Author Topic: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars  (Read 6868 times)

soccerluvof4

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #50 on: March 28, 2019, 03:18:27 AM »
imo long haul trucking will be a prime candidate for this first.

You have far less city driving, far more long stretches. There are multiple economic factors driving it.



Totally agree with this statement. Straight runs with doubles and triples.

Askel

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #51 on: March 28, 2019, 04:34:12 AM »
I'm sick this morning, so I can't ride my bike and am a bit grumpy about it, so bear with me. My academic career involves a lot of technologies in use in self driving cars; machine learning, image analysis, 3d point clouds. I have numerous colleagues that work directly on actual self driving car projects (I chose to avoid the field). 

THE SELF DRIVING CAR IS THE WORST BOOMERTECH, END RUN, TECHNOCRAT NIGHTMARE SOLUTION TO A PROBLEM EVER.

Look, you want to make roads safer? Ban fucking cars. Public transportation and bicycles. Also in my dreams I have a pony that can fly. 

Oh, we can't do that!

Fine, I can probably identify 90% of driving infractions such as distracted driving, drunk driving, speeding, hit and runs, and otherwise shitty driving with technology that already exists that everybody carries around with themselves damn near 24/7: their cell phone. 

But privacy! 

See: Self driving cars. 

The dream of me stumbling out of the bar, passing out in the safe and loving arms of my self driving car to be safely delivered home just isn't going to happen. But some dipshit bro at Uber thinks he can save ten bucks by eliminating the driver from my uber ride home and is willing to burn through billions in venture capital to prove he's right. 

We can't even make a web browser that doesn't crash, I'm not holding out much hope for cars.  Also something something 737max automation. 

Unfortunately, we'll probably get a self driving car. At best, we can just hope the self driving car becomes the flying car of today.  But probably not. The dipshit tech bros have too much invested.  Shipping crappy, barely working products without considering the larger impacts to society has never stopped them before, why should it stop them now? 

Maybe we'll adapt our infrastructure to self driving cars. Maybe they'll just be a plaything of rich retired boomers.  Maybe when we take the human pleasure out of driving a car, we'll come to our senses and realize private car ownership is just a retarded idea anyway.  My pony that can fly is also a unicorn.   

Thanks, and good morning. I'll leave you with this: https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/999762887735263232
« Last Edit: March 28, 2019, 04:38:16 AM by Askel »

Metalcat

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #52 on: March 28, 2019, 04:55:05 AM »
Jesus, as much as I like the idea of self-driving vehicles, I'm really having trouble seeing it go full tilt in snowy/icy area's, or the worst, snowy with hills...  Like the testing they did in Pittsburgh.  I don't like driving all that much in snow (I'm in lake effect the snow-belt), and I sure as hell can't see me at this time, being in a SD vehicle in those type of conditions.  Any links of how they deal with the issues I raise?

Humans suck at driving in those conditions though.

I live in a frozen hellscape and on snowstorm days, 100+ accidents by 9am is not unusual. It's a frozen hellscape here every year, and yet almost no one here has specific winter driving training. There are courses, they are incredibly useful, and no one takes them.

All of the self driving cars will automatically use all of the techniques for handling slipping that local motorists have never bothered to learn. They also probably won't drive way too fast out of frustration with traffic, and if the self driving cars are all networked, then other cars will be able to anticipate the moves of merging vehicles.

Also, yes, as PP said, self driving cars need detectable lines in the road. OK, so eventually lines that don't need to be seen to be detected will be installed. Easy.

We may not be there yet, but the capacity is there for self driving cars to be INFINITELY safer than the idiot yahoos who currently occupy the road.

Ever driven in Montreal?
I would take a fleet of drunk robots over Montreal drivers any day.

Self driving of course has flaws, I just simply have no faith in humans to be collectively safe behind the wheel. We are TERRIBLE drivers. Truly, exceptionally, unreasonably terrible drivers.

EricEng

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #53 on: March 28, 2019, 08:25:57 AM »
...
THE SELF DRIVING CAR IS THE WORST BOOMERTECH, END RUN, TECHNOCRAT NIGHTMARE SOLUTION TO A PROBLEM EVER.
...
[long anti tech/car rant cropped]
So Waymo's self driving cars have successfully driven over 10,000,000 miles with only causing 1 accident that I know of so far which is a far better rate than most humans.  So your anti tech rant is  unfair.  The technology does work and works very well when you aren't cutting corner (looking at you uber). 

I understand you also just hate cars in general, but they are a necessity for much of the country that is too sparsely populated and spread out not to mention other factors like disabilities, injuries, and inhospitable weather.

Pizzabrewer

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #54 on: March 28, 2019, 10:28:45 AM »
Automated driving is an inevitability.  By 2025 the evidence will be indisputable that it is safer than human driving in all circumstances.  By 2030 more miles will be driven automated than by humans.  By 2035-2040 human driving will be outlawed or otherwise eliminated, most likely by being uninsurable. 

