Maybe instead of trying to train an AI powered car to deal with the insane chaos that is the road system, what if we designed something to remove that chaos? Maybe like a path that’s just for these self driving cars. There’s a network of paths to get you to your final destination.
But if we did that, there’d still be our current problems of running out of fuel, or battery power. Which could be solved by electrifying those paths.
But it’d be very difficult to have each of those individual cars switch between paths. Maybe it would be easier if instead of the cars switching paths, the people switched paths. Maybe we just make really long cars, and numerous people can get in them, and then switch cars as needed. People would need to know where to switch between these long cars. So we’d want to set schedules of when they’re running to where, and then have an app or something that just told you where to get on and off.
And if they’re really long, maybe we could kickstart this before we have self-driving abilities anyway. We could just have one person in the front driving it.
And maybe to reduce the need for rubber, instead of regular wheels on a road, they could just be metal wheels on metal tracks.
Just throwing some ideas out there.
I saw the train conclusion coming from “a network of paths to reach your destination.”
I do think that rail is a great solution to a lot of modern transportation needs.
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Unless the train comes to my house, it does not solve the same problem as a self-driving car. It solves the same problem as a bus. I have to go where it stops, and it has to stop where I need. You can throw all kinds of should on that, like ‘well things should be near stations,’ and ‘stations should be near people,’ but that won’t mean they are. And if we’re just wishing, we may as well skip a step and say, ‘things should be near people,’ rendering the whole thing moot.
Go right ahead and say ‘walkable cities are an excellent goal,’ but the point is, I don’t live in a goal.
You don’t live somewhere that self-driving cars can fully autonomously navigate either. No-one does.
Orienting urbanism towards public transit and the conditions that support it (mixed use zoning, pedestrian connectivity, reduced/removed parking mininums, etc.) are incremental steps that can be taken right now, today and make cities better places to live in, unlike self-driving cars which don’t even fucking exist and only serve as a stupid carrot on a stupid stick for NA to stay hilariously dependent on car-centric infrastructure.
‘Gradual change can happen right now’ is really underlining what’s wrong.
Again - sure, trains and public transit and walkable cities are fine goals. We can and should. But cheekily brushing off the desire for a perpendicular technology that’s already partially demonstrated (and gets more feasible year by year) is not being honest about the problem or the solution. Will self-driving cars solve problems caused by cars? Of fucking course not, just look at the words in that sentence.
But nor are they at-odds with positive change, except in the agendas of assholes who will pick any excuse. Elmo defrauded multiple states with the promise of holes in the ground. This tech is not to blame for the stupid evil done in the name of this tech.
If by some miracle we have both sensible urban design and self-driving cars in about ten years, the demand for those cars will be drastically reduced and we’ll all be better-off for it, but those cars will still be really fucking useful.
Thanks but not thanks, most people on the public transport are disgusting and weird… Although I can live with that, they would need to have 24/7 schedules and insecurity is a big downside too.
Disclaimer, I actually don’t know if trains work 24/7 as there is not a single one where I live (not for passengers at least) and even if there was insecurity still an issue, one of the disadvantages of living in a 3rd world country.
Engineers at tesla do great work. Elon is a completely incompetent moron who has no fucking idea what he’s talking about, please stop using what he says as ‘gospel’ for what the company and its products can and can not do.
The literal only reason he’s CEO of tesla right now is because he fucking bought the position
I don’t think he’s an incompetent moron so much as he’s made (himself) a ton of money in multiple industries by
lying to manipulate stock pricesconfidently overestimating his products and deadlines.
meanwhile actual human drivers continue to get worse at driving, partially caused by the many driving “assistants” which won’t stop making seemingly random noises. while also enabling the driver to look at their phone while completely ignoring traffic “because they have lane keeping and distance control”
cars around me have my full attention, because my car doesn’t interfere wuth my ability to drive. (2002 yaris btw)
rant over, sorry. i just really hate modern cars.
Say what you want about Henry Ford, he wanted to make a car that he himself would like to drive. Current management rides in the back seat and makes decisions based on marketing, not actual driving needs.
i would like to say Akio Toyoda does things very differently, and i love him for it.
this is the guy that made the GR yaris, the GR Supra and the 86 line possible. not all of them great cars, but a good start after 20 years of FWD corollas.
The exception that proves the rule.
Every degree of automation increases the time it takes a human to regain full control. This, above all else, is the betrayal in Tesla’s implementation. We cannot tell someone to pay attention to something they aren’t doing. It’s not how people are wired.
I bought a Tesla in early 2020 and after four years I can say confidently that autonomous driving seems unlikely. The self driving feature feels like I’m in the car with my geriatric grandpa. It drives like a stoned teenager trying to protect the liability of his rich daddy.
The reason that humans are able to drive swiftly and efficiently is because we’re not thinking about every single thing that could go wrong at every single moment. The car is incapable of such blissful ignorance and therefore the autonomous driving experience is uncomfortable, to say the least.
