I'd rather wait for the self-driving transportation we have to actually be used and built: trains and subways. It makes nearly zero sense to replace single low occupancy cars with the exact same occupancy but orders of magnitude more cost and blurred responsibility.
I assume that safety will only increase as the proportion rises.
I assume that safety will drastically decrease as self-driving cars are introduced.
I’m a huge public transit fan, but let’s not let perfect be the enemy of better.
I live at a train stop in SF. I take a bus to work. Public transit is great. I still use Waymo sometimes because coverage isn’t always amazing at all times. Sometimes I’m in a rush, sometimes I want some privacy, sometimes I’m carrying some heavy things.
Replacing low-occupancy human driven vehicles with low-occupancy robot driven vehicles is good if they’re safer. Today, they’ve proven to be safer. Today, lives are saved because a human driver chose not to drive. If a private individual wants to pay more (<2x, not a single order of magnitude), then let them. There is no reason that the private introduction of self driving cars needs to stop the investment in public transit.
Let us save lives on the road to the future, even if some stops along the way aren’t your chosen stops.
I haven't seen that data. Do these cars drive in rainy, wet, snowy weather or in cities with crazy streets such as the northeastern United States? Not that I know of. I think it's a wild leap to suggest they're safer already today.
You can unambiguously claim they are safer the moment Waymo reports parity with L5 automation criteria. Until that happens you're talking about a system that by Waymo's own admission under-performs human drivers.
What is so magical about L5 criteria? Today Waymo is performing drives on public roads, and it’s safer than a human. Today. With whatever Lx criteria it meets. The label is irrelevant, all that matters is the mile-per-mile record of being safer.
Not sure what “Waymos own admission” means, but they out perform not underperform.
Nah. The automation criteria are very well defined. Waymo's current self-reported automation level means there are things human drivers can do, situations they're capable of navigating correctly, that their equipment can't cope with.
My car is also pretty terrible at making me breakfast in the morning. So what?
Parent's point is that in the context where they do work, they save lives. You're arguing about something else entirely - whether they work in all situations. But that's irrelevant.
Is it really? Look how often comments here and elsewhere express impatience that the majority of vehicles on the road aren't fully autonomous. Since we know there are conditions under which self-driving tech loses the plot, ubiquity would necessarily involve deploying self driving equipment under those very conditions with predictable results (see also FSB early adopter shitshow).
Because as I understand it L5 is parity with human capabilities. Until you clear that you're underperforming in some measurable way with what even mediocre human operators are capable of.
If a robot taxi can drive way better than a mediocre (read: every human driver when drunk/tired/angry) human can, but is geofence limited to a single area, that is an L4 system.
As a fellow driver, I don't care that they can't drive out of that area, I care if tf they're a safer driver.
It would absolutely be the wrong bar if there wasn't a steady drum beat of calls for ubiquity. "I can't wait until the majority of vehicles..." etc etc. This kind of uncritical optimism has already lead to some pretty wild outcomes with half-baked automation.
It gets blurry towards the edges. There are certainly roads I should not be driving on that competent 4WD folks are (in the right vehicles). I;ve also driven in winter conditions that felt very sketchy to me that I may have felt the need to drive in for work or other reasons. You don't always have the option to just Nope. I'm going to stay at home.
And, of course, if you otherwise basically never drive, you're probably a hazard in those marginal conditions.
They systematically get in less accidents, the accidents they do get in are not their fault, and they tend to be less dangerous when they occur. As I understand it, that unambiguously means outperforming.
We don’t need to remove every manual car in the world overnight, but this seems like a clear win, at least in the regions they operate. They don’t need to cure cancer and drive in every road condition at all times in all places and also not ever make any mistakes at all to be an improvement. “L5” is just a label, which I guess doesn’t apply, while “safer”, “less accident prone” are different labels, which do apply.
Self-driving vehicles can be symbiotic with mass transit. Autonomous taxis can make rail work better at low to moderate densities by shuttling people to stations. They can also ease the path to higher density development in car-centric suburbs by dropping people off at their destinations and then going to serve other riders or park out of the way, eliminating the need for density-killing parking lots immediately adjacent to businesses. As density rises in these areas, building mass transit will become more viable.
Nor does autonomy have to be limited to car-sized vehicles. It could be used for larger vehicles, perhaps intermediate between car and bus size — once you don't have to pay for a driver, operating a larger number of smaller vehicles is much more viable. These could be dynamically dispatched and routed, eliminating many drawbacks of existing bus service.
How many billions of both private and public funding has been put into public transportation solutions and technology instead of self-driving cars? The answer is basically 0. Self-driving cars is the most expensive Hot Wheels experiment ever. It's been well over a decade with barely anything to show except that they've replaced cars with more expensive cars that have muddy responsibility.
That's why you have to build and live more densely. The US absolutely refuses to do that, outside of Manhattan and a few select other places. It won't be a place where local trains make any economic sense until this changes.
However, for your "door to door" point, that's not desirable anyway. Even here in Tokyo, you have to walk a lot to get between your home and work or wherever you're going. That's a big, big part of why people here are so much thinner than Americans. Having transport that takes you door-to-door without any significant walking is terrible for your health.
Tokyo has taxis and Ubers. I take them quite frequently when there, even though the public transit is amazing. The fact it's blatantly obvious that robotaxis make a ton of sense in even one of the most transit-friendly cities in the world shows how wrong the OP is.
If your neighbourhood is pleasant and walkable, you don't need to be dropped off at the door. In most cases, the key barrier to walkability is removing the cars.
Comments
I'd rather wait for the self-driving transportation we have to actually be used and built: trains and subways. It makes nearly zero sense to replace single low occupancy cars with the exact same occupancy but orders of magnitude more cost and blurred responsibility.
