Why Self-Driving Cars Slowed Down in High-Tech Boston – Slashdot

Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive
Nickname:
Password:
Nickname:
Password:
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

AVs could transform transportation, with all manner of economic and social benefits: high-paying jobs in robotics, manufacturing, and artificial intelligence
— We already have good paying manufacturing jobs in the auto industry, which is already heavily automated and making extensive use of robotics. Replacing conventional cars with AVs doesn’t create any new jobs, it just moves jobs around.
— AVs may create some increased demand for people with expertise in A.I., but a car company only needs so many A.I. experts, regardless of the number of cars they produce.

.. and reduced carbon emissions should people forgo private cars for electric robo-taxis.
This is just delusional bullshit. People don’t travel in taxis unless they absolutely have to. Peo

We already have good paying manufacturing jobs in the auto industry, which is already heavily automated and making extensive use of robotics. Replacing conventional cars with AVs doesn’t create any new jobs, it just moves jobs around.
Well, and completely eliminates the job of the guy driving the car, which has historically been a gateway to the middle class for people without college or manual labor abilities, but that just proves your point even more.

This is just delusional bullshit. People don’t travel in taxis unless they absolutely have to. People like the freedom and flexibility of private cars, and that is not going away.
To this day I don’t get how “taxis and Ubers are better for the environment” works. The portions in “ridesharing” where multiple people are actually sharing the same ride (downtown job to near edges of suburbia where the “park-and-ride” parking lots are located) are the portions where they’d generally use subways or even, yikes, buses anyway. Taxis/Ubers save downtown parking, which is a good thing and all, but cars don’t emit carbon when they’re sitting in a parking lot.
This isn’t to say they’re useless overall. They’re great for getting around the city, and great for navigating suburbia without a car of one’s own. But trying to shoehorn them into being a “~*Green*~ Alternative” is, like hooker said of the man with the diamond-plated spermatozoa, a tough swallow.

We already have good paying manufacturing jobs in the auto industry, which is already heavily automated and making extensive use of robotics. Replacing conventional cars with AVs doesn’t create any new jobs, it just moves jobs around.
Well, and completely eliminates the job of the guy driving the car, which has historically been a gateway to the middle class for people without college or manual labor abilities, but that just proves your point even more.
The fact it doesn’t require a lot of extra training means they don’t have a lot of specialized skills going to waste and they’re less likely to suffer a drop in income when switching jobs.

This is just delusional bullshit. People don’t travel in taxis unless they absolutely have to. People like the freedom and flexibility of private cars, and that is not going away.
That’s because taxi’s are expensive, kinda random quality (don’t know exactly what vehicle you’re getting), and kinda random timing (you don’t know how long you have to wait).
A future with actual driverless cars means driverless taxis go way down in cost since you’re no longer paying for the time of the driver.
That means m

The fact it doesn’t require a lot of extra training means they don’t have a lot of specialized skills going to waste and they’re less likely to suffer a drop in income when switching jobs.
…except they kind of will? I’m hard-pressed to think of any jobs that pay comparable rates to taxi-driving, bus-driving, food delivery, courier services, and short-haul freight that don’t require either a college degree (or similar credential-chasing) or manual labor. Food delivery was paying about $20-30/hr in 2023 dollars back when I did it (this was pizza delivery pre-Doordash days).

In that case cool things start to happen like garages becoming obsolete (higher suburban density) and side streets becoming devoid of parked cars (maybe kids can play street hockey again).
“Higher suburban density” is like “well-done steak tartare”. The defining feature of the suburbs is the lack of density –

The fact it doesn’t require a lot of extra training means they don’t have a lot of specialized skills going to waste and they’re less likely to suffer a drop in income when switching jobs.
…except they kind of will? I’m hard-pressed to think of any jobs that pay comparable rates to taxi-driving, bus-driving, food delivery, courier services, and short-haul freight that don’t require either a college degree (or similar credential-chasing) or manual labor. Food delivery was paying about $20-30/hr in 2023 dollars back when I did it (this was pizza delivery pre-Doordash days).
Working as a waiter? Staff in a store? I mean it’s still not great for them (I suspect the Luddites had a long term loss of income as well) but I don’t think it will be a complete disaster.