GuitarStv

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #55 on: March 28, 2019, 10:57:08 AM »
Automated driving is an inevitability.  By 2025 the evidence will be indisputable that it is safer than human driving in all circumstances.  By 2030 more miles will be driven automated than by humans.  By 2035-2040 human driving will be outlawed or otherwise eliminated, most likely by being uninsurable.

2050 . . . skynet.  :P

robartsd

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #56 on: March 28, 2019, 11:04:52 AM »
Also, yes, as PP said, self driving cars need detectable lines in the road. OK, so eventually lines that don't need to be seen to be detected will be installed. Easy.
Easy enough to add some tech to the reflectors that get installed on major highways anyway. Probably would add less than $1 per lane mile of reflector to the manufacturing costs to add something like an RFID tag that says "this is a [color] reflector". No other change in road construction required; just use tagged reflectors. Of course not all roads get reflectors - I suppose tags could be embedded in the striping, but that would likely require changes to the striping equipment.

Also autonomous vehicles with accurate enough location tracking could map the lanes when visible and use the location tracking with previously developed maps when visibility is poor.

dougules

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #57 on: March 28, 2019, 12:21:03 PM »
Jesus, as much as I like the idea of self-driving vehicles, I'm really having trouble seeing it go full tilt in snowy/icy area's, or the worst, snowy with hills...  Like the testing they did in Pittsburgh.  I don't like driving all that much in snow (I'm in lake effect the snow-belt), and I sure as hell can't see me at this time, being in a SD vehicle in those type of conditions.  Any links of how they deal with the issues I raise?

Humans suck at driving in those conditions though.

I live in a frozen hellscape and on snowstorm days, 100+ accidents by 9am is not unusual. It's a frozen hellscape here every year, and yet almost no one here has specific winter driving training. There are courses, they are incredibly useful, and no one takes them.

All of the self driving cars will automatically use all of the techniques for handling slipping that local motorists have never bothered to learn. They also probably won't drive way too fast out of frustration with traffic, and if the self driving cars are all networked, then other cars will be able to anticipate the moves of merging vehicles.

Also, yes, as PP said, self driving cars need detectable lines in the road. OK, so eventually lines that don't need to be seen to be detected will be installed. Easy.

We may not be there yet, but the capacity is there for self driving cars to be INFINITELY safer than the idiot yahoos who currently occupy the road.

Ever driven in Montreal?
I would take a fleet of drunk robots over Montreal drivers any day.

Self driving of course has flaws, I just simply have no faith in humans to be collectively safe behind the wheel. We are TERRIBLE drivers. Truly, exceptionally, unreasonably terrible drivers.

From a different perspective, I'm in a place where we get significant snowfall only about once every couple of winters.  It's not enough to be worth the equipment to clear the roads, so most natives just stay home until it melts. 

We do have a lot of people who've moved in from further north.  I tell them that they may have experience driving in snow, but that's not relevant.  Bubba in the huge truck behind them probably doesn't. 

Once it's a mature technology I'd much rather see an automated vehicle behind me in the snow than a human driver. 


...
THE SELF DRIVING CAR IS THE WORST BOOMERTECH, END RUN, TECHNOCRAT NIGHTMARE SOLUTION TO A PROBLEM EVER.
...
[long anti tech/car rant cropped]
So Waymo's self driving cars have successfully driven over 10,000,000 miles with only causing 1 accident that I know of so far which is a far better rate than most humans.  So your anti tech rant is  unfair.  The technology does work and works very well when you aren't cutting corner (looking at you uber). 

I understand you also just hate cars in general, but they are a necessity for much of the country that is too sparsely populated and spread out not to mention other factors like disabilities, injuries, and inhospitable weather.

A web browser doesn't need to be 100% reliable, so it's not tested to the same level.  The problem with the 737 Max looks like it's more about "Sure, Boeing, we here at the FAA will take your word for it" than whether or not systems can be developed that are safe.  And they only have to be safer than human pilots. 

I completely agree with the fact the whole hype glosses over the fact it still has all the other problems of over-reliance on cars.  Most of the US may be very spread out, but 80% of the population is concentrated in urban areas.  Saying the US is too spread out not to need cars is either untrue or just bad planning for most of the population. 

EricEng

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #58 on: March 28, 2019, 01:40:19 PM »
I completely agree with the fact the whole hype glosses over the fact it still has all the other problems of over-reliance on cars.  Most of the US may be very spread out, but 80% of the population is concentrated in urban areas.  Saying the US is too spread out not to need cars is either untrue or just bad planning for most of the population.
Statistic without context.  Most of the US is in suburbs or exurbs.  The definition of being "urban" is simply 2,500+ people in close proximity.  That's a pretty low bar. 
https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/11/data-most-american-neighborhoods-suburban/575602/
Vast majority of people live way to far from work, food, shopping to be without cars in US.  New York City is the exception, not the rule.

scottish

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #59 on: March 28, 2019, 05:08:32 PM »
imo long haul trucking will be a prime candidate for this first.

