this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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Why do people hate on self-driving cars?
They are creating a bunch of traffic problems in cities like San Francisco where the driverless car companies are essentially allowed to beta test their vehicles on public streets. They stop in the middle of the road and block traffic and emergency vehicles. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/driverless-taxi-cruise-waymo-18157172.php
Because they provide very few, if any, actual solutions to the problems created by car-oriented society.
In their current iteration I totally agree. However, long term we could shift away from needing to own a car and it would be an Uber like experience for everything.
If I could have a car waiting for me every morning at 7:30 to take me to work and then hit a button when I’m ready to go home I would consider it. Maybe I’d rent a car if we needed to do a road trip.
The big car companies are aware of this need and have shifted their focus to become "mobility" companies (you can read company goals for shareholders, it's public), so you're not alone on this fact.
Unfortunately, this also means that they're all pining to make mobility a subscription service and vertically integrate as much as possible, which means to have their own fleets, repair shops and refueling / recharging stations to cut down cost. This would net them a good recurring source of revenue - which is golden - and reduce operating costs.
In theory this is more efficient for mankind, but this also means you can't fix your own cars and a lack of money means that one of the last (unofficial) safety nets is torn from you the moment you're out of cash as you're no longer able to just sleep in your car.
It also means maintaining the status quo when it comes to car-centric infrastructure, as cars are still cars. There is no real incentive to build separated bike lanes or walkable shops if the amount of people using cars is still the same.
This would in theory all work without issue for city-dwellers in warm climates, but the same issues that plague(d) telecommunications seem to apply to shared self-driving cars; Electric cars happen to be the most efficient for fleet use as you can rotate them easily with minimal maintenance, but their limited range and need for service techs would mean that you would have rural areas that would be less profitable to serve. Reducing the supply of manual cars would impact their economy of scale, making them even more expensive to own outside cities.
The only way I see mobility companies not ramping up the prices to intolerable levels and ignoring poor people is if we did the same thing as telecommunications in 1934; by making fleet operators common carriers, making them responsible for their customers, and allowing smaller operators to openly use the larger operators' infrastructure (charging stations, repair manuals, parts and technicians) so smaller mobility companies can exist.
Because ML is not very advanced. It is barely capable of basic functionality. It does not have the capacity to deal with the enumerable edge cases. Those are irrelevant collateral damage for the corporate investors only interested in profit.
We live in a society (in the USA) that has a tenth of the laws and protections of any other western country. This is the real "billionaire battle." All the stupid polarized politics is about controlling the legislature to prevent effective legislative discussion. It is a dos attack. The content is irrelevant to them, but the more radical rhetoric is required to maintain control.
This paradigm, that individuals are nothing more than collateral damage in the wake of capitalists like the blood emerald African space Karen, is clearly seen with the policy of not leaving a paper trail and only verbally addressing any issues with their vehicles internally at Tesla. They are not legally required to physically document such things by law. It is a massive legal oversight, but it is intentional, and the result of strategic politics. This is what the billionaires are funding. The Republican party is all about mobilization of convenient idiots in the cause of corrupt loopholes. It is all about the loopholes.