In that case cool things start to happen like garages becoming obsolete (higher suburban density) and side streets becoming devoid of parked cars (maybe kids can play street hockey again).
“Higher suburban density” is like “well-done steak tartare”. The defining feature of the suburbs is the lack of density – if they were high-density, they’d just be the “urbs”.
Well density increases as a matter of simple economics. You don’t need a car house so smaller lots are more appealing than they would be otherwise.
Apartment buildings also get a bit denser / cheaper / more appealing since they require much less parking.
The interesting question is whether it balances out to less urban spra

Working as a waiter? Staff in a store?
Yeah, see what I mean? Those are pretty much what I thought of as well, but waiter jobs are regarded as physically demanding (being on your feet all day while also socially interacting with customers), and there’s no retail job on earth that’s paying $20-30/hour on hire unless you’re looking at a super-fussy high-margin boutique or a (credential-requiring) managerial job.
Don’t agree. I would appreciate having the ability to have a cheap taxi. I’m assuming that AVs can be significantly cheaper that taxis with drivers. I have several use cases.
1. I hike the that Santa Monica Mountains (Los Angeles) regularly and having a taxi would allow me more easily do one way hikes.
2. I live in the suburb
“People like the freedom and flexibility of private cars, and that is not going away.”
That is precisely why our overlords want private cars to go away.
“Proponents have long said AVs could transform transportation, with all manner of economic and social benefits”
With all due respect to the proponents – bollocks.
If you need a car but can’t/won’t drive it there’s been a solution for 100 years – its called a taxi. Perhaps having an AV sitting outside your house that you can just jump in to instead of firing up the Uber app might save 5 mins out of someone day, but thats about the only benefit that’ll happen.
Lets have a reality check here – the real reason so many shills are so thrilled about AVs is it means they can fire all those taxi/truck/bus drivers one day and save on staff wages. So yeah, it’ll certainly have social effects, but the vast majority will not be a benefit.
I do, but if you think AVs will work on narrow single track roads in the countryside where reversing into passing places is the norm over this side of the pond then dream on. There’s a feck load more to the human skill of driving than the AV techs even know about.
Feel free to show me an AV that knows to reverse back 50m or – if the driver flashes their lights – to move forward while the other driver reverses. Manouvering isn’t the issue, know what to do is.

There’s a feck load more to the human skill of driving than the AV techs even know about.
Apparently that somehow includes “getting out of the way of ambulances.”

