- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Just to be clear, I do think the obvious solution to terrible things like this is vastly expanded public transit so that people don’t have to rely on cars to get everywhere, not overhyped technology and driving aids that are still only marginally better than a human driver. I just thought the article was interesting.
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I’m all for better safety features but perhaps an easier, cheaper, and more likely to succeed option to use is city planning/enforcement and change of current regulations. For instance, closing the loophole that lets car manufacturers ignore safety and emissions rules for “light truck” classified cars, which at this point is most of the oversized SUVs and pickups.
Alternatively having safer options for pedestrians and cyclists would help too, like having separated bike roads, and pushing highways and stroads out of residential areas and reclaiming city space for pedestrians. Public transit investment also helps reduce the number of drivers, which helps traffic and safety too.
I don’t hate the idea of these extra AI tools like emergency braking being required or at least encouraged with stuff like safety ratings, but I think it’s going to be very hard to get that implemented anytime soon considering you’d be fighting consumer interest(higher cost cars) and companies who don’t want to have to make or license AI tools.
Edit: also the current regime in the US is more interested in de-regulating things to the point where I can get a happy meal wrapped in asbestos with a nice lead toy. So uh… Good luck
While I agree in concept, redesigning and rebuilding society to be less car centric would NOT be fast or easy.
It’s better in so many ways and I wish more Americans could experience the freedom and convenience of walkable and transit oriented areas to understand how unpleasant their cars really are. But if even if we seriously pursued that, it would be many decades, probably more like a century. In the meantime electric vehicles are much better than what we use now
The Problem is, the whole pedestrian and cyclist centric society only works of we also restructure the entire economic system to where workers have an extra hour and a half to two hours of free time outside of work. Because we already don’t have enough time for our families and children.
Like me for instance. I have like 3 waking hours to spend with my child (once you minus, cooking, cleaning, adulting) if I’m lucky each day. Driving to work is a highway exit away on the other side of town. With a car, that’s 6 minutes each way. On a bike? 40 minutes minimum. Public transit? With transfers, even longer.
And then you have to juggle picking up your child from childcare, etc with is ridiculous without a car. And living closer to your work is a funny idea unless you expect every neighborhood to have offices and warehouses representing every industry. I mean it sounds great for the upper middle class with shorter office jobs and the finances for that kind of lifestyle, but that’s just not feasible for real working class Americans in the economic system as it is currently
It’s for singles who can tralala themselves around on a bike or have a leisurely stroll to wherever they’re going and who don’t really cook or anything themselves.
but that’s just not feasible for real working class Americans in the economic system as it is currently
Nothing to do with economics, everything to do with city planning and resource allocation. Public transit and bikes are a bad option in the US because the transit is completely underfunded, “only poor people take the bus”, and bike paths, even pedestrian paths (if they even exist) are sent on detours around car infrastructure instead of cutting through everything.
And then you have to juggle picking up your child from childcare, etc with is ridiculous without a car.
My mum did just fine first coming by with the bike, putting me on the back seat, then swinging by the supermarket, groceries in the front basket, later on coming by with the bike, me riding along on my own, still swinging by the supermarket. We were driving on calm backstreets and through a park which was actually the most direct route, much more direct than with a car as you’d have to get onto the collector, first. Got more than one kid to wrangle? Put them in a trailer, or get a suitable cargo bike. They can even have seatbelts.
No, you don’t need a warehouse full of washing machines in every neighbourhood. People don’t shop for washing machines daily. People don’t need cars to shop for them, either, delivering bulky stuff makes a ton of sense. Groceries? Wherever you were that day, a supermarket should only be like a two or three minutes detour.
And it’s not like European cities didn’t go down the car-centric route, mind you. Difference being we realised it’s a stupid idea.
It seems really time consuming still for not much gain. I mean I value public transit because I’ve always wanted to live in a big city with a metro, but bikes seem impractical with the weather, terrain etc. and I hate going for groceries, etc so don’t it more often along the way is a nightmare.