You have far less city driving, far more long stretches. There are multiple economic factors driving it.



Totally agree with this statement. Straight runs with doubles and triples.

Except we already have this.   It's way more fuel efficient than conventional trucking, it doesn't compete for space on the interstate or transcanada, and it has a very low operator requirement.    Best of all the technology is mature and doesn't require billions to develop.


LennStar

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #60 on: March 29, 2019, 02:05:31 AM »
I completely agree with the fact the whole hype glosses over the fact it still has all the other problems of over-reliance on cars.  Most of the US may be very spread out, but 80% of the population is concentrated in urban areas.  Saying the US is too spread out not to need cars is either untrue or just bad planning for most of the population.
Statistic without context.  Most of the US is in suburbs or exurbs.  The definition of being "urban" is simply 2,500+ people in close proximity.  That's a pretty low bar. 
https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/11/data-most-american-neighborhoods-suburban/575602/
Vast majority of people live way to far from work, food, shopping to be without cars in US.  New York City is the exception, not the rule.
Yeah, the prime example of bad planning. Suburbs.

dougules

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #61 on: March 29, 2019, 11:04:31 AM »
I completely agree with the fact the whole hype glosses over the fact it still has all the other problems of over-reliance on cars.  Most of the US may be very spread out, but 80% of the population is concentrated in urban areas.  Saying the US is too spread out not to need cars is either untrue or just bad planning for most of the population.
Statistic without context.  Most of the US is in suburbs or exurbs.  The definition of being "urban" is simply 2,500+ people in close proximity.  That's a pretty low bar. 
https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/11/data-most-american-neighborhoods-suburban/575602/
Vast majority of people live way to far from work, food, shopping to be without cars in US.  New York City is the exception, not the rule.

As I said, just bad planning. 

Askel

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #62 on: March 30, 2019, 05:54:53 AM »
Automated driving is an inevitability.  By 2025 the evidence will be indisputable that it is safer than human driving in all circumstances.  By 2030 more miles will be driven automated than by humans.  By 2035-2040 human driving will be outlawed or otherwise eliminated, most likely by being uninsurable.

2050 . . . skynet.  :P

I'm thinking more a Brazil-esque dystopia where nothing works quite right and we're all forced to buy self driving cars not because they are safer or better, but because we need to prop up an auto industry that's "too big to fail". Bicycles are banned from public roadways because we couldn't quite figure out how to keep the cars from mowing them down. 

Meanwhile, some bureaucrat mistypes your street name in some database and everybody's car parked on that street suddenly thinks it's lost and drives off looking for home. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKAc6yJI_fw

sherr

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #63 on: April 01, 2019, 06:53:29 AM »
imo long haul trucking will be a prime candidate for this first.

You have far less city driving, far more long stretches. There are multiple economic factors driving it.

Totally agree with this statement. Straight runs with doubles and triples.

Except we already have this.   It's way more fuel efficient than conventional trucking, it doesn't compete for space on the interstate or transcanada, and it has a very low operator requirement.    Best of all the technology is mature and doesn't require billions to develop.

<picture of a train>

What exactly is your point? We have both trains and human-driven semis today. Are you assuming that the entire shipping industry is incompetent and doesn't know what it's doing?

Mississippi Mudstache

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #64 on: April 01, 2019, 07:27:11 AM »
imo long haul trucking will be a prime candidate for this first.

You have far less city driving, far more long stretches. There are multiple economic factors driving it.

Totally agree with this statement. Straight runs with doubles and triples.

Except we already have this.   It's way more fuel efficient than conventional trucking, it doesn't compete for space on the interstate or transcanada, and it has a very low operator requirement.    Best of all the technology is mature and doesn't require billions to develop.

<picture of a train>

What exactly is your point? We have both trains and human-driven semis today. Are you assuming that the entire shipping industry is incompetent and doesn't know what it's doing?

This makes me think of a quip from a fellow I know who built a lumber business from the ground up and was quite successful with it: "If you want it to get there on time, use a truck; if you want it to get there eventually, use a train."

There is absolutely a place for self-driving technology in the transportation sector, and the "just use a train" crowd is glossing over some severe limitations. It doesn't really make sense to think of the two as interchangeable - they each serve a valuable role, and if they didn't we wouldn't have them both. I work in the lumber industry, and a common arrangement is for sawmills deliver their lumber (comprising a very specific order of sizes/grade with a tight delivery window) by truck, while the residuals (commodity products like chips, bark, sawdust that are used for pulp/paper or burned for fuel) are delivered by train. I can assure you that the business that operate these mills have spent considerable effort to figure out the most cost effective means of delivery for their products.

