[skybrian]

It doesn't seem like all that many people are all that crazy about self-driving cars? It's a frequent topic of conversation because some companies have invested a lot of money in it. But people express fairly negative sentiments about it.

Meanwhile, huge amounts of money is spent on improving mass transit. It's fairly conventional wisdom that it's a good thing. (The money doesn't seem to go very far though, compared to the need.)

[theplumber]

>> It doesn't seem like all that many people are all that crazy about self-driving cars?

I think that many people(including me) do not belive in self driving cars. I "know" there will be no level 5 self driving car anytime soon so why would I be excited? All the current and "near future" self driving cars seem to have a steering wheel so they are "fake self driving cars" and I'm not interested in that. Why would I use a self driving car if I still have to keep my hands on the steering wheel? I would be more worried that the car could get into an accident by itself and I would be blamed.

Then the more you learn about the tech the more I get worried. The car is supposed to drive itself based on solved captcha or an army of people trying to label everything?? I don't want to be anywhere near a "fake self driving car".

Self driving cars are like those miracle cures for aging or cancer that seem to work only on rats or in lab specific conditions. One day they will work on humans but you never know the day.

So if a miracle happens and "real" self driving cars are developed I think all the people will go crazy after them just like for a miracle drug to reverse aging.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/06/02/health/reverse-aging-life...

[xodjmk]

"The car is supposed to drive itself based on solved captcha or an army of people trying to label everything??"

You're learning is a little bit off. Self driving cars are not a big truck. It's a series of tubes.

[pwinnski]

I love that my current rental car (a Kia K5) has lane-keeping and collision-detection features. If it tried to label those "self-driving," I'd never use them.

I think you're right: companies like Uber and Tesla are pushing self-driving cars, but there isn't really popular support for them.

[ncmncm]

Huge amounts are not (wholly-legal urban tunnel fraud aside) spent on public transit.

Huge amounts are instead siphoned from public transit to shore up car makers' and suburb real estate profits.

[skybrian]

Examples:

In California, $10 billion so far has been spent on high speed rail. The new bus terminal in SF was $2 billion, though admittedly that includes a skyscraper and a park. The Bart extension to Milpitas cost another $2 billion.

In Manhattan the first phase of the second avenue line cost $4.5 billion and the second phase will cost $6 billion.

[ncmncm]

> "(wholly-legal urban tunnel fraud aside)"

As I said. It is usually best to read what you reply to.

[skybrian]

Yes, I ignored that on purpose because it doesn't make sense.

I'm reminded of Abraham Lincoln's joke: "How many legs does a dog have, if you count the tail as a leg?"

The money counts as spending, even if you say it doesn't.

[ncmncm]

It is not spent on transportation, it is spent on something else, and deducted from the transportation budget. If somebody steals your wallet and uses your card to buy an NFT, did you spend that? It came from your account.

[skybrian]

Governments spent huge amounts of money on what they at least thought were public transportation projects. In California, the public voted for propositions approving this spending. This shows that spending on public transit is popular. The will is there. It's fairly conventional wisdom that improving public transit is important.

The execution of these plans is often pretty bad. This shows that something is going wrong other than having public support.