[robotresearcher]

I worked in the field, not at Waymo. Everyone in the business is acutely aware of weather, along with hundreds of other factors, many much less obvious.

The engineers whose expertise you assume away are actually debating corner cases like the one we saw of someone carrying a bicycle on their skateboard.

In fact the companies run test campaigns in shitty weather all over the country on purpose, at great expense.

[jsrozner]

Yeah maybe we should just stop doing that and invest in public transit infrastructure instead.

[simondotau]

Public transit is a function of city design, less so much the presence of public transit. If you can’t walk to a stop, or if your destination isn’t reasonably accessible from that network, it won’t be used for that trip.

While it sucks for many other reasons, autonomous vehicles are actually a very good solution to public transit in most American cities. What I envisage is a dense grid of virtual bus stops in N square miles surrounding a rapid transit stop. You hail using an app, and a minibus (8-20 pax) adjusts its route to collect you and get you to that rapid transit station. The inverse happens for people arriving at that station, where routes are planned as the train approaches, so people heading to the same general area can be directed to the same minibus.

[SR2Z]

Who is "we?" The cost to develop self driving cars is not exactly being felt by society at large.

It certainly isn't stopping anyone from improving public transit, but it seems like you believe it's this and not any one of a bajillion actual factors to blame.

[jsrozner]

This is not true. If a king has all the money, then whatever the king wants is what society builds. The use of resources by tech companies to build self-driving cars uses resources for things that might otherwise have gone to some other approach.

Google's use of resources does not occur in a vacuum. Moreover, if cities decided to pass laws that would slowly transition all road infra away from private vehicles to shared public transit, then Google would lobby against that.

For public transit to function well (i.e. competitively with private vehicles), traffic needs to be much reduced (e.g., imagine no traffic lights and no traffic). Google's private cars on the roads do not move us in that direction. There is no doubt that they are technologically impressive, but they do not provide greater utility than investing in shared infrastructure would.

[mschuster91]

Last mile is still a thing. We need long distance public transit, regional public transit, local public transit (buses, trams, cable cars, ...) and we also need hyperlocal public transit (taxis, autonomous vehicles/"peoplemovers").

[timmmmmmay]

if you want people to use public transit, you need to make it not be a mobile homeless shelter. otherwise everyone who can afford to will insist on a private transport

[jsrozner]

Public transit and public places will continue to decline in cleanliness and quality for as long as the rich suck resources out of local municipalities.

They do the same things with public schools (pulling educated teachers to teach in private institutions) and with medical care (pulling physicians into private concierge practice).

If all the rich people had to take public transit and send their kids to public schools, they'd start investing money and (human) energy / capital in making the public infra better.

The investment of resources by rich people into their own private enclaves is entirely rational and can be solved only by wealth taxes that preclude such action (by making it impossible).

[cess11]

Why are usians still allowing homelessness?

[charcircuit]

Roads are public transit infrastructure.

[robotresearcher]

These are companies. They can invest where they please.

Call your government reps.

[contubernio]

They depend on public investment to build and support road infrastructure. If one accepts your point of view, these companies depend on massive government subsidies. Or perhaps they should pay for the construction and upkeep of the roads their vehicles use.

[jlebar]

All companies (and indeed individuals) rely on and benefit from various public goods, such as roads, law and order, and an educated populace. They pay for these public goods through taxes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good

[robotresearcher]

These robot vehicles pay road use taxes, like other vehicles do. And when used commercially, they pay taxi tariffs. There's even an EV-specific road tariff in CA to make up for the lack of gasoline tax revenue.

I'm not sure why you would assume to the contrary.

[jsrozner]

By law, the English king could do what he pleased to. Somehow most folks still think the American Revolution was just.

[bitpush]

True. While we're at it, let's not fixing roads as well. Also electric cars. Also what's the deal with space exploration? Fix what's on earth first please.