masterspace

I never said that all cars must be abolished. Go, go back in the discussion and check.

Yes, which brings us back to the point that if any cars are on the road, they should be autonomous, because autonomous cars have the potential to be far safer than humans.

Either your point is that all cars can be abolished, or that the deaths that drivers cause don't matter. Either way you're wrong.

If you're talking about the US: No, the US didn't suddenly start to safety engineer, they're still hostile to pedestrians over there. On the contrary, 20 years ago SUVs which make children invisible didn't really exist yet. If you're talking about Europe: We never abolished public transit. We made mistakes weakening it, but we didn't abolish it, and engineering for pedestrian safety goes back to at least the 60s, and by the 70s at least the Netherlands had found their bearings.

Bruh. Seriously. Are you intentionally being dense? The point is not that safety standards suddenly started 20 years ago, it's that pursuing increased automotive safety standards was still a worthwhile effort in parallel with building public transit, because guess what, even Europe has thousand of car deaths a year, and it's worth planning for harm reduction strategies even if we don't get the overall optimum first choice.

My answer is “automated cars will continue to be opposed by the collective unconscious until urban planning related things that are of importance to it are addressed (such as housing, equity, but also plain liability see asphalt deserts), and at that point autonomous cars will not be needed any more”

Lmfao, ok bud, please point me to the jurisdiction where drivers aren't killing thousands of people a year.

You seem to have forgotten the parts of the discussion where you failed to account for even a modicum of edge cases on an even 20 year timeline.

But that’s a mouthful, I thought you intelligent enough to understand it without being spoon-fed given that you claim to be such an advocate for public transit and modern urban planning, being aware of all its its advantages in most exquisite and intricate detail.

Everyone getting around by streetcar suburbs made sense 20 years ago too, but I'm glad we didn't stop all road safety engineering on the assumption we'd do it just because it the logical collective thing to do. You're living in a fantasy where you're planning only for the best possible outcome.

We can probably both agree though, that the actual thrashing of the car was an inevitable result of ever growing wealth inequality.

And the merits are “people don’t like it”. As evidenced by the very title. You asked me why anyone would destroy an automated car, I gave you an answer, you didn’t accept it but neither provided an alternative. Maybe ponder about it a bit more.

Lmfao, so your answer at the end of all this, is "automated cars won't happen because people don't like them"??

And yet your alternative is for every American to give up their car and take public transit. lmfao.

And I have the potential to be an exact drop in replacement for Jesus Christ. Why do you insist the fix to the issues be a drop-in replacement? Conservative, afraid of change, much?

Learn how to read.

Apparently doesn’t stop you to be car-brained like an American. As to techbro: Don’t act and argue and talk like one and I’ll stop calling you that.

Apparently doesn’t stop you to be car-brained like an American. As to techbro: Don’t act and argue and talk like one and I’ll stop calling you that.

Learn how to read.

Then why don’t you argue in favour of it?

I do, frequently, but we're in a thread discussing the merits of autonomous vehicles vs normal car, not the merits of public transit.

Why, among all the gazillion of approaches to reduce traffic deaths, are you focussed specifically, and quite pin-pointedly so, on self-driving?

Because that's what this fucking thread is about. You want to start a thread on the merits of roundabouts vs cross intersections and you'll see me arguing for roundabouts.

What makes it so more effective, so more realistic, so more existing, than raised intersections? What makes the rest of the US so fundamentally more backwards than, of all the people, the Mormons?

You clearly have not been to the US if you think the Mormons are the most stubborn and backwards part of it. Go to Florida, go to any Trump supporting county, drive from a city to the various suburbs and country homes and see how spread out they are. Look at how half the US votes. Utah and the Mormons are an exception and odd sect that isn't remotely representative of America at large, they also mass built housing for the homeless, something that nowhere else in America has done. And guess what? Utah still has a ton of cars.

And you know what makes self driving cars different from every solution that you mention? They have the potential to be an exact drop in replacement for existing cars and can work absolutely everywhere they do, including all edge cases.

