That's 20 linear feet of space on nearly all our streets for sidewalks, bikes, restaurants, green spaces, or whatever else.
Given Unions and AB5 I'd like to see how driverless is embraced California
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Assembly_Bill_5_(20...
You missed this word. Presently they do not behave predictably and consequently sometimes do not follow the rules. That they might one day achieve these attributes is speculation.
This is a really niave take.
Sure they follow rules as well as any other computer but they're gonna be following a set of rules different than the human drivers around them. That's a recipe for a ton of minor accidents.
Hmmm... a "different set of rules than humans" aka following the actual laws that were designed for safety rather than the human rules of "whatever maximizes my personal convenience"
But on the other hand, city environment is very unpredictable and lots of other actors there don't follow the rules. It'll be great in long term, but transition will be really hard.
* Notice me attempting to use a crosswalk and choose not to yield
* Drive dangerously close behind my bicycle while honking for additional intimidation
* Pass my bicycle at obviously unsafe distances
* Park in crosswalks
* Blatantly disregard lane markings
* Run stop signs
* Pittsburgh left turns
Not with the amount of ML, particularly DNN, involved.
If we enabled more people to bike for our commutes and just use a driverless car (or a taxi/Lyft) for shopping, car ownership would be much less essential, and car rush hour would be a thing of the past.
I just hope they put a bike rack on the Cruise cars. :-)
The end result is 'food deserts' where one has to have a car to drive out to get food.
They might not leave a note on your windshield but they would surely acknowledge the accident and as a company, would have to cooperate with any investigations. It's not some random dude that if they hit and run off you will never see them again.
Tesla and Uber have shown that this is not the case. Tesla tries to throw the driver under the bus or, if that fails, the victim, and Uber has acted especially despicably after their fatal crash.
Perhaps "traditional" car manufacturers with less of a cult behind them will take the PR route, but the behaviour of current companies involved in self-driving vehicles isn't very encouraging.
The cars have a handbook for safety drivers and the case is handled like almost any other accident. This system was put in place following the first accident that occurred near the SF courthouse years ago (safety drivers were hired following that crash).
What happens if there's no safety driver? Remote assistance is there, and the city is not a large place if you have to recover a wayward robot. I am not a lawyer; there will probably be some regulation eventually.
Although self-driving is a hard problem, automatically determining that the car may have had an accident and alerting humans in your control center is a much easier problem. I imagine the control center humans would be responsible for calling 911 if there was an injured human. They would probably be able to see out all the cameras in the car to help make that determination, or if the cameras are all malfunctioning you probably want to dispatch ambulances anyway.
The technologies are orthogonal, but I do think it does make sense to pursue both of these things together. EVs are much more energy efficient. They will cost less energy to run. The choice to go to EVs also makes sense if you think about robotaxis, as EVs will require much less maintenance, they have much fewer moving parts.
You also have the environmental argument to consider. Gasoline-powered Uber rides are not environmentally friendly. The general assumption is that robotaxis will decrease the price-per-ride to the point where there will be a big shift towards less people owning cars, and probably also less people using mass transit. That will mean less people taking buses and more people in cars. If all of your robotaxis are EVs, this is less of a concern.
I found this fact to be extremely surprising. Based on looking at daily traffic patterns, I would have assumed that there are fewer deaths on the road this year than previous years.
It's a strange shift in branding that has occurred over the last 10 years of social media, where once companies were very cautious on branding and required everything to be on their own domains, but are now comfortable making announcements on platforms that are not self hosted (e.g medium, but also Twitter, FB etc)
Oh yeah that's totally my response to a quiet road, "hey kids, not much traffic, pop those boring old belts". Come to that how much of the USA actually allows people to not wear belts ? Surely not much ?
Because their sort of car-pool thing with no wheel or place for a driver is going to make people think twice at least with Covid right now. Maybe that's why Kyle's video is at the bottom and not mentioned in the article.
I feel like a big issue holding back small pod transport is the fact that vehicles are generally all designed for many passengers and 3000 pounds. And I think a big part of that is safety. The likelihood of death for a really small single passenger vehicle is just much greater with all of these massive cars on the road (generally with only one occupant).
In my mind there is room (especially in places like Texas) for new types of smart cities. And you can build them from the outset with autonomous single-passenger small pods in mind. In my scenario the regular vehicles would need to be parked away in a commuter hub and the transportation in the city would be fully automated. This will save a lot of energy with very small single passenger vehicles as compared to the 5+ passenger vehicles normally taken by individuals around town. And in this city there is no danger of the small pods running into a larger vehicle driven by a human since it's not permitted.
I am actually thinking some of these companies may be doing a redesign where the shared space of the pool cars are broken up into little airtight compartments. Personally I would prefer that even if there wasn't a pandemic.
