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After Uber Destroyed Taxi Cabs, Drivers Now Face the Existential Threat of Self-Driving Cars: "It feels like every time I adjust to a new reality, another tech comes along & threatens my livelihood." (futurism.com)
submitted 6 days ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 3 points 6 days ago (12 children)

Honestly the sooner we have fully autonomous cars the better. This growing pain in the worst part but think about things

  • The ability to watch TV, eat, read, nap, work in your car if you want while it drives you places
  • a safer experience due to faster reaction times
  • less traffic jams and slow downs due to more coordinated timing
  • better independence for the infirm and elderly (this is one I think a lot of people overlook)

Too many people are still scared at this point but overall this would be a positive step for societies. I know there are negatives (car could repossess itself or it could cart me off to jail) but we can’t always fall in the trap of “it has to be 100% right”.

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  • [–] 20 points 6 days ago

    Or maybe we could put all that effort into public transit? I lived in Germany for a few years. I did have a car, but I rarely ever used it. I could take a bus to most places in town, including the train station. Most downtown areas were pedestrian traffic only and it was very nice. Now that I live back in the US, I spend so much time in traffic. Their is always construction to make the roads bigger for all the cars. But it never seems to be enough. The whole thing feels like an expensive mess. I don't think self-driving cars will fix enough of the problems with cars.

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  • [–] 10 points 6 days ago (4 children)

    The entire rhetoric relies on the idea that self driving road cars are

    1. Feasible
    2. Desirable over rail or bus

    Tesla's failed efforts have proven time and time again that the road is full of unexpected and arbitrary inaccuracies, ambiguities and risks that cannot be assessed by a machine alone. They've also been sued in multiple markets on claims of false advertising because autopilot is not, in fact, autopilot.

    They don't even have the best system in the industry, that would be Drive Pilot, a Level 3 autonomous assist system by Mercedes-Benz. The only systems to have level 4 are taxis that only operate in limited areas, on limited, known routes, and they are well known for being very easily confused and blocking emergency vehicles.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 days ago* (2 children)

    Tesla is far from the only player - they're just the loudest, and sadly the most embarrassing. Waymo and Zoox, for example, are demonstrating its real feasibility and desirability.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    To be fair, I've never stepped into a Waymo, but from what I've heard they're sent on pre-determined paths around a delimited area. These only seem to be feasible you can either strictly control your environment or adjust for a finite number of cases, such as a delimited area, and even that isn't working too hot for other road users.

    I still don't see the advantage versus a taxi bus.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 days ago

    The "delimited area" comprises entire cities, and they are not following predetermined paths, except in the sense that they only follow mapped roads. And the entire point is to share the road with human drivers.

    Taxi buses do not operate on-demand.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 days ago

    The only systems to have level 4 are taxis that only operate in limited areas, on limited, known routes, and they are well known for being very easily confused and blocking emergency vehicles.

    Even then, they have overrides for human operators when they fuck up. Driverless cars, my ass.

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