Driverless cars were the future but now the truth is out: they’re on the road to nowhere::The dream of these vehicles ruling the roads remains just that. Focusing on public transport would be much smarter, says transport writer Christian Wolmar
The problem is not that driverless cars won’t be viable. Thw problem is the same as several other industries where a few startups promise tech that hasn’t matured yet, taking in billions of ‘stupid’ money from investors who are greedy but not knowledgeable about the underlying viability of what can realistically be done in a decade.
One hundred years from now? Driverless cars will be old news, so common or maybe even surpassed with something newer. But investors want a 10 year explosion of cash, not a 50 year investment.
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 11 months ago
Self driving cars have always been a solution to the wrong problem.
The problem isn’t really “I don’t want to steer this car”. It’s “I want to fast+safe+cheaply get from where I am, to where work/school/fun is”. So you could spend billions on machine vision and car tech to try to accomplish that, and maybe you will eventually. Or you could invest in historically proven solutions that have incredible side benefits like public transit and better zoning. Because having your self driving car cart you around suburban sprawl is still going to suck. Living spaces that are built for humans first instead of cars are better on like every metric.
grabyourmotherskeys@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I heard this guy going on about this amazing machine a company had invented to sequester carbon. They were not happy when explained that a tree does the same thing and they grow like crzy just about anywhere.
We already know what we need to do but people don’t want to do it.
ashok36@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Unless you can take a dead tree and prevent it from decaying, you’re just moving around carbon and not actually sequestering it. We would basically need to grow billions or plants and turn them into coal/oil and then just leave those fuels sitting around. Good luck with that.
aesthelete@lemmy.world 11 months ago
That’s the thing that gets me about AI solving global warming or whatever. You think a computer telling you that you have to get off oil is going to make a difference?
Wanderer@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Soon it’snot going to be we don’t want to do that it’s we are going to have to.
Also if you look at happiness. We do want that some people don’t know that, some don’t know it’s possible and some people have been outright lied to.
Bye@lemmy.world 11 months ago
You missed part of the problem. It’s actually,
“I want to fast+safe+cheaply get from where I am, to where work/school/fun is, and I want to do it without sharing transportation with anyone else who might be sick, annoying, crazy, or a member of an ethnic group or economic class I don’t care for”
The good solutions for transit do not account for how much people hate being around each other. My city has phenomenal bus infrastructure, that often gets you to your destination faster than driving. But people drive anyways, because there are sick people and crazy people on the bus.
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 11 months ago
You’re not wrong, but I don’t really think society should bend too far to the whims of it’s most antisocial members.
Like, if they don’t want to share the bus with a black person they can leave. And I don’t want to subsidize their selfishness by ceding space to cars, for example.
Also that’s a bit of induced demand, probably. People drive because it’s easier. Take away the subsidies or internalize the costs of driving, and people’s habits will change.