructure. It says a lot that you’re so openly willing to hurt and inconvenience others to defend against an entirely imaginary threat against your 2 ton toy. A car is a tool, not a personality. And if your personality is your car, I think you have a POS personality.
Nooo, 15 minute cities are a communism plot to smoother America with comfort, or something 🤦🏻♂️
I can walk to a grocery store. I’m not doing it when weather sucks and I have a bunch of stuff.
And public transit to get there would be worse.
Besides, empty busses and empty trains require as much fuel empty as with passengers. They’re not as eco friendly as you may think.
And your assumptions about how other people live are stupid. Not everyone has the time to waste walking to get stuff.
This idea of planned cities is naive at the best. Cities grow organically, as things change. You act like cities are static entities that can predict where things will be tomorrow. Naive at best.
Just wait till you get older, where walking, even to the car, is uncomfortable or painful. And I’m not talking old - I was in this kind of pain in my 30’s, and still am. Walking from the car into the store sucks, and I’m not as bad off as some people.
You can take my car from my cold, dead, no-longer- in-pain ass.
Ah yes, there’s nothing more organic than demolishing black neighborhoods to build highways.
That’s only feasible if you have a small family, once you have a couple kids and are buying $300 of groceries a week it’s not at all feasible to transport that home by walking or using public transportation. Even less so if you’re having to transport the kids at the same time. Just carrying in all the food from my driveway to my house takes 15+ minutes, and that’s literally like 20 feet.
Bruh my family would make costco trips and absolutely pack the car with groceries, I’m talking trunk full to the ceiling. That shit takes 5 minutes tops to unload with everyone helping. You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. If raising a family without a car is so difficult then why can so many people manage it fine in other countries?
Yes, everyone has nothing better to do than go shopping daily for anything they need. Nevermind having stores on hand in case you can’t go to the store daily, like when we had a pandemic. Plus, we should all pay the maximum “bodega” price for everything, no buying in bulk for things to be cheaper, or just buying at a larger central location where things are cheaper.
This just seems asinine to me.
I suggest you do more research, it’s far from asinine. It may seem very strange to someone who has lived their entire life in a car centric city but these ideas have been applied in many cities successfully. The results are a healthier and happier populace.
You don’t have to get a week’s worth of groceries when you don’t live in a car-first dystopia.
You walk five minutes to the store, spend 5-10 minutes grabbing stuff, then walk back with like a single bag. You shouldn’t even need to get on public transit for basics like groceries, but even if you do a single bag isn’t a problem.
How many people live a 5 minute walk from a grocery store? I think the closest one to me is about 5 miles away in a city of 250k+. That’d be like a 4 hour round trip walk on average.
How many people live a 5 minute walk from a grocery store?
That’s part of what we want to change. I live a 3 min walk from the grocery store and it’s fucking glorious. Better designed cities are better for everyone.
My main problem with this line of thinking is that our cities already exist as they are, and it would take Herculean effort from the government, citizens, and companies in order to raze and rebuild them in a more ideal way.
My city passed mixed use zoning to tackle exactly this years ago and nothing has changed.
Where do you live that has grocery so far apart? Are you actually in the city or like a suburb of it?
I’m in Brooklyn. I can’t speak to all of Brooklyn but this neighborhood has a population of 100k from Wikipedia. Where my friend used to live wikipedia says is about 120k, and they had good walkable options.
I live on the west coast where cities aren’t as dense as the boroughs of NYC or most eastern states.
Ah. Yeah, that’s one of the reasons I don’t want to live there. Too sprawled out.
You walk five minutes to the store, spend 5-10 minutes grabbing stuff, then walk back with like a single bag.
That is an incredibly large amount of time over the week spent doing this task; literally hours per week if we are talking 5 min walk each way plus 10 min in store every day. This is much longer than condensing the 7 trips into 1 and buying in bulk. And it still doesn’t solve the having to go outside in cold and wet weather. Not to mention any grocery store this close is going to be at bodega prices, so we are talking spending more money as well.
This isn’t a solution. This is a way to spend even more time and even more money while one has to be outside hauling stuff in the cold and wet weather.
You don’t have to go every day. You can also take a hand cart if you really want to stock up. It’s also just much less of an ordeal to walk down the street and grab some things than it is to deal with the car, traffic, parking, gas.
You have to go outside in the cold weather when you drive, too. Plus you’re more likely to get in an accident if it’s very rainy or icy. Not a compelling argument.
Foot traffic is also better for the neighborhood in terms of economic and social health (see: Death & Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs).
I live within walking distance of several large supermarkets, in addition to bodegas and smaller groceries. I don’t live in a fancy or expensive neighborhood. I don’t know why you think that there would only be expensive places near where people live.
Also even if it was spending more money on food because you only live next to an expensive bodega, you’re ignoring the huge externalized costs of car-first culture. Pollution, pedestrian deaths, opportunity cost from lack of walking, economic loss from lack of foot traffic, safety loss from lack of foot traffic, and so on.
Waymo seems to be the best and most successful robotaxi service. My friends in Pittsburgh and the Bay speak highly of them.
But it’s a shame that none of the other robotaxi companies in the US were able to succeed.
We had a thriving robotaxi scene in Pittsburgh (R&D, no actual taxis), mostly because of CMU. But most of the work has shutdown since the pandemic (Uber ATG, Aurora, …). Waymo still seems to be doing well here though.
Waymo the one.
Just because most of the other car companies are full of shit doesn’t mean waymo isn’t making slow yet consistent gains in the area. It might take 5 years it might take 10. But mass roll out of self driving cars is coming.
We are just in the “this touchscreen phone isn’t ever going to take off” part of history.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Moreover, the recent withdrawal from the market of a leading provider of robotaxis in the US, coupled with the introduction of strict legislation in the UK, suggests that the developers’ hopes of monetising the concept are even more remote than before.
The attempt to produce a driverless car started in the mid-00s with a challenge by a US defence research agency, offering a $1m prize for whoever could create one capable of making a very limited journey in the desert.
In 2010, at the Shanghai Expo, General Motors had produced a video showing a driverless car taking a pregnant woman to hospital at breakneck speed and, as the commentary assured the viewers, safely.
It was precisely the promise of greater safety, cutting the terrible worldwide annual roads death toll of 1.25m, that the sponsors of driverless vehicles dangled in front of the public.
The trouble is there are an enormous number of potential use cases, ranging from the much-used example of a camel wandering down Main Street to a simple rock in the road, which may or may not just be a paper bag.
That is why it is clearly a misplaced priority on the part of the government, headed by tech bro Rishi Sunak, to put forward a bill on autonomous vehicles while sidelining plans to reform the railways or legislate for electric scooters, which are in a legal no man’s land.
The original article contains 1,036 words, the summary contains 233 words. Saved 78%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Nobody with a functioning brain thought they were the future
I don’t really understand why you’re getting downvoted, if you ever genuinely thought about them and how they’d possibly ever be implemented you would’ve figured out it was a dumb idea very quickly.
Because blahaj.zone disabled downvotes I can’t even see them lol
