I hope they succeed, for the sake of my mom who's legally blind and has dreamed about them for decades. but I'd be significantly more excited about self-driving if you could buy level-4 AVs that you can actually own.
Cars aren't the best option, but you can drop self-driving cars into an existing car-centric society one car at a time, with the car buyers paying for themselves.
Making a car-centric society meaningfully less car-centric requires the enthusiastic support of that society, along with competent political leadership, and probably a fair chunk of taxpayer cash too. Suburbs with huge lots make for long walks to the transit stop - but densifying those suburbs is not easy.
I don't own a car; I travel everywhere by bicycle and public transport - but the public transport I use was all built in the 1850s. Some time between then and now my society reorganised into a form that has a lot of difficulty delivering public transport projects.
This is a false alternative, because robocars do not exist, while public transit does exist but simply hasn’t been adequately implemented everywhere.
Politicians (and grifters alike) like to point to a future technology to solve an existing problem only to delay existing solutions which they don’t want to implement, most often for political reasons.
Robocars most certainly exist. They’re probably about 5% of car traffic in San Francisco. I’ve not taken one yet (taxis/ubers/Waymos are mostly impractical with a young kid in the US as you must use a car seat unlike in most European countries) but as a pedestrian they seem mostly a safer than other drivers. As a driver I expect they will eventually induce gridlock but the city can always create more bus lanes.
In the USA where transit in most cities sucks? Seattle is supposedly one of the best but you can’t get to work downtown most days without being harassed by a fent zombie.
Surely, not until public transit networks covering literally everywhere regular roads can get you.
Public transit is better, but building it outside of dense metro areas to the extent it becomes competitive is probably even more difficult than building a self-driving car.
Can I ask why you prefer that some future technology will solve her problem when actual solutions (such as access vans; public transit; etc.) already exist?
And before anyone points this out, if your local government does not offer these solutions that is a political choice of your local politicians. Plenty of local governments all over the world (even in dictatorships) are able to provide these, and changing the policy of your local government should in theory be easier then to roll out technology that does not exist.
I'm blind. I wish to hop in a robocar and drive from Denver to go visit my folks back home in Florida. Is the Denver Access-A-Ride going to take me? Which public transit is available?
I preemptively addressed this. Not providing access is a political choice. The airports/train stations/bus stations in both Denver and Florida should have assistants ready to guide you to your flight/train/bus and the Colorado government could have an agreement with Florida to share services with residents of either state. If they don‘t, there was a political choice not to, which can be changed. If there is no public transit available... well... neither are robocars, but only the former is a political choice.
I want to drive. I want to bring my cat and bring some stuff back from my dad's house. My parents just drove up here to visit me, I would like to do the same. Not take a train. Not take a plane. I want to hop in a robocar and drive to Florida. The same thing that every other person with a car can do whenever they want to. Freedom.
Because technological freedom has, historically, vastly outperformed political choice?
I can buy a robotic car, once they're available. I am nowhere near rich enough to afford even one politician, much less enough to get public transit to happen in California.
Political choices also take time. You have to get people to vote on a budget, you have to actually build the infrastructure, etc. - even busses require bus stops and drivers and maintenance facilities.
Given that robotic cars already exist today, and are planning to expand, basically every reasonable expectation says that robotic cars will happen before politicians change tack on public transit (especially in the USA, where Trump is currently our president - he does not seem gung-ho on public transit)
Like I said, dictatorships manage to do this. Claiming that America is different is just another form of American exceptionalism.
And no, robotic cars do not exist. A very limited version of robotaxis do, but they are nowhere near ready for public rollout on all public roads for the consumer market.
Waymo was a target during the anti-ICE protests because of Google's collaboration with ICE. In addition, Waymo is seen as a symbol of the gentrification problem.
Agree or disagree with it, my point is that that xkcd doesn't take into account political motivations
Protesters block human cars as well as the only difference is that the Waymo driver doesn’t get frustrated and are pretty patient. So protesters need to physically damage the car to make their point, which is a tricky proposition with all the cameras it has (but face masks are common on both sides these days).
Except in this case, damaging cars belonging to Google—a collaborator with ICE—is the point. It's more comparable to people who were damaging Tesla vehicles or the Tyre Extinguishers in the UK than the very common tactic of halting traffic/economic activity to threaten "business as usual"
Property damage is just hooliganism, thugs make an excuse for it no matter if that’s what they feel like doing.
The eventual result of America falling into chaos will be countries like China having nice stuff like self driving cars (because they don’t tolerate thugs) while the us doesnt.
Perhaps sometimes a simplistic take like this is true - people destroying just for the sake of destruction and indifferent to the target.
However when destruction is targeted toward specific brands or toward infrastructure being used for specific purposes such takes can no longer be true.
that xkcd is always funny - but there's a white lie in it e.g on motorcycles in areas where you are allowed to ride median. there's instances of drivers actively tryin' to kill you by swerving onto the median when they see you comin'.
Numerous times now, using Tesla FSD, I've found the car seemingly drifting from the center of the lane, only to have motorcycles buzz by at high speed on the opposite side. It's very polite toward motorcyclists.
I started riding in AZ, which does not allow splitting.
I now live in CA, which does.
The actual justification for it is valid, but mostly outdated:
Older and less powerful motorcycles often have air-cooled engines, and if you sit idling in them in e.g. a traffic jam, they will absolutely overheat and die (at best).
Newer and more powerful bikes are liquid-cooled, and do not have this issue (though the driver overheating is another very real issue).
My personal take is that most riders who use bikes to commute are too reckless, and lane split at speed rather than doing so more safely.
25 mph or below, in fully-stopped traffic, is relatively safe. Ditto for <=35 in a 10-20 mph flow. Each of those gives you a relative stopping distance of about 50 feet, which is 3 or fewer car lengths, which is easy to account for.
60 in a 25mph flow OTOH isn't lane splitting, it's just weaving through traffic recklessly, hoping to God that no one in the next 20 cars lengths merges or drifts at all.
The good rule that most of Europe uses is that motorcycles can "lane filter" (i.e. go in between lanes but only for cars that are basically stopped and only at low speed). Going between lanes is suicidal at high speed, but if cars are <5mph and the motorcycle is ~10mph it's actually safer for the motorcycle because it removes the chance of them being rear-ended. (It also makes motorcycles faster than cars which is helpful for discouraging cars in cities)
It's actually safer-ish. First: terms. Filtering is good, involves moving slowly through stopped traffic between the cars, usually under 20mph differential.
Splitting is less good, that involves weaving between cars at speed and is actually dangerous.
Some of the worst accidents are rear endings where drivers (not paying attention) just run you over while stopped in traffic.
This is offset by accidents where people do the stuff you're worried about but when it's practiced correctly that's not as big of a risk and generally leads to less catastrophic accidents than rear endings.
It's also just kinda dumb to force a class of vehicle that can get out of traffic jams to instead sit in them