Not with that attitude certainly not, no, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Stop talking to me, convince your local city council to build a raised intersection you will have done more for humanity.

Bruh, you can't fucking read. I've already told you I'm not American and that I do that. Jesus fucking christ your brain is incapable of not just thinking "haha I'm arguing with generic tech bro dufus, let me clown on how tech bro dufus he is ha ha ha"

Have you noticed something about those statistics Germany vs. USA? How the ratio is approximately 3:1 vs. 5:1? And that’s with the Autobahn having long stretches with no speed limit? What does Germany do that the US doesn’t, that could be copied as tried+true approach to drastically reduce traffic accidents?

AGAIN, because you can't get it through your skull apparently, I am in favour of building more transit and actively vote and letter write and campaign for it. Jesus fucking christ, if you respond one more time without understanding that I'm just blocking you and fucking off because this is insufferable at this point.

But the point is that regardless of what we want, reality is still reality, American suburbanites are still American suburbanites, and 20 years from now there will still be cars on the road, a lot of them.

Why are you so focussed on self-driving?

Because hundreds of thousands of people die from human drivers and far more are injured and maimed, every single year. How is that so fucking hard to understand?

Level 4 tech does not exist, all those accreditations are in places with very questionable regulatory regimes.

Waymo has driven millions of miles in Phoenix and San Francisco with three incidents that produced minor injuries. Are those extremely limited conditions? Yes, intentionally so. But level 4 driving does exist within those conditions, and the cars training in those conditions are preparing for them to expand to less limited conditions.

And because 20 years from now the public transit utopia that we both want won't exist in the US, but self driving cars might be ubiquitous.

US, 2021: 128,200 household accident deaths, 42,939 traffic.

You said ladder, now you're saying "household accidents", so how are you going to prevent people from falling and hitting their heads on the floor, or falling down their stairs, or poisoning themselves?

Also, in your made up fantasy world, is "whataboutism" still a valid way to argue? In your society are they only allowed to solve one problem at a time? If we're having hundreds of thousands of lives changed and ruined every year by something it's totally not worth solving or addressing because more people are dying in Ukraine right? We need to solve all bigger problems first, and ONLY then can we work on solving traffic fatalities right?

Appropriate that you used the song famous for not understanding what irony actually is.

You’re doing it again: I readily admit that I used the statistics loosely, I didn’t even look up numbers, I said “ladder” and meant with that “household accidents”, which I knew to be much higher than traffic deaths (at least over here, dunno about the US).

Yeah, and you were fucking wrong about that too, and just focused on your own area and extrapolating what's going on in your fucking village to the realities around the world. Like I said, arrogant.

What did you do? Instead of correcting me on the fuzziness but acknowledging that household safety is a bigger issue than traffic safety, you go on “lol you dumb I don’t have to engage with your point because you made a spelling mistake”.

It wasn't a spelling mistake, you didn't bother looking up stats and made an argument based on incorrect information. Even the stat you thought you had in your head was for your tiny region of the world only, not the world on global scale.

A safety technology which doesn’t get used doesn’t increase safety. Or is the existence of autonomous cars making non-autonomous cars safer? Hmm? Basic logic? If you want a technology to solve something, part of the design requirements for that technology is its acceptance, its price, which will dictate how ubiquitous its use will be.

Yes, and when we're talking about a problem that causes 35,000 deaths a year on top of billions in damages and hundreds of thousands injured and maimed (in the US alone), then there are many avenues to have regulators encourage or enforce the use of that technology. It's also not very expensive. First generation Waymo hardware costs ~$100k, that's easily in the range for autonomous taxi services to pay back within a year of use, give it 10 years for the compute and sensors costs to come down and to get the benefits of manufacturing at scale and it will be easily affordable by average individuals. Another 10 years from then and it will have filtered down into the used and low end markets.

