Anyone who thinks that these things could or would be anything other than a colossal waste of time and resources should watch Adam Something’s recent video on them. Such a pointless way to solve inner-city transport
we don’t have full self driving capabilities yet - Elon overstated his cars actual abilities
adding lanes has never fixed traffic - demand just fills the new capacity. Therefore self driving cars will make traffic worse.
cars are generally terrible and inefficient, hurray for trains
US cities were built for cars and not public transit: we should build denser cities instead of all this.
1 and 2 are beside the point and can be discarded.
3 is the core argument and is circular, essentially saying that anything that increases capacity will make traffic worse. If this seems fundamentally flawed, it’s because it is. It assumes infinite demand. You could easily apply this same logic to trains: add more frequent trains and riders will just flock to enjoy the new capacity until they are crowded again. The reality is that there is a right amount of capacity, and the question is what kinds of cars can best utilize the lane capacity we have.
4 and 5 are good points but mainly argue that we should not ONLY focus on self driving cars as a complete transportation panacea, which is true. But no one is doing that. Therefore this is a straw man argument.
The silent presumption of this entire video is that the sole, entire hope of self driving cars is to reduce urban traffic congestion. This is patently false. They also aim to improve on the abysmal safety record of human drivers, and improve fuel efficiency by taking people’s lead foot off the gas pedal, and finally to make access to a car more economical for those who don’t own one or can’t drive because of disability or age.
So basically, it’s what you’d expect from a YouTube video: some random guy leaning way too hard on a couple of limp arguments to make a sensational video that will get clicks because it has extreme claims in the title. Throw in some Elon hate and cherry picked videos of self-driving errors and the narrative is complete.
the question is what kinds of cars can best utilize the lane capacity we have.
The kind that can take 50-100 passengers instead of 1-5?
It’s not about who’s driving the vehicle, it’s about what’s a sustainable ratio of people: vehicles.
Make self-driving vehicles, by all means. Autonomy won’t solve the fact that number of people in the city divided by 5 (best case scenario, but we all know it’s more like 2 or 1) equals vastly more cars than there’s road surface.
We have autonomous subways in Europe btw, they work very nicely and they minimize the distance between successive trains at rush hour. I’m all for driving automation but the circumstances need to make sense. Subway automation won’t make up for train capacity or station capacity, for example, once a train or platform fill up they fill up, end of story.
Anyone who thinks that these things could or would be anything other than a colossal waste of time and resources should watch Adam Something’s recent video on them. Such a pointless way to solve inner-city transport
Okay, I watched it.
Summary of video:
1 and 2 are beside the point and can be discarded.
3 is the core argument and is circular, essentially saying that anything that increases capacity will make traffic worse. If this seems fundamentally flawed, it’s because it is. It assumes infinite demand. You could easily apply this same logic to trains: add more frequent trains and riders will just flock to enjoy the new capacity until they are crowded again. The reality is that there is a right amount of capacity, and the question is what kinds of cars can best utilize the lane capacity we have.
4 and 5 are good points but mainly argue that we should not ONLY focus on self driving cars as a complete transportation panacea, which is true. But no one is doing that. Therefore this is a straw man argument.
The silent presumption of this entire video is that the sole, entire hope of self driving cars is to reduce urban traffic congestion. This is patently false. They also aim to improve on the abysmal safety record of human drivers, and improve fuel efficiency by taking people’s lead foot off the gas pedal, and finally to make access to a car more economical for those who don’t own one or can’t drive because of disability or age.
So basically, it’s what you’d expect from a YouTube video: some random guy leaning way too hard on a couple of limp arguments to make a sensational video that will get clicks because it has extreme claims in the title. Throw in some Elon hate and cherry picked videos of self-driving errors and the narrative is complete.
The kind that can take 50-100 passengers instead of 1-5?
It’s not about who’s driving the vehicle, it’s about what’s a sustainable ratio of people: vehicles.
Make self-driving vehicles, by all means. Autonomy won’t solve the fact that number of people in the city divided by 5 (best case scenario, but we all know it’s more like 2 or 1) equals vastly more cars than there’s road surface.
We have autonomous subways in Europe btw, they work very nicely and they minimize the distance between successive trains at rush hour. I’m all for driving automation but the circumstances need to make sense. Subway automation won’t make up for train capacity or station capacity, for example, once a train or platform fill up they fill up, end of story.
America and Europe are most definitely not 1:1 analogues, and crs will be of significant importance for the US moving forward.
Our job is to find ways to maximize their efficiency and safety, since they will exist. Driverless cars are the best method for both.