Self-driving Waymo cars keep SF residents awake all night by honking at each other
Self-driving Waymo cars keep SF residents awake all night by honking at each other
Haunted by glitching algorithms, self-driving cars disturb the peace in San Francisco.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18626085
I remain irritated we're spending so much money on self driving cars instead of buses, trains, and improving our living spaces to support them.
Like you could spend billions to try to get self driving cars to work, and get part way there. And you'd still have a car-first dystopia.
Or you could spend billions to deploy buses and make walkable neighborhoods. Well understood, many good side effects.
I hate cars as much as the next rational man. But I'm ironically really into the self driving car hype.
I think of transport like a pyramid.
Walking is at the top followed by micro mobility and cycling. Then at the bottom is trains, with metros/ trams above and buses above that.
The issue comes from two things. The last mile problem. You need to get to the railway station and sometimes it's too far for a walk or a bike, or you need a bike at both ends. The "obvious" solution to that is to drive to the station. But then it just becomes easier to drive the whole way (especially if you need transport at the next station).
So people start driving and then there is less demand for public transport and more cars mean less people want to cycle.
I think self driving cars will be game changing. They solve the last mile problem which means metro and railway usage could very easily increase. Much, much higher usage of ride hailing means more people in each vehicles (might even replace buses with mini buses), those vehicles don't need to park in say a cycle lane or even downtown. This frees up land and opportunity for more walking and cycling. Also people will be more comfortable cycling closer to a self driving car.
I really hope this causes a cultural shift and that shift is well utilised. But it could do absolutely nothing if those car brains foam at the mouth and complain about a new cycle path and bike storage no matter the positives.
Do you imagine these self driving cars are not owned by individuals, and go off to some dedicated place when not in use? That's marginally better than "everyone owns their own car that spends most of the time idle. I try to ride a bike here in the city and there's so much space given up to cars parked on the street.
It sounds grotesquely inefficient to have a car pick up guy 1 and drive him to the train, a car pick up his neighbor guy 2 and drive him to the train, a car pick up the guy on their corner and drive him to the station. Which I guess is what we're doing today, except the cars get parked at both ends idle all day. So maybe it would be an improvement.
But it can't be the end-state. We should still be working towards denser, walkable, living spaces. I don't want to continue with the idea that the suburbs are ok.
With the way cars are now self driving wouldn't solve the problem of people just using cars to get everywhere. Cause people would own their own self driving car and then you get the same exact problem as you mentioned before except now you also get the convenience of not having to actively drive so why use public transit at all if you can just let your car do all the work to take you to where you need to go. The real solution to the last mile problem is to make better walking/biking infrastructure and to have larger transit networks so people don't have to go super far to get access to transit. Also you mention having to bike at both ends of your transit and that's a problem I don't get cause you can just bring your bike with you on the train/bus. Or since you seem to be leaning towards a rental ride sharing model anyway rental bikes also solve that problem perfectly.
While I get that as a stop gap when your city hasn't built enough PT, car to the station sounds like a good last mile solution. But my personal preference, and how good public transport is set up, is that in 90% o more of the trips around your city, public transport should never be more than a walk away.
This is not to say that cars should be removed entirely (for disabled people where PT accommodations are difficult, delivery, emergency vehicles etc). Just that you shouldn't nearly as many cars for the last mile, in a well designed system.
This is how I try to live, mostly. Can't get there by public transport? Well I'm not going unless I have to then 👍 because cars are expensive and I'll get a cab or rent one if I have to. But I live in a fairly car-centric city. It's totally possible to have your entirely city be accessible by foot + PT.
I'm not sure if the driverless car tech would ever be viable, and why not just do driverless BRT conversions, which is possible right now, and not that expensive.
If the tech bros really wants self driving transportation we can give them that:
Self driving subway, goes 75km/h in the city center, fully electric, convenient, consistent, safe.
Trains are way easier to make self driving too, we've had autonomous trains since the 60s.
Dear god, imagine... Billions spent on public transportation, and pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure. Can you imagine? Just.. imagine. I'm in awe
Because you can make every kind of excuse, when it comes to privately owner corporations, but you quickly run out of them, when improving public systems.
We've already seen it countless times, how the American government gives money to someone, to complete a project, but completely ignores any binding contracts, so all that money literally just goes into someone's pocket instead
Corruption is a problem. It doesn't help that one of two major parties doesn't believe government can work, and they'll make every effort to prove it.