LennStar

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #65 on: April 01, 2019, 08:26:17 AM »
imo long haul trucking will be a prime candidate for this first.

You have far less city driving, far more long stretches. There are multiple economic factors driving it.

Totally agree with this statement. Straight runs with doubles and triples.

Except we already have this.   It's way more fuel efficient than conventional trucking, it doesn't compete for space on the interstate or transcanada, and it has a very low operator requirement.    Best of all the technology is mature and doesn't require billions to develop.

<picture of a train>

What exactly is your point? We have both trains and human-driven semis today. Are you assuming that the entire shipping industry is incompetent and doesn't know what it's doing?

This makes me think of a quip from a fellow I know who built a lumber business from the ground up and was quite successful with it: "If you want it to get there on time, use a truck; if you want it to get there eventually, use a train."

There is absolutely a place for self-driving technology in the transportation sector, and the "just use a train" crowd is glossing over some severe limitations. It doesn't really make sense to think of the two as interchangeable - they each serve a valuable role, and if they didn't we wouldn't have them both. I work in the lumber industry, and a common arrangement is for sawmills deliver their lumber (comprising a very specific order of sizes/grade with a tight delivery window) by truck, while the residuals (commodity products like chips, bark, sawdust that are used for pulp/paper or burned for fuel) are delivered by train. I can assure you that the business that operate these mills have spent considerable effort to figure out the most cost effective means of delivery for their products.

And that is exactly the point of problem, because the "most cost effective" way is only the most cost effective because a lot of the costs is not in the calculation. For example cost of CO2 in climate change damage. Usage of land. Other pollution.

EricEng

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #66 on: April 01, 2019, 09:50:43 AM »
I completely agree with the fact the whole hype glosses over the fact it still has all the other problems of over-reliance on cars.  Most of the US may be very spread out, but 80% of the population is concentrated in urban areas.  Saying the US is too spread out not to need cars is either untrue or just bad planning for most of the population.
Statistic without context.  Most of the US is in suburbs or exurbs.  The definition of being "urban" is simply 2,500+ people in close proximity.  That's a pretty low bar. 
https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/11/data-most-american-neighborhoods-suburban/575602/
Vast majority of people live way to far from work, food, shopping to be without cars in US.  New York City is the exception, not the rule.

As I said, just bad planning.
Bad planning?  Starting when?  1700s? 1600s?  The US has always been a huge amount of land with a relatively small population for the size.  Other countries avoided this by having lots of people in a small space, ie: Japan, Western Europe, Southern England.  The US spread out for many reasons and not simply bad planning.  People historically don't voluntarily choose to live like sardines in dense urban areas, just recently (like last 30-40 years), that has become more hospitable.  No amount of planning would have prevented this short of extreme govt intervention dictating no one could live X distance from a city center.  A lot of this sprawl happened before those dense city centers even existed.  Were people supposed to build dense super tall buildings exclusively initially in unpopulated prairie land?

Mississippi Mudstache

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #67 on: April 01, 2019, 10:26:47 AM »
And that is exactly the point of problem, because the "most cost effective" way is only the most cost effective because a lot of the costs is not in the calculation. For example cost of CO2 in climate change damage. Usage of land. Other pollution.

It's a tragedy of the commons type of problem, and in this case, the "commons" (the global climate & atmosphere) is too large to expect any sort of cooperation among the individuals who depend on it. We must depend governments to intercede on our behalf, and so far our own government refuses to even formally acknowledge that the problem exists. You can't expect individuals and corporations to price in the negative externalities out of the goodness of their precious little hearts, because they'll simply become less competitive and lose market share to the entities that ignore the externalities. We are dealing in reality.

dougules

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #68 on: April 01, 2019, 10:36:22 AM »
I completely agree with the fact the whole hype glosses over the fact it still has all the other problems of over-reliance on cars.  Most of the US may be very spread out, but 80% of the population is concentrated in urban areas.  Saying the US is too spread out not to need cars is either untrue or just bad planning for most of the population.
Statistic without context.  Most of the US is in suburbs or exurbs.  The definition of being "urban" is simply 2,500+ people in close proximity.  That's a pretty low bar. 
https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/11/data-most-american-neighborhoods-suburban/575602/
Vast majority of people live way to far from work, food, shopping to be without cars in US.  New York City is the exception, not the rule.

As I said, just bad planning.
Bad planning?  Starting when?  1700s? 1600s?  The US has always been a huge amount of land with a relatively small population for the size.  Other countries avoided this by having lots of people in a small space, ie: Japan, Western Europe, Southern England.  The US spread out for many reasons and not simply bad planning.  People historically don't voluntarily choose to live like sardines in dense urban areas, just recently (like last 30-40 years), that has become more hospitable.  No amount of planning would have prevented this short of extreme govt intervention dictating no one could live X distance from a city center.  A lot of this sprawl happened before those dense city centers even existed.  Were people supposed to build dense super tall buildings exclusively initially in unpopulated prairie land?

