Austin cyclists split on sharing bike lanes with pizza delivery robots
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Of course, local governments are extremely unlikely to improve bike lanes at the behest of a single startup. Bike lanes are already extremely unpopular as is, when the primary users are common neighbors and citizens.
They look big enough to cause serious damage to your car if you hit one, so I think you are right that drivers will pay attention to them. But I think drivers will also want to pass them, increasing the chances that drivers will use the bike lanes as passing lanes.
Furthermore, I think drivers will not trust the delivery robots, so when they are passing they will be paying attention to the robot, increasing the chances the drivers will not notice a cyclist in the bike lane.
Put the robots in the bike lanes and then that increases driver attention will be going toward keeping the car out of the bike lane.
I could envision problems with unprotected bike lanes, but those are dangerous by design [1]. However, a robot clinging to the rightmost side of a car lane next to an unprotected bike lane could easily make passing in the unprotected bike lane infeasible.
But, this is all just speculation.
[1] https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/05/29/protect-yourself-sepa...
For non-food deliveries it could wait until you are ready (maybe even hours), or have some kind of robot accessible locker where the package is left, but food you really want brought to your door.
I think there is an assumption here that the corporations will not simply pocket the profits from automation. It's not like you pay less when you use the self checkout at the grocery store.
There's a huge open question of what we're gonna do when automation crowds out large numbers of jobs, and that's potentially a significant societal shift. But right now we've already got human beings doing jobs effectively as robots, and already not creating real human interaction.
Personally, I'd rather be giving a UBI to those people for going off to, I dunno, create art or go on hikes and write about them or whatever it is human beings do when they're off being human. That might let me have some real human interaction, not a forced moment of intersection while they're just trying to get me my groceries so I can be on my way.
Are they? Food delivery has become incredibly popular but both consumers feel they are paying far too much and delivery people are getting paid almost criminally low pay and given extreme time pressure causing them to run red lights to make minimum wage.
It seems like the prime target for automation to me.
Money is disappearing into a black hole somewhere.
Y.T. notices a black Town Car that has been sitting there for a while. She doesn't have to see the plates to know it is Mafia. Only the Mafia drives cars like that. The windows are blackened, but she knows someone's in there keeping an eye on het. How do they do it? You see these Town Cars everywhere, but you never see them move, never see them get anyplace. She's not even sure they have engines in them.
Also, Whole Foods' freeganning is a must for everyone tired of Amazon's insane "convenience" (vulture capitalism) pricing.
I'm thinking about lots of "whoopsie-doodles" for interested parties who might want to hack on these for other purposes.
edit: I should've been clear in stating that it is _unsolicited_ mail addressed to your name and address that is legally yours.
Is this in anyway based on any facts whatsoever or is this something you weer once told and are now repeating? A quick Google says it's up to 5 years jail for keeping misdelivered mail in the USA (depends on jurisdiction).
https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/theft-or-receipt-of-stolen...
Yes. https://about.usps.com/publications/pub300a/pub300a_v04_revi...
Incidentally, we've been having numerous postal issues at my complex because it doesn't have a full-time carrier assigned to the route. It's so bad, I had to get a PO Box.
My neighbors must be mostly thieves (keep) or too lazy (throw away) to bother correctly redelivering mis-delivered letters or packages most of the time. They are surprised like you're a fool for making an effort to redeliver them correctly. The complex is 98% white-collar, third-tier college graduates, single, between 24 and 35. I've had electronics, clothing, and random articles left in my box and at my door... these are mis-deliveries.
Misaddressed mail would be wrong name but correct address.
I however didn't go candy is the new toliet paper-hoarding Grinch over lazily mis-delivered snacks by doing the couriers' job for them. Maybe I shouldn't have because replacements, but neighbors and candy usually involves kids. Neighbors didn't even say "thanks," so I definitely should've kept them. No good deed ever gets you anywhere, kids; you must always appear to do something half benevolent and half selfish with an audience. Be Vito Corleone. Make them an offer they can't refuse. Since it was was couriered instead of postal mailed, postal laws don't apply and it reverts to property and commerce laws. Now if I conspired to give them half if they said they didn't receive it, that would've been conspiracy to commit fraud.
Personally, I think enough is enough. If your delivery robot can't "take the lane", then it's not viable and you should go back to the drawing board. Riding your bike in America is already treacherous enough, and this certainly isn't helping. We are already third-class citizens (and afterthought after streets and sidewalks are put in place), and we certainly don't need to go down another rank just because some startup wants the space for robots.
Also, if e-bikes and bike-speed robots become really numerous in the bike lanes, that should motivate more creation and better maintenance of bike lanes.
I'd much rather bike in the street versus the sidewalk. The sidewalk is just far slower and more treacherous. No one rushes in a truck fix a hole or branch blocking a sidewalk. In a car-based country, you want to be included with the favored mode of travel, even if you're second-class there.
Bike lanes aren't, like, a natural resource to be shared. Cyclists fought hard to get them, in order to cycle on, and now we need to get crowded out of them to subsidize a startup on the theory that, once we can't use the bike lanes, we'll complain some more and maybe get as much space as we have today?
I mean, I like pizza and startups and pizza startups and I don't blame them for trying, but my reaction is a very strong fuck no. If you want to use the bike lane, build a pizza delivery robot that can ride a bike.
How do you feel about bikes with sidecars?
If you mean the current robot, it could surely be redesigned.
