Futurology

After years of being "almost there" 2023 seems the year self-driving robot vehicles have finally come of age.

Then you haven't been paying attention to the reality:

• driverless cars disabled by placing traffic cones on their hoods
• driverless car blocks emergency vehicle
• driverless car fails to recognize construction area

These incidents demonstrate that driverless cars are incapable of recognizing and responding to unusual situations. Reality is chaotic and there will always be unusual situations, and unusual situations with vehicles put peoples' lives at risk. The cost is too high, the benefit too low.

It surprises me that fixed route buses, like the model talked about here, aren't taking off faster.

We already have those, they're called buses. This thing reminds me of those projects that reinvent trains but shittier. Instead of investing in this kind of nonsense we should be improving public transit infrastructure. If we need to add more bus routes we should just do that.

And frankly, the current state of the technology has been massively overhyped.

Seems they’re still only “almost there”

• A Bumpy Ride for San Francisco’s Driverless Taxis
• Driverless Taxis Blocked Ambulance in Fatal Accident, San Francisco Fire Dept. Says

Self driving buses on fixed routes sem like a good idea to me, self driving cars not ao much.