The US does have huge areas with sparse population, but only a small fraction of the US population lives in areas like that.  New Jersey is more dense than Japan, and far more people live in places like New Jersey than Montana or Nebraska.  It doesn't matter how dense the country as a whole is, but how dense the areas people actually live in are. 

Planning and government intervention is exactly what put us here in the first place.  We already had a lot of people living in dense cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, etc.  We created policies that destroyed the urban fabric of those places while also making folks in those areas subsidize sprawl. Yes, planning could have prevented this because extreme govt intervention is what actually created the way our cities are currently laid out. 

Also, you don't need the density of Manhattan to create an environment where a car is not a necessity.  The current density of a lot of suburbs would work if it weren't for issues like the streets being disconnected, lack of sidewalks, lack of bicycle infrastructure, and opposition to mass transit.  Our suburbs were laid out with the idea that people would never walk again, or sometimes purposefully to keep pedestrians out. 
« Last Edit: April 01, 2019, 10:46:30 AM by dougules »

Askel

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #69 on: April 01, 2019, 10:41:56 AM »
Lack of population density is not a sufficient argument against public transport.  I live in quite possibly one of the most rural areas of the midwest. We still manage to somehow pick every kid up right outside their house and deliver them to school dang near every day. 

Solving the same problem for adults who can likely navigate a public transit transfer or two does not require a fleet of cars that can drive themselves. 

LennStar

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #70 on: April 01, 2019, 01:16:30 PM »
Bad planning?  Starting when?  1700s? 1600s?  The US has always been a huge amount of land with a relatively small population for the size.  Other countries avoided this by having lots of people in a small space, ie: Japan, Western Europe, Southern England.  The US spread out for many reasons and not simply bad planning.  People historically don't voluntarily choose to live like sardines in dense urban areas, just recently (like last 30-40 years), that has become more hospitable.  No amount of planning would have prevented this short of extreme govt intervention dictating no one could live X distance from a city center.  A lot of this sprawl happened before those dense city centers even existed.  Were people supposed to build dense super tall buildings exclusively initially in unpopulated prairie land?
Historically "everyone" lived in either villages or dense cities. Walkable distances.

But in the case of the US especially the car-city ideology was extremely intensive, like dougules said even with areas completely without sidewalks.

I strongly recommend reading about the comparison between North America and Japan on zoning planning. Very interesting stuff.
https://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/euclidian-zoning.html
https://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html


Shane

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #71 on: April 02, 2019, 09:47:04 AM »
Bad planning?  Starting when?  1700s? 1600s?  The US has always been a huge amount of land with a relatively small population for the size.  Other countries avoided this by having lots of people in a small space, ie: Japan, Western Europe, Southern England.  The US spread out for many reasons and not simply bad planning.  People historically don't voluntarily choose to live like sardines in dense urban areas, just recently (like last 30-40 years), that has become more hospitable.  No amount of planning would have prevented this short of extreme govt intervention dictating no one could live X distance from a city center.  A lot of this sprawl happened before those dense city centers even existed.  Were people supposed to build dense super tall buildings exclusively initially in unpopulated prairie land?
Historically "everyone" lived in either villages or dense cities. Walkable distances.

But in the case of the US especially the car-city ideology was extremely intensive, like dougules said even with areas completely without sidewalks.

I strongly recommend reading about the comparison between North America and Japan on zoning planning. Very interesting stuff.
https://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/euclidian-zoning.html
https://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
Interesting links. Thanks for sharing, @LennStar

There's definitely room for improvement in the way local governments do zoning in North America. Allowing more density to develop gradually by permitting multi-family dwellings, i.e., duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, etc, in neighborhoods with existing single-family homes, sounds like a good way to do it. Insisting that only single-family dwellings be permitted in residential neighborhoods drives up the cost of housing out of the reach of working and middle class families. Apparently, according to the links above, that was the purpose behind the Euclidian Zoning model we use in NA. It was to exclude POC and poor people from living in "good" neighborhoods, by making it too expensive for them to buy and impossible for them to find anything to rent...

LennStar

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #72 on: April 02, 2019, 10:19:12 AM »
Interesting links. Thanks for sharing, @LennStar
Funnily enough the US zoning is extremely "socialist" while the Japanese is extremely free market, though enacted by fairly "socialist" planners.

scottish

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #73 on: April 02, 2019, 05:54:51 PM »
And that is exactly the point of problem, because the "most cost effective" way is only the most cost effective because a lot of the costs is not in the calculation. For example cost of CO2 in climate change damage. Usage of land. Other pollution.

It's a tragedy of the commons type of problem, and in this case, the "commons" (the global climate & atmosphere) is too large to expect any sort of cooperation among the individuals who depend on it. We must depend governments to intercede on our behalf, and so far our own government refuses to even formally acknowledge that the problem exists. You can't expect individuals and corporations to price in the negative externalities out of the goodness of their precious little hearts, because they'll simply become less competitive and lose market share to the entities that ignore the externalities. We are dealing in reality.

