LiDAR is affected greatly by dense fog btw.
Comment on The technology to end traffic deaths exists. Why aren’t we using it?
Arkhive@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
“Let’s invent metal boxes with wheels that follow lines one the ground automatically to get you places.”
“Oh, you mean like trains.”
“Ew, no. They’re nothing like trains, these are ‘self driving cars’. They’re fool proof!”
tesla hits someone in a dense fog because it doesn’t have lidar
Queue surprised pikachu.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 5 weeks ago
CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
Trains are great for moving people but only from one designated area to another. With most commuters, they might be all headed to the same city but completely different parts of the city that aren’t easy to access. Their homes might all be in the same city but a 45 minute bus ride to the 40 minute train ride to the 20 minute bus ride, which isn’t helpful for what might have been a 45 minute commute by car to begin with.
Arkhive@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
Imagine if all the space between the primary radial arms of trains was filled in with street cars and pedestrian/micromobility centric spaces. Like the problem you are saying cars solve just doesn’t exist in the first place and people can still get around very easily. Even more rural folks can simply drive to the edge of this style of urban design if they need access to something. The reason bus rides are 45 minutes is because of the number of cars they have to put up with. The density of people that can be moved with shockingly good area coverage if cars are not a factor is incredible.
wewbull@feddit.uk 4 weeks ago
It’s still bad.
My old commute was a 25-30 minute drive. For a while though, I had to do it by public transport.
I’d be walking for less than 10 minutes because both my house and my work were close to the train station. The rest of it was on 4 different trains, but all within one metropolitan area. The changes were no more than 5 minutes each, pretty good really. However, the number of stops and the number of changes killed any progress. The end result was that it took 1h45m to 2h.
Changing a 8hr + 2x30m day into an 8hr + 2x2h day is a significant change in lifestyle. Losing 3hr day means you don’t enjoy your evenings, you don’t socialise, and life is only work. It’s miserable.
On a different job I worked at I could get there with just 1 train. That was about 35 minute drive or 55 minutes by train once you included the walk (again about 10-15 minutes total). Even with that you’re asking yourself “Why am I not driving?”.
dubyakay@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
I assume this is London.
And that’s fine, the train commutes were not for your specific needs. Weird that you had to switch three times to get to your destination, including the walks.
But this is hardly the norm.
If you want to have counter-anecdotal evidence presented, my daily commute used to be 5 metro stops worth 9 minutes of ride and 5 minutes of walking (in total). By car it was about the same, except for the added inconvenience of finding and paying for parking. This was Budapest.
Then there was 15 minutes of train coupled with 25 minutes of walking, 20 to the train station at a brisk pace and then another 5 to the office through the underground maze. By car it’d have been 15 minutes, not counting traffic. Which there always was. Because this was Toronto, the home of “just one more lane, bro”. So in total it was more like 40.
My current commute is 20-40 minutes by a single bus. Only ~2.5km. It’d be the same by car, because the route is entirely at the whims of the traffic.
However it doesn’t matter, because I also bike, and it’s my preferred mode of transportation. Biking in cities that do have minimal infra (such as well placed arteries) and culture for it, as in driving lessons focus on awareness and there is no us vs them mentality, is like IRL cheat code to commuting. You are faster than transit and traffic, you get some well needed exercise and de-stress time. And you get to exactly from where you leave from to where you want to go to, all while saving a dime.
Obviously biking is not for everyone. But if a fat dude with asthma in his late forties with two young children can do it, the barrier for entry doesn’t seem that steep.
CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
This sounds great but isn’t really feasible in cities that are already built unfortunately.
MichaelScotch@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Look at the history of transportation in whatever city you’re imagining. Cars took over, but I guarantee that city had the transportation infrastructure you think isn’t feasible. The automobile industry has you brainwashed into thinking cars are the only option, but one just has to look at the history of transportation in any given city to know that that isn’t true.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 5 weeks ago
U less you replace every road with train tracks, trains can’t replace cars.
dinckelman@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Doesn’t even need to be dense fog. The other day I saw a video of a Tesla (on newest firmware, mind you) drove off the road into a tree, in broad daylight, with no visual impairments to the sensors. It’s not ready for any kind of driving, let alone fully automated, not to mention that it’s only really trained on American roads
01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 5 weeks ago
Wait. Those things rely on visual sensors only?? That moronic! I mean, more so that I originally though. Please tell me that they have them, but this particular one was malfunctioning.
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 5 weeks ago
Musk has sai d multiple times that humans can drive with vision alone, so cars shouldn’t need LIDAR.
He ignores that humans also regularly experience optical illusions that contribute to poor driving and collisions, and that LIDAR is far less susceptible to such abberations.
finalarbiter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
Very early on, Tesla used lidar in addition to optical sensors. However, they only use optical sensors today and have for a while. Like many of the poor decisions at that company, the change to optical-only was made at Musk’s demand.
stephen01king@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
IIRC, they uses to have radar, not lidar.
CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
Correct they’ve never used lidar.
NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
Mark Rober of YouTube recently did a video demonstrating how bad tesla sensors are.