No shit. The bar is low. Humans suck at driving. People love to throw FUD at automated driving, and it’s far from perfect, but the more we delay adoption the more lives are lost. Anti-automation on the roads is up there with anti-vaccine mentality in my mind. Fear and the incorrect assumption that “I’m not the problem, I’m a really good driver,” mentality will inevitably delay automation unnecessarily for years.
It’d probably be better to put a lot of the R&D money into improving and reinforcing public transport systems. Taking cars off the road and separating cars from pedestrians makes a bigger difference than automating driving.
WVU has a tram system called the “PRT”. It’s semi-automated cars on a track around campus and downtown. It’s not great, but goddamn does it handle a large school population just fine. Very high throughput, and it keeps congestion down. … as down as you can be with such a high density town.
Sure that’s great, but read the room. It’s like advocating for gun legislation in the US, it can only go so far realistically. The vast majority of US cities are built around automotive infrastructure and the culture is very much anti-public transport. That requires heavy government level buy in. Car automation can be driven primarily by industry.
One can happen in a major way in a few years, the other will take decades if it happens at all. Personally I’m all for it, but it’s such a different discussion that it just comes across as distracting when talking about very real delays in car automation and it’s not a valid criticism of moving forward and promoting decreased barriers to fully automated vehicle infrastructure.
No shit. The bar is low. Humans suck at driving. People love to throw FUD at automated driving, and it’s far from perfect, but the more we delay adoption the more lives are lost. Anti-automation on the roads is up there with anti-vaccine mentality in my mind. Fear and the incorrect assumption that “I’m not the problem, I’m a really good driver,” mentality will inevitably delay automation unnecessarily for years.
It’d probably be better to put a lot of the R&D money into improving and reinforcing public transport systems. Taking cars off the road and separating cars from pedestrians makes a bigger difference than automating driving.
In my country at least (US) that’s just not going to happen.
WVU has a tram system called the “PRT”. It’s semi-automated cars on a track around campus and downtown. It’s not great, but goddamn does it handle a large school population just fine. Very high throughput, and it keeps congestion down. … as down as you can be with such a high density town.
That, and the inevitable bureaucratic nightmare that awaits for standardising across makes and updating the infrastructure.
Car infrastructure was a mistake. Automation isn’t the solution, it’s less cars and car-based spaces.
Why not both? We can automate the trains (more), the busses, and the occasional rural drive.
The rural drive is the fun one, though…
Sure that’s great, but read the room. It’s like advocating for gun legislation in the US, it can only go so far realistically. The vast majority of US cities are built around automotive infrastructure and the culture is very much anti-public transport. That requires heavy government level buy in. Car automation can be driven primarily by industry. One can happen in a major way in a few years, the other will take decades if it happens at all. Personally I’m all for it, but it’s such a different discussion that it just comes across as distracting when talking about very real delays in car automation and it’s not a valid criticism of moving forward and promoting decreased barriers to fully automated vehicle infrastructure.
Automation also can be abused, which I’m very very cautious about.