I just don’t think people have that kind of free time, because how many people can work ten minutes via bike from where they live?
The question is rather “how many people have a metro station within walking/biking distance” and “how many long-haul trips do you need to make”.
Over here we don’t set aside half a day (or more) to to drive to walmart to buy groceries for a fortnight, we pick stuff up as we need it when we’re out, anyway. Dropping into the supermarket to grab some things is like a five minute detour if you know what you need and where it is. You can spend the metro ride thinking about what to cook, buy what you need, then get going.
According to statistics commute times in Europe are actually slightly longer than in the US, but that doesn’t take into account that combining trips is much easier over here and that riding public transport gives you time to, whatnot, knit, biking or walking counts as exercise, while driving a car counts as, at best, nothing, at worst, the road rage will ruin your day.
I’m not saying that you, personally, can flip a switch and make it work for you, on the contrary: The reason that you’re not doing it organically is because the infrastructure where you live is right-out designed to not make it work for you. What I suggest is that instead of saying stuff like “It cannot be the case that Europeans are living better lives, they must be imagining things” you say, to your compatriots, “How are those bloody europoors better at this we are supposed to be the best let’s figure out how to beat them”. Or at least that’s how I imagine motivating Americans looks like.
I hate going for groceries
Have you tried ordering ahead and picking it up? Get some panniers on your bike and the whole trip would be super quick since you can pull up right to the front.
how many people can work ten minutes via bike from where they live?
With a properly designed city, most people? With mixed zoning, people could live right next to transit or where they work, and main attractions (grocery and whatnot) could also be along the transit lines. Ideally, everything you’d need would be within a few stops, and everything else you could just order.
I don’t hate the idea of these extra AI tools
Those are not AI.
considering you’d be fighting consumer interest(higher cost cars) and companies who don’t want to have to make or license AI tools.
Openpilot is FOSS. Any OEM could use it without even asking permission.
The reason I mention AI is because the article talks about AI tools to predict accidents as well. I also googled Openpilot and this is from their wiki page.
In contrast to traditional autonomous driving solutions where the perception, prediction, and planning units are separate “modules”, openpilot adopts a system-level end-to-end design to predict the car’s trajectory directly from the camera images. openpilot’s end-to-end design is a neural network that is trained by comma.ai using real-world driving data uploaded by openpilot users.[34]
So uh. It might be AI
Also it seems openpilot requires hardware for the cameras and stuff, they aren’t going to strap third party cameras to cars to sell new. They’d have to implement the sensors in the car itself, and doing so would cost more than nothing.
My cars are old and don’t have any of this, and my one experience in a rental car with lane keeping assist was that it pushed me towards a highway barrier in construction where the original lane lines weren’t in use. Terrifying.
I quickly disabled my van’s lane assist feature, having something else giggle the wheel while I’m driving is unnerving.
giggle the wheel
Hehehehe
Because too many people in too many industries that would be negatively affected have too much money.
More sensors in the car might help a bit, but the real problem in US is its car dependent infrastructure. If the only way home after a night in the pub is by car, then you’re going to get a lot of drunk drivers. Add to this that bikes have to share road with cars, then it’s a death sentence to ride bike by night.
Autonomous vehicles. They don’t get high, they don’t get distracted, and if they’re made by literally anyone except for Tesla, they have superhuman vision and not only don’t have blind spots, they can also see in the dark and see through steam and fog.
If I could cut my work time by my driving time, because I would be able to work from the car, it would be an absolute game changer for my family life.
This will only ever work if all vehicles were autonomous. Any human interaction introduces unpredictable behavior into an otherwise “perfect” system.
This is misleading and dangerous rhetoric.
Autonomous vehicles - actual autonomous ones, not Tesla bullshit marketing “self-driving” - are already significantly safer than human drivers. Yes, they are limited to certain conditions (they don’t handle inclement weather very well yet) but the point is that they are already improving safety over human drivers.