I thought the reason people are promoting convoys of self-driving trucks is to save fuel reduce carbon output.    The trucks drive closely together so they draft each other.   The automation reduces the need for staff.    The whole approach reduces operator costs.

But convoys of self-driving trucks will plug up the freeways pretty badly.   And they're dangerous - the results of a collision between a tractor-trailer rig and a passenger car or light truck are always bad for the smaller vehicle.

We're willing to invest billions and billions in a highly complex technology based solution to a problem that is largely solved by trains already.   Yes, trains have problems.    They have to go to a railyard to off-load goods and put them on trucks for local deliveries.    Train scheduling needs to be improved for timeliness.

But these problems are much easier to solve than inventing self-driving technology.    People like the idea of self driving trucks because they're flashy and cool, not because they're a great solution.

Get the big rigs off our highways!   


ender

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #74 on: April 02, 2019, 06:38:48 PM »
We're willing to invest billions and billions in a highly complex technology based solution to a problem that is largely solved by trains already.   Yes, trains have problems.    They have to go to a railyard to off-load goods and put them on trucks for local deliveries.    Train scheduling needs to be improved for timeliness.

But these problems are much easier to solve than inventing self-driving technology.    People like the idea of self driving trucks because they're flashy and cool, not because they're a great solution.

Citation needed?

Most of the United States doesn't have remotely the rail infrastructure to do what you are suggesting.

Linea_Norway

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #75 on: April 03, 2019, 12:34:04 AM »
My DH thinks self driving cars might need to wait until the roads have been modified for them. They could for example put electronic midt stripes and side stripes into a road and devices that gives warnings about speed or other information. They could then wirelessly transmit it to the cars. This would work equally well with snowy conditions. The self driving cars could then only be allowed to drive on those approved roads. The cars would have to be hybrid, so that the owner can drive him/herself on the remaining roads.

Mississippi Mudstache

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #76 on: April 03, 2019, 07:15:48 AM »
We're willing to invest billions and billions in a highly complex technology based solution to a problem that is largely solved by trains already.   Yes, trains have problems.    They have to go to a railyard to off-load goods and put them on trucks for local deliveries.    Train scheduling needs to be improved for timeliness.

But these problems are much easier to solve than inventing self-driving technology.    People like the idea of self driving trucks because they're flashy and cool, not because they're a great solution.

Citation needed?

Most of the United States doesn't have remotely the rail infrastructure to do what you are suggesting.

Yeah, seriously. I work for a firm that, among other things, helps big corporations decide where to build manufacturing facilities. When they specify rail access as one of the required criteria, it drastically winnows the range of available sites because coverage is so poor in some parts of the country. And they never just want "rail access". It has to be a rail line owned or managed by one or two specific rail companies, which further narrows the field. Imagine if USPS, UPS, and Fedex controlled various highways, and you could only send your goods down the highways controlled by one company. That's what you're dealing with when you ship by rail. Rail transportation has serious limitations that I don't think you are fully aware of, and they're not solvable by just telling the rail companies to improve their timeliness.

dougules

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #77 on: April 03, 2019, 10:36:09 AM »
We're willing to invest billions and billions in a highly complex technology based solution to a problem that is largely solved by trains already.   Yes, trains have problems.    They have to go to a railyard to off-load goods and put them on trucks for local deliveries.    Train scheduling needs to be improved for timeliness.

But these problems are much easier to solve than inventing self-driving technology.    People like the idea of self driving trucks because they're flashy and cool, not because they're a great solution.

Citation needed?

Most of the United States doesn't have remotely the rail infrastructure to do what you are suggesting.

Yeah, seriously. I work for a firm that, among other things, helps big corporations decide where to build manufacturing facilities. When they specify rail access as one of the required criteria, it drastically winnows the range of available sites because coverage is so poor in some parts of the country. And they never just want "rail access". It has to be a rail line owned or managed by one or two specific rail companies, which further narrows the field. Imagine if USPS, UPS, and Fedex controlled various highways, and you could only send your goods down the highways controlled by one company. That's what you're dealing with when you ship by rail. Rail transportation has serious limitations that I don't think you are fully aware of, and they're not solvable by just telling the rail companies to improve their timeliness.

What's sad is that the US had double the amount of tracks it does now, and passenger service was fairly extensive.  My hometown was where the Union Army stopped trains on the most important railroad in the South during the Civil War.  Now we don't even have Amtrak.  My dad's hometown of 600 people had passenger train service even when he was a kid. 

You're basically saying we're not capable of doing again what we already did once with 19th century technology. 

Askel

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #78 on: April 03, 2019, 10:40:51 AM »
I promise not to be (too much of) a dick if we have to reverse a few rails to trails projects in the name of public transportation.