Good job missing the point. Then I’ll fall off the ladder cleaning windows or showing winter clothes on the top shelf of the cabinet. Point is: Household accidents aren’t exactly rare: In 2022, 2.776 people died in Germany due to traffic accidents. Domestic accidents: 15.551.

300 people died falling from ladders in the US, while 35,000 died from traffic fatalities. So shut the fuck up with your cherry picked stats and shifting from a single problem (ladders) to all household accidents once you tried to look up stats and realized you were a fucking idiot.

…and you’re going to make people use them how? Put a police officer in every household to make sure people are sticking to occupational safety principles?

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? You asked for a technology that helps prevent ladder falls, THATS WHAT A FALL ARREST HARNESS IS. YOU FUCKING IDIOT. Here's another one: light bulb changing poles!

I very much doubt we have the same opinion on whether capital should be running basic infrastructure.

Yeah, because you're an idiot who can't fucking read and keeps slotting in a tech bro stereotype. You're a judgemental, inaccurate, dumbass.

Nah I don't think you're a petrol head, I think you're a techbro. I've accused you of it amply, and you have never even tried to give off any other impression.

Well like I said, you're a dumbass who judges people on stereotypes in their head instead of reading what they wrote so go fuck yourself for thinking you know literally anything about me.

If you think I'm a tech bro I will repeat what I've already said, learn how to fucking read. Jesus fucking Christ you're an idiot.

Statistically speaking I'm vastly more likely to fall off a ladder changing a lightbulb than getting hit by a car. But I'm sure you have a technology for that, too.... don't you?

First of all, about ~300 people die from ladder falls a year in the US, and ~35,000 people die from traffic incidents, so no, you absolutely fucking are not more likely to die from a lightbulb unless you're a shut in obsessively changing their light bulbs every 3 months.

Second, engineers invented these little things called LED light bulbs, and you only have to change them once every 10-15 years instead of a couple times a year. There are also these little things called fall arrests harnesses that are mandatory for all up high work in any commercial or industrial setting. And guess what, engineers even invented light bulb changing poles so you never have to be up high.

Now that we're done with your dumb analogy that you didn't think through, back to the topic at hand, as long as cars exist, they will be safer if they're self driving, so present your plausible plan for getting all of the world to give up cars in the next let's say even 20 years, or shut. the. fuck. up.

And thanks for the reminder that even people with extremely similar political views to me, can be arrogant dickbag idiots.

Yeah that's not how to argue. What am I supposed to read in that context? You're deflecting.

It means reread what you wrote and then reflect on what might have already been explicitly contradicted. Maybe reflect on what I've said about my political views instead of injecting the car loving stereotype you've made up.

No, it's not a dream. No, I'm not living in the city centre, either.

Congratulations bro. There are still cars all around you and you would still be safer if they were autonomous.

It’s you who’s lobbying against them

Learn how to read.

How about “hey why are the Mormons of all people more progressive than our city”, instead?

Learn how to read.

Also for an purported supporter of public transport you ripped into /r/fuckcars quite a lot.

You can support something and also think that others who support that thing are childish and naiive.

WTH are you even doing over on the snoo site.

I didn't even say I was on it, I implied that you were childish like they were. Learn how to read.

No. Railcar suburbs once existed and existing car-dependent single-home suburbs can be turned into them by, as I already explained, densifying around the stations. Which has been done, and is being done, and would come soon also to your city if you bothered to argue for it.

Learn how to read.

As to me personally: I never owned a car. Never needed one.

I didn't ask and I don't care.

Fair point, but the difference is that human drivers are already at roughly their limit for how good they can drive, but self driving cars have the potential to exceed us.

It's similar to one of the biggest arguments in electric vs gas cars. Even if electric cars today are just as environmentally unfriendly as gas cars (they're not) the difference is that gas technology is super mature and there's very little improvements to be made by spending more money on it, electric battery technology on the other hand, is still in it's relative infancy and has huge potential to improve in numerous ways, but that can only happen if more people buy electric so more R&D money can be spent on it.