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Additionally, once autonomous vehicles become the standard, you will see a dramatic shift in how the insurance industry operates.
Think about it: if I’m not the one driving, why would I be the one taking on liability? I wouldn’t. The manufacturer would. Suddenly, the insurance industry would be targeting vehicle/software producers instead of individuals. And anyone who chooses to drive themselves anyway? They would almost always be liable by default. Premiums for drivers would skyrocket and this would be a huge disincentive to getting behind the wheel in the first place.
Don’t. Let. The. Perfect. Be. The. Enemy. Of. The. Good.
We all lose out. And it costs lives.
The returns grow exponentially, yes. Even removing some of the bad (i.e., human) drivers is clearly better than *none."
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
The technologies to end a lot of problems exist. We aren’t using them because the oligarchs think it’s better this way.
This is definitely a great example of individuals being obstinate and entitled. Just mention you support speed cameras on all roads and find out how many of your friends think speeding is a good given human rights.
It’s my understanding that speed cameras don’t actually make roads safer, they just generate revenue for the city.
In my city a program of speed cameras was instituted about a decade ago. A private speed camera corporation lobbied the city to install, maintain and administer the system. Whoever it was that they bribed to approve it did so and the system was installed. For the first year it brought in a bunch of money extorted from the citizens. Then the revenue dropped below the minimum amount that the corporation wrote into the contract as their cut (people figured out where all of the cameras were). At that point the system was costing the city money rather than generating revenue as the corporation had promised. So they started using mobile cameras. This worked for a short time but the blowback was sharp. In the end the system was scrapped.
Speed cameras are a privacy issue that doesn’t solve the problem of speeding. People are most comfortable driving the speed the road is designed for, and if that speed is too high, the solution is to modify the road for a safer speed. The speeders in your example are right here, for the wrong reason; speed cameras should be rare if they’re allowed to exist at all. They have, at most, a short term benefit, and broad public surveillance is a very serious issue they contribute to.
Public transportation or bust
What a load of fear mongering. Instead of having people take accountability for their actions we should require “safety features” that have a direct correlation to increased distracted driving. Maybe if somebody is killed we should make regulations around driving drunk? Oh yea pretty sure that exists. Problem is we have a bunch of steering wheel holders, hardly anybody is a driver anymore. Would lane assist and auto braking have prevented this? Possibly. But would lane assist not keep him barrel assing down the road doing up through the next intersection where somebody may decide to cross the road? This is not a fix. We have ALWAYS had the “technology” to avoid traffic deaths, problem is most people are selfish self centered pricks with but a ball of lint between their ears.
The technology isn’t great, but rather than implement it, you want us to expect humans to be great.
The technologies mentioned in the article:
lane-keep assist, automatic emergency braking (AEB), and blind-spot detection
AI-powered traffic systems
On-demand breathalyzers, smartphone saliva tests, and eye-tracking sensors
All of those things are garbage and don’t work, they just drive you nuts until you turn them off.
And they missed some really low hanging, inexpensive solutions that would also work:
- roundabouts
- mass transit
- physical barriers for bike lanes
- zoning changes
Those are all old “technologies” that are proven to be effective and don’t require giving car manufacturers an excuse to make cars even more expensive or retrofitting existing cars.
with every section it just became worse
Only one of my cars has just one of those things (2015 Toyota Highlander and it’s the blind spot monitor). That aside, all of my vehicles - cars and motorcycles - are paid off. I’m not going into debt just to have nannies yelling at me.
My vehicles are a means to an end. I would absolutely love more public transit, but there is just a single train station about 12 miles from my house, while my work is only 6 miles in the same direction. “You could bike” you might say, which is a fantastic idea. However, 90% of my commute is on a 55mph rural highway with minimal shoulders and zero bike lanes. It’s literally a perfect candidate for a bus route, yet there are none, and I am not risking my life on a bicycle next to 55MPH traffic during commuting hours.