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #79 on: April 04, 2019, 09:15:27 AM »
I promise not to be (too much of) a dick if we have to reverse a few rails to trails projects in the name of public transportation.
Most of the rails to trails projects I am aware of are abandoned local rail, not long distance rail lines. Road infrastructure crossing the rail lines has also often been developed in a way that would be incomparable with returning the line to rail service, so there likely would be push back from both the trail users and the drivers in the area.

Local passenger rail service was deliberately dismantled by the automobile industry in the mid twentieth century. They bought up the lines, converted them to bus lines, then shut them down when they were not profitable as bus lines.

Askel

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #80 on: April 04, 2019, 09:25:00 AM »
Local passenger rail service was deliberately dismantled by the automobile industry in the mid twentieth century. They bought up the lines, converted them to bus lines, then shut them down when they were not profitable as bus lines.

Yep, I learned all about it from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"

https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/moviesandtv/features/14901-Who-Framed-Roger-Rabbit-Is-Based-On-True-Story-of-Los-Angeles-Fr

ender

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #81 on: April 04, 2019, 09:56:18 AM »
What's sad is that the US had double the amount of tracks it does now, and passenger service was fairly extensive.  My hometown was where the Union Army stopped trains on the most important railroad in the South during the Civil War.  Now we don't even have Amtrak.  My dad's hometown of 600 people had passenger train service even when he was a kid. 

You're basically saying we're not capable of doing again what we already did once with 19th century technology.

I mean, we could do that trivially. The question is whether it makes sense.

You already see a lot more passenger rail transportation in areas where there is high population density. Mass transit in general is way more popular there.

Suburban sprawl though basically causes mass transit to either become super expensive or not effective. Mass transit works well when you can... well, mass transport people. Suburban population density is low enough you either need tons of routes running or people need to accept inconvenient schedules. Neither of which are that great along the "makes sense" perspective.

And that is all assuming that the cost and time for driving is enough of a difference to offset the convenience factors.


dougules

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #82 on: April 05, 2019, 10:32:02 AM »
What's sad is that the US had double the amount of tracks it does now, and passenger service was fairly extensive.  My hometown was where the Union Army stopped trains on the most important railroad in the South during the Civil War.  Now we don't even have Amtrak.  My dad's hometown of 600 people had passenger train service even when he was a kid. 

You're basically saying we're not capable of doing again what we already did once with 19th century technology.

I mean, we could do that trivially. The question is whether it makes sense.

You already see a lot more passenger rail transportation in areas where there is high population density. Mass transit in general is way more popular there.

Suburban sprawl though basically causes mass transit to either become super expensive or not effective. Mass transit works well when you can... well, mass transport people. Suburban population density is low enough you either need tons of routes running or people need to accept inconvenient schedules. Neither of which are that great along the "makes sense" perspective.

And that is all assuming that the cost and time for driving is enough of a difference to offset the convenience factors.

I think density is only part of it.  A lot of places have no sidewalks, and the places that do are not in any way pleasant to walk.  Also mass transit in low density areas generally tends to be buses mixed into regular traffic.  They get stuck in the same traffic as cars, so there's no advantage.  If there is enough traffic to back cars up, though, that means there are enough people to easily fill a bus.  What would really work is to have dedicated bus lanes and to give buses priority at lights.  BRT works really well. 

People think mass transit won't work in the suburbs because when the suburbs try to do mass transit, they generally phone it in.  If they did try to add real mass transit, people would be up in arms about having one less car lane or poor people getting access to their neighborhood. 

Mississippi Mudstache

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #83 on: April 05, 2019, 12:21:42 PM »
We're willing to invest billions and billions in a highly complex technology based solution to a problem that is largely solved by trains already.   Yes, trains have problems.    They have to go to a railyard to off-load goods and put them on trucks for local deliveries.    Train scheduling needs to be improved for timeliness.

But these problems are much easier to solve than inventing self-driving technology.    People like the idea of self driving trucks because they're flashy and cool, not because they're a great solution.

Citation needed?

Most of the United States doesn't have remotely the rail infrastructure to do what you are suggesting.

Yeah, seriously. I work for a firm that, among other things, helps big corporations decide where to build manufacturing facilities. When they specify rail access as one of the required criteria, it drastically winnows the range of available sites because coverage is so poor in some parts of the country. And they never just want "rail access". It has to be a rail line owned or managed by one or two specific rail companies, which further narrows the field. Imagine if USPS, UPS, and Fedex controlled various highways, and you could only send your goods down the highways controlled by one company. That's what you're dealing with when you ship by rail. Rail transportation has serious limitations that I don't think you are fully aware of, and they're not solvable by just telling the rail companies to improve their timeliness.

What's sad is that the US had double the amount of tracks it does now, and passenger service was fairly extensive.  My hometown was where the Union Army stopped trains on the most important railroad in the South during the Civil War.  Now we don't even have Amtrak.  My dad's hometown of 600 people had passenger train service even when he was a kid. 