Lets have a reality check here – the real reason so many shills are so thrilled about AVs is it means they can fire all those taxi/truck/bus drivers one day and save on staff wages. So yeah, it’ll certainly have social effects, but the vast majority will not be a benefit.
Some trains are already fully automatic and driverless. easy when its on tracks. Buses are being tested near where I live currently on a test loop with real passengers. Taxis and trucks that need to obey current roads rules and current road conditions and other drivers has the same difficulty as a Full AV so this will take a bit longer
However even an AV that is not fully autopilot would make my daily driving a lot easier. I have already found the lane guidance and crash detection warnings/Auto braking use
“Some trains are already fully automatic and driverless. easy when its on tracks”
And even then plenty still have someone sitting in the cab for safety reasons.
” Buses are being tested near where I live currently on a test loop with real passengers”
Right, because a test loop and say the Arc De Triumph roundabout in paris have so much in common.
“I have already found the lane guidance and crash detection warnings/Auto braking useful.”
Perhaps you shouldn’t have a license in the first place if you can’t stay in lane or notice whats coming up ahead in time.
The location systems, vital to automated driving, get very confused in downtown Boston. They don’t get GPS or reliable wi-fi or cell tower signals in the lengthy “Big Dig” tunnels that run through downtown, and on the streets the wi-fi antennas pick up reflections from the skyscrapers. The wi-fi is a vital part of most location systesm such as Google Maps, the chip picks up the three most powerful wi-fi signals and adds that data to the web query as they talk to Google’s or Apple’s survery to provide much m
“The wi-fi is a vital part of most location systesm such as Google Maps, the chip picks
WIll probably depend on the jurisdiction. The French seem happy to have driverless (ATO) trains with no staff on board but here in the UK all our ATO trains have at least 1 member of staff onboard either in the cab or doing the doors in one of the carraiges so I suspect driverless buses not not be so driverless depending on the country/state.
There is one and only one reason we use buses to move people and that is that it lets you have fewer drivers.
If you have self-driving vehicles then it makes no sense to make full scale buses any more, because the whole purpose of self-driving a public transport vehicle is to eliminate the cost of the driver. A van that can hold say 8 passengers in comfort costs about $60,000-$80,000. A bus that can hold 40 passengers in discomfort can easily cost $500,000. But wait, there’s more. The vans can easily go down
A van has a service life of about 10 years, a bus is about 20 so you can double the cost of those vans for starters. Secondly a full bus of 80 people will get way better mileage per person than 10 vans so on busy city routes your idea doesn’t work. Out in the burbs or countryside where there are fewer pax then sure.
Worst case you use minibuses or midibuses, not the full size ones… Bigger than vans, smaller than buses. Easier to manage.
In Humboldt there is no cross county express bus so it takes an hour and a half to do what I do in twenty-six minutes. It should take no longer than forty-five on the bus (with reasonable stops) but that’s not how it’s laid out because they would need local buses, not just one bus that covers Scotia, Rio Dell, college of the redwoods, etc etc.
Automated driving also has haulage / trucking as a business case.
Winter can be a brutal force. We’re lucky if we get an hrs travel in before hitting road construction. It’s endless and constant. Roads in MA are perpetually under construction and AI just can’t cut it. Boston changes roads so frequently nobody every knows where they are going. GPSs get out of date too. I have a friend with a Tesla and he said he’s still waiting for ‘Pot Hole Detection’ so his 80 thousand dollar car won’t steer itself into a monster pot hole. No. It’ll NEVER happen. We’ll get fusion first.

No. It’ll NEVER happen. We’ll get fusion first
Not only this, there are places were you drive right on the Subways tracks, with a Subway in front of you and behind you. Plus many places, people turn a single lane road into a 2 lane road, and the first lane of a double lane road is fine for parking.
Good luck with this, there you will need real AI, not the fake AI people are pushing now. Or maybe a huge trailer with you towing a mainframe. BTW, crosswalks and lights mean nothing, how to spot a tourist ? They are the ones waiting for a walk light to com

I would think Boston would be the perfect testbed as driving here is an absolute nightmare. With constant random road construction, inconsistent road markings, pedestrians crossing whenever they feel like, bikers not following the rules, a plethora of potholes, and other drivers who drive like idiots. if you can get a car to drive autonomously here, it should be easy anywhere else.
Not to mention the abject chaos when they close down the freeway for July 4th and the absolutely insane number of corners where you can’t turn in the direction you want to go, requiring you to go several blocks out of your way. Self driving cars probably can’t figure out how to get around Boston any better than anybody else can, which is to say not at all.
Everything you just said about Boston driving is true in San Francisco. But also; throw in hills so steep that in some places the city just gives up on having sidewalks and puts in stairs on the side of the road, “two way” streets so narrow that it’s physically impossible to actual have two way traffic on them, and dipshit luddites who hate progress actively trying to sabotage the cars.
There is only 1 self-driving company that I would trust, and it sure as shit is not Tesla/Google/GM/Rivian/etc
Boston is the last place you want self driving cars. Driving in Boston is primarily a game of chicken. How is an AV going to win at that?
There may be more comments in this discussion. Without JavaScript enabled, you might want to turn on Classic Discussion System in your preferences instead.
Workers are Resisting Calls to Return to Offices
Scientists Finally Know Why Germany’s Wild Boar Are Surprisingly Radioactive
“Any excuse will serve a tyrant.” — Aesop

source