cross-posted from: https://lemmit.online/post/5292633
This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/science by /u/calliope_kekule on 2025-03-01 05:53:17+00:00.
cross-posted from: https://lemmit.online/post/5292633
This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/science by /u/calliope_kekule on 2025-03-01 05:53:17+00:00.
They will truly do anything not to admit the problem is cars
It‘s even worse. You need mass surveillance and strip away human rights to do it the way China does it. And I am sorry, but that‘s not worth it. There are countless better ways to deal with climate change because in the end of the day it‘s still a self serving mission for the most part.
Your take is that changing traffic management is a violation of human rights?
Your bad faith argument aside, they absolutely do use technology that violates human rights and integrate it in this system. Think about why smart cities are controversial and amp it up to 11. That‘s China managing their population. Point systems that prevent you from air travel or entering other provinces because you dared criticize the almighty government do violate the basic human right of free speech and control traffic at the same time.
That’s… just not real… Your understanding of Chinese policy comes from curated western sources with vested interests in putting a dystopian and totalitarian understanding of China and its government in our countries’ people (we’re both westerners). There are systems in place to prevent certain convicted criminals from freely moving around there country, but that has little to do with criticising the party.
Regardless, big data on traffic doesn’t imply knowledge about the particular vehicles and drivers inside said vehicles. You’re just going ahead and assuming “dystopian control of people” because it’s China.
Which human right does this strip away?
Privacy obviously. They collect everything about their citizens and use it in every system. They‘re not some super advanced country that simply does tech better than everyone else, they just hoard more data than anyone and use it carelessly everywhere.
No they aren’t. They’re saying smarter traffic systems are an improvement over what we have now. I’ve looked in the article and nowhere do they say cars aren’t a problem, or that emissions is down to traffic lights not cars.
I see so many examples on here and on Reddit of people letting perfect be the enemy of good.
Whether we like it or not, cars will be around for a while. It makes no sense to put zero effort into improving efficiency in the meantime. You don’t have to be so all-or-nothing.
And next year the congestion will be the same as before, except with even more cars and even more emissions.
This is equivalent to building another lane on a highway to increase throughput and decrease traffic jams. In the beginning, emissions will be reduced since traffic jams occur less frequently. And then, through induced demand, there’s congestion again.
Improving car throughput directly leads to increased emissions with a small delay.
From the paper:
Yes, and such intelligent systems can also optimize for pedestrian traffic, reducing the time waiting for a walk light, monitor bike lane usage, track dangerous intersections, improve emergency response times, prioritize buses and trams, etc. It’s good for people to be gathering this data and trying to make things better.
In the US, these types of “intelligent” systems almost always degrade pedestrian traffic quite severely.
China has more public transit of every type than the rest of the world combined at this point, and most of their cities are quite pedestrian centric.
Cars are a luxury outside the rural areas, and they’re a problem, but this is unrelated to that.
Exactly all this does is create more road capacity which will inevitably lead to more cars and then increased congestion.
This is the big data equivalent of “one more lane”.