I assume that safety will drastically decrease as self-driving cars are introduced.
I’m a huge public transit fan, but let’s not let perfect be the enemy of better.
I live at a train stop in SF. I take a bus to work. Public transit is great. I still use Waymo sometimes because coverage isn’t always amazing at all times. Sometimes I’m in a rush, sometimes I want some privacy, sometimes I’m carrying some heavy things.
Replacing low-occupancy human driven vehicles with low-occupancy robot driven vehicles is good if they’re safer. Today, they’ve proven to be safer. Today, lives are saved because a human driver chose not to drive. If a private individual wants to pay more (<2x, not a single order of magnitude), then let them. There is no reason that the private introduction of self driving cars needs to stop the investment in public transit.
Let us save lives on the road to the future, even if some stops along the way aren’t your chosen stops.
I haven't seen that data. Do these cars drive in rainy, wet, snowy weather or in cities with crazy streets such as the northeastern United States? Not that I know of. I think it's a wild leap to suggest they're safer already today.
You can unambiguously claim they are safer the moment Waymo reports parity with L5 automation criteria. Until that happens you're talking about a system that by Waymo's own admission under-performs human drivers.
Why? And what?
What is so magical about L5 criteria? Today Waymo is performing drives on public roads, and it’s safer than a human. Today. With whatever Lx criteria it meets. The label is irrelevant, all that matters is the mile-per-mile record of being safer.
Not sure what “Waymos own admission” means, but they out perform not underperform.
https://waymo.com/blog/2023/12/waymo-significantly-outperfor...
Nah. The automation criteria are very well defined. Waymo's current self-reported automation level means there are things human drivers can do, situations they're capable of navigating correctly, that their equipment can't cope with.
My car is also pretty terrible at making me breakfast in the morning. So what?
Parent's point is that in the context where they do work, they save lives. You're arguing about something else entirely - whether they work in all situations. But that's irrelevant.
Is it really? Look how often comments here and elsewhere express impatience that the majority of vehicles on the road aren't fully autonomous. Since we know there are conditions under which self-driving tech loses the plot, ubiquity would necessarily involve deploying self driving equipment under those very conditions with predictable results (see also FSB early adopter shitshow).
Why is L5 the bar to pass and not L4?
Because as I understand it L5 is parity with human capabilities. Until you clear that you're underperforming in some measurable way with what even mediocre human operators are capable of.
If a robot taxi can drive way better than a mediocre (read: every human driver when drunk/tired/angry) human can, but is geofence limited to a single area, that is an L4 system.
As a fellow driver, I don't care that they can't drive out of that area, I care if tf they're a safer driver.
As such, L5 seems to me like the wrong bar.
It would absolutely be the wrong bar if there wasn't a steady drum beat of calls for ubiquity. "I can't wait until the majority of vehicles..." etc etc. This kind of uncritical optimism has already lead to some pretty wild outcomes with half-baked automation.
It gets blurry towards the edges. There are certainly roads I should not be driving on that competent 4WD folks are (in the right vehicles). I;ve also driven in winter conditions that felt very sketchy to me that I may have felt the need to drive in for work or other reasons. You don't always have the option to just Nope. I'm going to stay at home.
And, of course, if you otherwise basically never drive, you're probably a hazard in those marginal conditions.
Well how are they underperforming?
They systematically get in less accidents, the accidents they do get in are not their fault, and they tend to be less dangerous when they occur. As I understand it, that unambiguously means outperforming.
We don’t need to remove every manual car in the world overnight, but this seems like a clear win, at least in the regions they operate. They don’t need to cure cancer and drive in every road condition at all times in all places and also not ever make any mistakes at all to be an improvement. “L5” is just a label, which I guess doesn’t apply, while “safer”, “less accident prone” are different labels, which do apply.
I assume because humans don't drive at L3.
Self-driving vehicles can be symbiotic with mass transit. Autonomous taxis can make rail work better at low to moderate densities by shuttling people to stations. They can also ease the path to higher density development in car-centric suburbs by dropping people off at their destinations and then going to serve other riders or park out of the way, eliminating the need for density-killing parking lots immediately adjacent to businesses. As density rises in these areas, building mass transit will become more viable.
Nor does autonomy have to be limited to car-sized vehicles. It could be used for larger vehicles, perhaps intermediate between car and bus size — once you don't have to pay for a driver, operating a larger number of smaller vehicles is much more viable. These could be dynamically dispatched and routed, eliminating many drawbacks of existing bus service.
What about both? You travel long distances using the subway and then your last mile is done on an auto-automobile.
How many billions of both private and public funding has been put into public transportation solutions and technology instead of self-driving cars? The answer is basically 0. Self-driving cars is the most expensive Hot Wheels experiment ever. It's been well over a decade with barely anything to show except that they've replaced cars with more expensive cars that have muddy responsibility.
Unlike cars, trains and subways can't get you door to door (especially in suburban areas)
That's why you have to build and live more densely. The US absolutely refuses to do that, outside of Manhattan and a few select other places. It won't be a place where local trains make any economic sense until this changes.
However, for your "door to door" point, that's not desirable anyway. Even here in Tokyo, you have to walk a lot to get between your home and work or wherever you're going. That's a big, big part of why people here are so much thinner than Americans. Having transport that takes you door-to-door without any significant walking is terrible for your health.
Tokyo has taxis and Ubers. I take them quite frequently when there, even though the public transit is amazing. The fact it's blatantly obvious that robotaxis make a ton of sense in even one of the most transit-friendly cities in the world shows how wrong the OP is.
This is true, but taxis in Tokyo are expensive; they're not affordable on a regular basis to most people.
If your neighbourhood is pleasant and walkable, you don't need to be dropped off at the door. In most cases, the key barrier to walkability is removing the cars.
Roads are 24x7 and outside every building.