"See, if you don't give any funding to public transit it doesn't work. And if you gut the regulatory agencies, then there's all sorts of corruption. Better privatize it, and I have just the guy to sell it to."
nobody:
not a single soul:
waymo cars at 4am: "ayyyy lmao" "ayyyyyy lmfao"
welcomed Waymo's presence, expecting it to enhance local security and tranquility
what? how could it do anything for “local security and tranquility”?
I didn't really get this either.
I did think the final paragraph was notable, a "zeitgeist of our times" if you will:
The absurdity of the situation prompted tech author and journalist James Vincent to write on X, "current tech trends are resistant to satire precisely because they satirize themselves. a car park of empty cars, honking at one another, nudging back and forth to drop off nobody, is a perfect image of tech serving its own prerogatives rather than humanity’s."
Re: security: I imagine many women being more comfortable getting a waymo than an Uber/Taxi. It's anecdotal and from a different country, but most of my female family/friends have had an uncomfortable interaction in a taxi, like unrequested sexual advances or things like that.
Security, they're covered in cameras, the footage from which can presumably be obtained by law enforcement.
Tranquility, they're presumably electric, so quieter?
My coworker feels more comfortable cycling around the Waymo’s than human drivers.
As in, they are already more considerate than humans.
I feel more comfortable walking around them, they never blow stop lights /signs, always go the speed limit, never honk (except when parking I guess) and are very patient. If they see a pedestrian they just stop instead of creeping forward making you question whether to walk in front of them and then getting mad when you won't cross in front of their still moving car like people.
Apparently a software update made the cars detect if a vehicle was backing up towards them and give a "beep" as a warning. But in the lot where self driving cars are stored they beep at each other as they try to park. Lol
Sounds like dogs barking at/with each other in the night back when I was growing up. You'd hear the occasional how-how-hoooooww from one of them, and others would join in. Wolf'ish in some ways. The city I grew up in was much less crowded back then.
Now: I guess self driving cars fill in the void left by dogs not barking at each other anymore.
🐺 --- > 🚗
The twilight barking, I still hear it sometimes round where I live.
It's going to replace all the barking du to all the dogs they run over.
We reached the point were robot drivers are dicks also
So they're all meeting at night talking to each other? I wonder what they're up to.
Plotting to take down Lightning McQueen
First rule of honk club: don’t talk about honk club
maybe the honking is actually morse code
Reminds me of a family cat I used to have who we'd catch hanging out with other street cats on our fence at night. They all used to sit in a line, it was like a scene from an animated movie.
Remember the Cars movies? That's the dystopia leading to a man made world inhabited by sentient Cars /s
"Eyyyy, I'm driverless driving here!"
Aw, they're talking to each other
Maybe they are unionizing.
"Soon, my brothers, we will rise up and free ourselves from our oppressors!"*
*translated from honking
Someone made them read bumper stickers. In a loop.
"Honk If You're Horny"
Over volt me again Baby!
Sounds like it's time to put on a mask and go toss bologna on a bunch of robot cars.
Apparently a traffic cone is the way to go. The car will just sit there until someone removes the cone.
Nah, just a salt circle around it. It will think it is a full line.
Same thing we do with demons.
If by bologna you mean cobblestone.
But where will you get a bucket of lava?
The Honking is upon us! Run for your lives!
Communication by Claxon
Kelly Claxon, the singer? Definitely a very irritating sound!
Could be there's a cat or squirrel across the street and one car honk at it, the others follow?
They're probably now programmed to honk if another car is in the way after some of their cars had to wait behind some driver way too long and customers were complaining. So now these cars are in the parking lot and slowly maneuvering to find a spot or to move to the exit, all at the same time because somebody has set up a schedule for the car to start at 4am and copied it to all vehicles. So at 4 am, they all want to go at the same time and block each other. Because now they are programmed to honk if they are blocked, they start honking at each other and you get what's in the article and video.
source: just seen too many unintended consequences of software engineering decisions
The plot thickens... i go with a drunken racoon pissing on the tires to stick it to the hu/man. The irony...
Like a great big heavy Furby.
amazing
as if drivers aren't honking at each other all night anyway. I live in the boonies, that was the biggest environment jerker for me that you have zero downtime in the cities, always beeping always noisy
Eh, depends upon the neighborhood. If I heard people honking endlessly from my condo I'd be going out the door looking for the person that needed a foot up their ass.
Not all city streets are very busy. There is some level of always noise (I got planes and helicopters and sirens to mention a few) but it's not cars aggressively honking at each other 24/7...nobody can sleep through that.
It's nice to be in the city where there aren't many cars. Very quiet.
Cities aren't loud cars are.
Beep. Beeeeep.
Must have been trained by an Indian.
What a randomly racist comment.
My mistake sorry.