In a pivotal moment for the autonomous transportation industry, California chose to expand one of the biggest test cases for the technology.
Yeah…Great…
How about building public transport and not such stupid things?
Are these things in conflict somehow?
They’re already in conflict everywhere. Infrastructure for cars robs public transit infrastructure blind in Los of government budgets. The only public transit category potentially benefiting from car infrastructure is buses, which are arguably the worst form of public transit to begin with, and still also require additional dedicated infrastructure to get any better (e.g. dedicated bus lanes).
“Self-driving” cars obviously require car infrastructure which already steal from public transit budgets both federally and locally, but if we add government emphasis on this technology and start to develop specific infrastructure for “self-driving” cars (walled off routes, communications appliances, etc.) then they’ll start taking even more of the budget.
And all of this for something that’s arguably much more braindead and useless and consuming of R&D dollars than the obviously more efficient, already technically possible forms of transit that could be built or expanded upon today.
Yes
Self driving cars could actually be kind of a good stepping stone to better public transit while making more efficient use of existing roadways. You hit a button to request a car, it drives you to wherever, you need to go, and then gets tasked to pick up the next person. Where you used to need 10 cars for 10 people, you now need one.
Thats still only a few people… compared to a bus?
Why not just have a bus??
Sure you might have a lower number of cars total, but you’ll also have way more cars on the road, making the traffic problem even worse (because you can now have more cars than people). I’m guessing we’ll be seeing legislation that disallows empty cars driving around in big cities.
I don’t think it would necessarily mean more cars. It means that your car takes you to work but instead of sitting in the parking lot whole day it drives other people around making you money and then at the end of the day it takes you back home and perhaps then goes back to being a taxi for the night.
Because one of them costs taxpayer money and the other one is just signing legislation? The two concepts aren’t even related other than that they are two different ways of getting to places.
Most SDCs in use currently are for public transport.
Self driving cars are stupid. Invest in public transit instead.
EVs are a crutch for the failed auto industry. Personal vehicles made life worse over time. This is an extension of that mistake. The people defending it are myopic and lazy.
Personal vehicles made life worse over time.
When you guys are walking everywhere you’ll be regretting this insanity. Don’t bother responding, I’m not interested in your delusions and Lemmy.world has proven that real discussions are not possible here.
This guy fkn gets it
As cool as the idea of self driving cars are, I don’t trust it not to become a future where script kiddies and novice hackers take control of vehicles and crash them for fun if AI gets involved.
Don’t even get me started on if a country had AI self driving cars and an enemy nation hacks the AI and sends directions that cause the car to end up damaging itself without you knowing. Or just uses it to cause all the vehicles in an area to crash and not be able to deploy airbags.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
California often serves as a “canary in the coal mine for the country and the developed world,” said David Zipper, Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Taubman Center for State and Local Government.
The California Public Utilities Commission approved the permits for Waymo and Cruise on Thursday despite pushback from local leaders and many residents in San Francisco, who argue that the autonomous vehicles have caused chaos around the city — from traffic jams to disrupted emergency scenes.
But critics say this data is unreliable and incomplete because the companies are not required to report a range of other incidents that affect the public — such as when a car veers into a bike or bus lane or stops short and disrupts traffic.
Philip Koopman, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who has conducted research on autonomous-vehicle safety for decades, said the self-driving car companies are under intense pressure to turn a profit and — in some cases — prove the business’s viability to shareholders.
In Los Angeles, Jarvis Murray, the county’s transportation administrator, said it is “untenable” to allow a new mobility service to expand without requiring companies to report more data and also give the cities more say over what is happening on their public roadways.
In an attempt to halt Thursday’s vote, they wrote letters and spoke at hearings to bring attention to a string of incidents in recent months: A car stopping near the scene of a mass shooting, another getting tangled in caution tape and downed wires after a major storm and another blocking a firetruck from exiting a station for several minutes.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Well I know where I won’t be visiting in the near future.
Florida?
Golden State Bad!