Haha I like to say it feels like driving with a 15 year old who just got their learner’s permit.
[off topic?]
There was a ‘The Flash’ TV show back in the early 1990s. One episode had an evil scientist from the 1950s freezing himself to escape justice. When he awakens in 1990 he looks and around and curses. “Where are my jetpacks? Where are the Moon Cities??”
“We have Doom, Internet porn, and concentrated e-weed.”
“Internet porn.” That’s so cute…
There was an episode of Charmed like that a little later, and the best they could do was cell phones and hybrid cars
I remember a scene in “Play It Again, Sam” where the joke is that the businessman feels the need to call and check his answering machine as soon as he arrives at his friend’s apartment.
A Star Trek Strange New Worlds episode had two crew members meeting someone from the future:
Ortegas: Hey, what’s the future like? Do you have jet packs or what?
Chapel: We have jet packs now.
Ortegas: I know, but, like, smaller jet packs.
self driving cars would basically be more comfortable and also more expensive public transport.
i for one like to control when i go where at what speed, at which interior temperature, at a great increase in comfort, with a good deal more privacy and in a vehicle i own.
a coexistence of public and private transport to fit everyone’s needs and demands would be ideal, but another culture war seems likelier.
The roadway is shared by multiple parties. Right now in the US its 99% car preference, 1% all other options.
If we can add real mass transit and a pedestrian first footpath model like the netherlands, I think everyone can be happy. They still very much have cars, they are simply not the priority. People are. Youre still free to drive, its just generally less efficient than ever other means of transit. The above is demonstratively a more efficient/ecological/healthy/economical system than what the US does, which is dump endless trillions into car asphalt and fuel subsidies.
If you can agree that cars should be a part of but not the primary means of transportation, then there likely won’t be any problem.
sure, i would love universal seperate bike lanes on roads here in germany. the fahrradschutzstreifen seems really unsafe.
i have no problem with people wanting to save money and trying to be as ecological as possible by using public transport and riding their bike.
but it feels like i’m being attacked for driving a small, comfortable, fuel efficient car. i understand why people living in city centres got used to cars not being around, but you don’t solve climate crises by screaming “ban cars!” from every rooftop. that’s not gonna make people want to engage, because so many people like driving cars.
And I am pretty sure that in a couple of years we will be talking the same way about AI. Yes generative AI is cool and can do some useful stuff but we are fast approaching the theoretical threshold and progress over this threshold would become much more difficult if not almost impossible.
As someone posted out, it is relatively easy to design a self-driving car that drives 99% fully autonomously, but the last 1% is extremely difficult to crack and there are too many edge cases and problems that you would need to solve, that are not solvable with the current state of AI and hardware.
AI hypebot gonna AI hype
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In 2015, the then-lead of Google’s self-driving car project Chris Urmson said one of his goals in developing a fully driverless vehicle was to make sure that his 11-year-old son would never need a driver’s license.
In 2016, then-Lyft president John Zimmer claimed that “a majority” of the trips taking place on its ride-sharing network would be in fully driverless cars “within five years.” That same year, Business Insider said that 10 million autonomous vehicles would be on the road by 2020.
But confined within geofenced service areas, held back by their own technological shortcomings, opposed by labor unions and supporters of more reliable modes of transportation, and restricted from driving on certain roads or in certain weather conditions.
The amount of money flowing into the autonomous vehicle space also had the knock-on effect of convincing regulators to take a lax approach when it comes to self-driving cars.
It’s released a number of studies and statistical analyses in recent years that it says proves its vehicles get in fewer crashes, cause less damage, and improve overall safety on the roads.
Broken promises and failed predictions are what’s fueling the growing skepticism about self-driving cars in the public which, as the years plod by, gets more and more turned off by the idea of relinquishing control of their vehicles to a robot.
The original article contains 1,485 words, the summary contains 221 words. Saved 85%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
bad bot context is important
I’m watching the show “Upload”. I’m five episodes in and so far two people have already been killed by self-driving cars. Is this really the future everyone is looking forward to?
No, it’s the future corporations are looking forward to: “You’ll own nothing and be happy.”
The entire point of self-driving cars was to remove the hassle of selling directly to consumers and instead sell fleets to other corporations, intended for them to be constantly circling cities looking for people who need rides. Think Taxis but a million times worse and more congestion because it means every car that exists will always be somewhere on the road.
Corporations have increasingly looked away from direct-to-consumer business because consumers are fickle and have less money than corporate coffers. American corporations have slowly become one big mess of just buying and selling to one another and leaving out the average consumer, instead only “renting” or “licensing” products to consumers.
They don’t care if human lives are lost in the process as long as they can crow about how much “safer” it is to trust the “perfect” machines unlike “imperfect” humans. All they really want is to be able to sell the same car, over and over again. They want the benefits of repossession without the hassle. They want a permanent income stream via their vehicles.
Mhe .cars is cars .