Now tell me how I’m the problem.
Because people want to drive theur cars instead if let a system handle everything perfectly. Theres no way to have safe driving with people behind the wheel.
Autonomous driving. As long as people are behind the wheel deaths will be high. Autonomous driving is not perfection, but it will be safer by an order of magnitude. It will come to scale decades later than it should due to a human sense of loss of control causing resistance to change at the cost of many thousands of lives.
Trains? We’ve been using those for over a century now.
They don’t help with last mile.
Have you considered more trains?
I have an HO gauge rail that takes me from my couch to the refrigerator.
Are you very small, or is it a lot of HO track and engines?
It’s like the crawler that takes launch vehicles to the launching pad at Cape Canaveral.
Beautiful
Sure! let’s put train lines in every other street! Brilliant!
There are a lot of other neat inventions that deal with that.
The problem with traffic is caused by lack of investment in public transportation. Have a look at how they solved it in Paris.
More trains, trams, bicycle and/or e-scooter rentals, walking (a mile is what, 20 minutes walk at most?)
Trains?! For last mile?!
Trams, sure, smaller buses that run more often too. More routes.
Bicycles et al so long as they pay insurance, have a plate and know the traffic rules like everyone else - and preferably put them in their own lanes when possible.
Walking… if you have time and physical ability, but who cares about that, right? It’s so cool and eco-friendly to say “just walk 20 minutes”.Trams, sure
Still trains.
If cities are designed better, trains get more effective. Do mixed zoning and put housing on top of shopping, and the last mile plan problem is largely solved. For the rest, bicycles and buses work well.
And walking can be way better with moving walkways. They’re popular at airports, and I’d love to see them more in malls and maybe underground/covered sidewalks.
The most important thing is to commit and make driving more annoying so solutions to the last mile problem can be created. Otherwise you’ll just end up with gridlock.
Still trains.
Subways makes more sense.
put housing on top of shopping
Somewhat common where I live, not common enough though.
Subways
Also trains. If it runs on rails, it’s a train.
Bicycle insurance and plates? Why? That makes zero sense. We have these for cars because cars are dangerous, not just for funsies. Bicycles don’t pose the same danger.
Walking… if you have time and physical ability, but who cares about that, right? It’s so cool and eco-friendly to say “just walk 20 minutes”.
Yeah it is cool and eco-friendly to walk 20 minutes (assuming one is able-bodied, as you mention.)
Bicycles do pose similar dangers. A cyclists running a red light it the typical example. Forces someone else to swerve and hit a post then what?
Bicycles.
The last mile can be 25 mph. That alone will eliminate 99% of traffic deaths, especially if the roads are designed to make it uncomfortable to go above 25 mph.
Trains never crash.
Well, they do, but don’t cause traffic deaths.
No. It doesn’t.
One of the many things I like about Subaru is that they seem to move useful features from optional to standard, once they’ve had a chance to prove themselves. I bought an Outback in 2016 and paid extra for the EyeSight safety system. Two years later that car was destroyed in an accident (I was T-boned and rolled over twice, without anyone being hurt). I bought another Outback to replace it, but by that time the EyeSight was a standard feature. Subaru now includes EyeSight on all their cars because it saves lives.
They had done similar things with other safety features. Four-wheel disc brakes, anti-lock braking, and all-wheel drive became standard on Sabarus relatively early.
It is also worth noting that the more intrusive EyeSight features, like lane assist, are easy to turn off. There’s a button on the steering wheel for that one. Even if you turn it off, the car will still warn you if you start to cross lanes without using your turn signals, but it will not adjust for you.
Meanline Tesla: were removing radar and make the car blind when it rains to cut costs.
The solution is to raise better humans who make better choices, not to try to use technology to prevent our bad choices from being worse.
What about a Common Sense brain chip?
