No one was inside a Waymo car as it was destroyed.

A crowd destroyed a driverless Waymo car in San Francisco::A Waymo car was destroyed in San Francisco as a crowd began vandalizing it and ultimately set the car on fire. Nobody was in the vehicle at the time.

  • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
    4·
    10 months ago

    Even in an ideally car-free society, you will literally never be able to get rid of taxis, deliveries, moving large furniture / household items, etc. without some form of enclosed motorized transportation (a car for the purposes of this discussion).

    That’s not individual transportation. None of it. And do imagine how your city would look like if those were the only vehicles on the roads. Go to the next intersection, count cars, see how many of them would be gone, how much road surface could be converted into a tram lane, comfortable bike lanes, greenery, also, a hot dog stand.

    If we make machines that are safer than humans than yeah, it will.

    Malaria might be less severe than the bubonic plague still doesn’t mean I want to catch it.

    • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
      25·
      10 months ago

      Well the don’t shift goal posts to “individual transportation” when we’re talking about people thrashing a self driving car.

      They didn’t trash a normal individual transporter.

      • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        You can do automated taxis, deliveries and moving services, not so much.

        • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
          15·
          10 months ago

          You can still automate the driving part of moving and delivery services, which is the dangerous part.

          • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
            3·
            10 months ago

            No. Not securing loads is the dangerous part. You need a human in there anyway and with the current sorry state of driving automation best you can do is have them browse the delivery list while the car is handling a traffic jam.

            There’s a reason you don’t see the likes of UPS or DHL get into automated cars, but venture capital moonshot tech companies promising nonsense on the one hand, as well as traditional car manufacturers with way more reasonable claims. IIRC Audi is actually leading the pack.

            And it’s not like UPS or DHL know nothing about vehicles, they’re driving custom orders. DHL even was a manufacturer for some time.

            • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
              14·
              10 months ago

              No. Not securing loads is the dangerous part.

              Jesus christ, you’re trying to argue that driving isn’t dangerous? Ok bud, glad to see you’re approaching this discussion in good faith /s

              There’s a reason you don’t see the likes of UPS or DHL get into automated cars, but venture capital moonshot tech companies promising nonsense on the one hand,

              Yeah, cause they literally started from DARPA’s moonshot program and take massive amounts of cutting edge machine learning to execute, not exactly DHL / UPS’ strong suit given that they contracted out development of almost all of their software until very recently.

              • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
                31·
                9 months ago

                Jesus christ, you’re trying to argue that driving isn’t dangerous?

                Professional drivers have a very, very low accident rate. And generally don’t tend to be at fault even if they get into one. Distracted commuters are where the accidents happen, people who should not be using roads but public transportation.

                not exactly DHL / UPS’ strong suit

                What part of “DHL manufactured cars themselves” did you not understand. They know exactly what they need from their vehicles and self-driving wasn’t on the list. Electric was on the list, specific range requirements were on the list, second front seat wasn’t, instead you have comfortable loading heights and well thought through access to the load (that includes the missing 2nd front seat). That’s the stuff that actually matters for a delivery van. Automated driving would only get into the way of the fancy manoeuvring the vans do.

                • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
                  12·
                  9 months ago

                  Distracted commuters are where the accidents happen, people who should not be using roads but public transportation.

                  Yeah, you’re right, there’s no point implementing any road safety standards or technology whatsoever because it would be better if we all just instantly switched to public transportation! Thank god we live in a world where it’s only ever worth it to pursue the most perfect and naïve solution! All we have to do is rework our entire transportation network and tear down existing houses and force the residents to all move into villages! What a perfect solution, totally feasible in the next 10 years.

                  What part of “DHL manufactured cars themselves” did you not understand. They know exactly what they need from their vehicles and self-driving wasn’t on the list.

                  Lol, DHL didn’t specify self driving because it wasn’t an available option, and they don’t have the technical capability to build, not because they wouldn’t want it. They have an entire page on their website stating explicitly that they are closely monitoring self driving technology as it stands to have a huge impact on their business.

                  • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
                    31·
                    9 months ago

                    Thank god we live in a world where it’s only ever worth it to pursue the most perfect and naïve solution!

                    Like automated driving? Shit isn’t working, isn’t even close to working to the degree that advocates said it would ten years ago. Meanwhile, public transportation is a tried and true approach that actually fixes issues. It’s vastly more energy and resource efficient and does not create socio-economic barriers to mobility.

                    They have an entire page on their website

                    Yards make sense and that stuff actually is in operation in many places, it’s a controlled environment. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a modern container terminal without autonomous vehicles.

                    Long haul does not make sense as that’s train territory. Which of course can also drive automated which, unlike self-driving cars, actually a mature technology. Drivers are still used long-haul though because there’s need to do non-driving tasks that AI can’t do, automated trains are a metro thing.

                    Last-mile makes approximately zero sense. Parcel pickups are the right solution for standard service and for premium service AI generally won’t be capable enough for decades if not centuries to come. You don’t want a pharmacy to wait for life-saving medicine because someone put a traffic cone on the hood.