You're basically saying we're not capable of doing again what we already did once with 19th century technology.

No, I'm saying that we can't do it cost-competitively. At least, not without accounting for the negative externalities of excessive fossil fuel consumption. Do you actually believe that transportation was more efficient in the 19th century?

Hell, I love trains. Riding from Hattiesburg to Atlanta on Amtrak was bliss when I lived in Mississippi. Comfortable, inexpensive, and almost as fast as driving. But the stars have to line up perfectly for it to make sense. We had an Amtrak station less than a mile from our house in McComb, MS. We once looked up what it would cost to go straight from there to visit my wife's family in Florence, SC (since they both have Amtrak stations). 40 hours and $800 bucks, with the route taking us through Chicago. The McComb rail line only runs north/south, so it was useless to anyone heading east/west. We had to drive an hour and a half east to the Hattiesburg station for the rail to be useful. Even then, there was no good way to get to Florence.

BudgetSlasher

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #84 on: April 06, 2019, 06:01:12 PM »
Self-driving cars just have to be safer than the average person on average.  As soon as that happens, it would be immoral to allow people to drive for themselves any more . . . because you know that it will cause more accidents/deaths/injuries than fully automated vehicle fleets.

Once we get to that point it will be difficult if not impossible to get insurance for self-driving.

I highly doubt that.

As a practicality even if we perfect the self driving aspect, the average age of a car on the road in the US is around 12 years old. So assuming a switch all self-driving all the time the second it become better than the average driver it will be decades before you have near-complete switch out (and that is a big assumption both in timing and going straight to self driving). In the between time there will be a need for insurance on the existing fleet.

Second you can still insure cars that are objectively less safe than a modern vehicle, even if it is through a collectible policy. A car that didn't come with ABS, air bags, pre-tensioning seat belts, or any host of modern safety and survivability features can still be registered, insured, and driven. I see no reason that self driving cars and the existing fleet wouldn't follow a similar pattern.

dougules

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Re: Self driving cars may be less safe than people driven cars
« Reply #85 on: April 08, 2019, 10:36:30 AM »
We're willing to invest billions and billions in a highly complex technology based solution to a problem that is largely solved by trains already.   Yes, trains have problems.    They have to go to a railyard to off-load goods and put them on trucks for local deliveries.    Train scheduling needs to be improved for timeliness.

But these problems are much easier to solve than inventing self-driving technology.    People like the idea of self driving trucks because they're flashy and cool, not because they're a great solution.

Citation needed?

Most of the United States doesn't have remotely the rail infrastructure to do what you are suggesting.

Yeah, seriously. I work for a firm that, among other things, helps big corporations decide where to build manufacturing facilities. When they specify rail access as one of the required criteria, it drastically winnows the range of available sites because coverage is so poor in some parts of the country. And they never just want "rail access". It has to be a rail line owned or managed by one or two specific rail companies, which further narrows the field. Imagine if USPS, UPS, and Fedex controlled various highways, and you could only send your goods down the highways controlled by one company. That's what you're dealing with when you ship by rail. Rail transportation has serious limitations that I don't think you are fully aware of, and they're not solvable by just telling the rail companies to improve their timeliness.

What's sad is that the US had double the amount of tracks it does now, and passenger service was fairly extensive.  My hometown was where the Union Army stopped trains on the most important railroad in the South during the Civil War.  Now we don't even have Amtrak.  My dad's hometown of 600 people had passenger train service even when he was a kid. 

You're basically saying we're not capable of doing again what we already did once with 19th century technology.

No, I'm saying that we can't do it cost-competitively. At least, not without accounting for the negative externalities of excessive fossil fuel consumption. Do you actually believe that transportation was more efficient in the 19th century?

Hell, I love trains. Riding from Hattiesburg to Atlanta on Amtrak was bliss when I lived in Mississippi. Comfortable, inexpensive, and almost as fast as driving. But the stars have to line up perfectly for it to make sense. We had an Amtrak station less than a mile from our house in McComb, MS. We once looked up what it would cost to go straight from there to visit my wife's family in Florence, SC (since they both have Amtrak stations). 40 hours and $800 bucks, with the route taking us through Chicago. The McComb rail line only runs north/south, so it was useless to anyone heading east/west. We had to drive an hour and a half east to the Hattiesburg station for the rail to be useful. Even then, there was no good way to get to Florence.

No, transportation wasn't more efficient back then, and trains probably only make sense for routes between major cities these days.  Some of the reason it doesn't work, though, is just that so much of the network is missing.  Back in the day you could have gotten on at McComb then changed lines to go east from Jackson (same one my dad grew up by).  The more of the network you take out, the less useful the remaining lines are. 

Realistically bus works much better these days, but nobody is serious about making it work.  It's really easy to get around in Latin America by bus.  I think we could do the same. 

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!