Destroy the cars. That's what should be done about it.
this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2024
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Technology
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I'm all for mass transit, but there are some jobs that require cars. My partner does home health, for example. She often has to take a lot of bulky durable medical equipment (DME) to a person's home. Even if mass transit existed in all of her territory, transporting DME on it would be prohibative, especially when there are often multiple people that need different pieces of equipment.
This is precisely the kind of niche, but vital use case that even places that have otherwise already completely banned cars (like certain islands) allow cars for. Nobody will ever take this away.
That's a good point to illustrate the importance of banning cars for personal transportation; all of the traffic is making your partner's job slower and more stressful
I meant the self driving ones. Apologies for not clarifying.
Humans are not getting any better at driving. Self-driving cars will eventually lead to tens of thousands of human lifes saved annually. Why do you want to prevent this?
will eventually
You’re looking for “may eventually”. We’re not anywhere near this so using it as a current argument is rather silly.
Waymo gives 100,000+ rides a week and has never killed anyone, to my knowledge. Seems like it might already be safer than a human driver, it must have millions of miles driven.
Will it? All I have seen is that self driving cars will decide to kill people because they cannot make decisions about life in a way that preserves it.
Maybe in like 1000 years plus they might become good enough but by that time the conditions that make cars a necessity would be no more or at least severly reduced.
All I have seen is that self driving cars will decide to kill people because they cannot make decisions about life in a way that preserves it.
Do you have any examples?
Watch the video, my dude.
watch the video, my dude
Ah, got it. Could also be my migraine making me not fully get things.
No worries! Hope you feel better soon!
Or do not allow AI controlled cars in the city. Maybe its okay on longer roads without traffic.
Sure, but if they are allowed...
I'd rather have AI than human drivers. Most people are fine, but a small percent are dangerously incompetent drivers, and another small percent are psychopaths.
Assuming AI is perfect...
It doesn't have to be perfect. Hundreds of thousands die annually in car crashes. The bar isn't that high.
Making them die by Ai instead by human doesn't help anybody.
I think assuming AI will be as bad at driving is a bad assumption.
You're just making an argument for better regulations and testing. Let's start with elderly drivers, who are no longer physically and mentally capable of the maneuvering required to operate a vehicle at speed. Anyone over 65 should have to retest on a regular schedule. And when they fail, they lose their car too.
And all of this is an argument for effective and reliable PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION.
Singular acts of violence don't work, organized violence doesn't work either and will only lead to organized repression in response. The actual solution is to elect local representatives who are willing to prevent the nightmare scenario from the video from happening.
If you want to see a real-world example of this: Toppling over rental e-scooters didn't get them removed from cities, but petitioning municipal governments to ban them did.
Disagree that violence doesn't work, especially organised.
Technically it does, but not locally in the age of national governments. Before you're saying it, the moment it stops being a local movement, it would work even less and lead to the organized repression I mentioned. To support my point, see how harsh government reaction has been to activists merely gluing themselves to the street (not to mention, how most people were happy about this crackdown).
And no, I doubt "The Revolution" that magically solves all of our problems (unlike most revolutions) will be started by anti-AV riots.
Violence is a tool and like many tools it must be used correctly and at the right times. However, it's also not the only tool in the toolbox in which there are many.
Yes, that is a fair point.
Inner cities are better served by trolleys/buses anyhow. Self-driving taxis would work best at the edges of a city, or to fill gaps between train stations in suburbs
How would self-driving taxis do this any better than taxis that already exist and aren't relying on large tech corporations?
Cheaper, safer and one extra seat.
We're obviously not there yet but I haven't heard a single good argument for why we wouldn't be in the future.
I don't think they'd do much better besides being safer, eventually. Just saying that's the only place where they'd make sense to go.
Edit: giving it a bit more thought, they should also have greater passenger capacity for their size
If safer is a realistic outcome, perhaps things would further evolve. Ride share cars today are dual-use vehicles that typically carry driver + no passenger or driver + one passenger with the capacity for 3-5. If future autonomous ride share cars turn out to be dedicated to ride share, maybe most would end up being 3-wheel with just one or two seats. Shrinking the size of a substantial potion of cars on urban roads could be beneficial to road safety, power/carbon intensity, road capacity/density (which could also lead to more equitable road use for bikes and pedestrians).
Watched this video earlier today and I definitely hope German city planners in my area don't embrace this required car-centric approach to infrastructure more than they did for cities like Munich .