The idea of a side mount robot that pedals your bike and controls it, if that's what you're thinking, sounds pretty cool tho and could work if narrow enough.
The pizza delivery robot is a solution to an already solved problem and which creates problems for everybody else. The bike lane is for bicyclists and the like, no autonomous motorized things should be on them, bicyclists requested them for a long time and finally have them.
If the robo-delivery things prove so popular they may apply for their own type of lanes
Because the business plan that they sold VCs on involves autonomous delivery, of course.
...are you asking why autonomous robots exist? Like, at all?
Ok. But when this bike takes up exactly as much space in the bike lane as the robot would have, what have we gained? Theoretically the robot could take up less space since it doesn't need to be powerful enough for street speeds.
Speaking of which, drivers of cars must similarly share their lanes with self-driving cars.
Humans cost $30k+ a year, no?
Restaurant delivery is not a full time job and it is not a job that pays particularly well, particularly after factoring in expenses. Tips may make up for some of that, but it is an expense for the customer rather than the restaurant.
Autonomous delivery also has questionable benefits. Moving at 15 MPH, and likely being prohibited from using certain roads, means several vehicles would take the place of the more traditional delivery driver in a car. The restaurant would also be responsible for paying for upkeep of these vehicles. (If they have contracts with a company to operate these vehicles, they would be more aggressive at recovering their expenses than the typical owner-operator delivery driver.)
I'm not saying this robot is a great idea, just that humans are expensive.
Even ignoring how costs all add up eventually and affect consumer choice, if you can promise I don't have to pay a tip you can directly increase your delivery fee by $3 and I'll still be happier picking the robot.
-- I took your stuff 'cause it was the stuff that fit me the best.
Just because it's convenient to the robot be in the bike lane doesn't mean the robot has a right seize the bike lane.
I say provided they’re small and adhere to the same rules/speeds as bikes, then the more bike lane users we have the better! More traffic in bike lanes creates more demand for bike lanes, so more will get built. This in turn will encourage more cycling, so it’s a win for everyone!
The safest place for a bike is a separate bike lane on the road. If no separate infrastructure exists, the next safest place is on the road.
Edit: People are downvoting this; I guess because they don’t believe it? The law is here[0]. Also 73% of Japanese ride on the sidewalk more than the road[1]. So even without the wide open exceptions to the law, it’s still de facto allowed.
[0] https://elaws.e-gov.go.jp/document?lawid=335AC0000000105#5
第六十三条の四 … 三 前二号に掲げるもののほか、車道又は交通の状況に照らして当該普通自転車の通行の安全を確保するため当該普通自転車が歩道を通行することがやむを得ないと認められるとき。
[1] https://www8.cao.go.jp/koutu/chou-ken/h22/pdf/ref/2-1.pdf
The law is subjective and when you’re rolling around in spandex on a multi thousand dollar road bike and a paramilitary USA “peace officer” stops you, the law doesn’t really matter. You just “yes sir” and hope to be allowed to move on
* 10+ year Austinite until I left a few months ago. The City is exceptionally mismanaged.
> For now, an attendant on an electric scooter follows the REV-1 while the machine’s artificial intelligence learns Austin streets.
The City removed the camping ban in July 2019 allowing homeless people to camp everywhere - even at elementary schools - except in front of City Hall. Later that year, they started buying hotels to house people, paying 3x market rate (even during the pandemic), and as of last month had housed ~200 people in the year+ since purchasing the hotels.
When citizens finally voted to restore the ban in May, the City is choosing to not enforce it so they can "come up with a plan." Various budget sleuths estimate the City has spent ~$250M on the problem in the last five years but the City has fought audits to determine the actual number.
The last big battle over who gets to use the bike lane was over allowing powered bicycles in bike lanes. The trouble is that E-bikes have reached scooter and moped performance levels. (In speed, anyway. Braking, not so much.)
So far, the robots are pretty slow. They're more likely to be an obstruction than run over people.
great. let’s dump a bunch of experimental AI tech on already scare bike lanes without consultation, which, if successful, will decimate both the only easy to enter low skill job pool AND clog up bike lanes. just look at the massive PITA rent scooters have caused in city centers around the world, this has the potential to cause even more disruption.
Doesn't this phrase also refer to every human bicyclist's brain? Human bicyclists generally are not required to be licensed.
Parked cars, road work signs and other obstructions plague bike lines and cyclists ride two or three wide clogging the car lanes and once grandma sits behind them obscuring the view, the angry drivers behind drive wrecklessly around and maim or hurt someone. How about we have car cities and bike cities and don't try to mix. The robots can fly and we can make them have a bond so when they hurt someone or something the money is already there and they get grounded until FAA clears them.
> It is really surprising if you go on the road and see something foreign, and it’s coming at you at 15 miles per hour.
If it's going down the bike lane on the wrong way then I agree, that's bad and should be corrected.
There's also this:
> Some cyclists remain uncertain about exactly how a REV-1 would move out of a cyclist’s way
Would most of the safety objections go away if it just went faster and/or became easier to pass (i.e. smaller width, stay to the right side)?
It's bad for cyclists because the self-driving robots are probably buggy. Having a buggy vehicle hit you from behind and push you into a truck driving in traffic that pulls you under and kills you is a very bad outcome. That might sound extreme, but we're seeing Teslas kill their occupants (and potentially other road users). Do we really think "Tesla's AI will drive into a solid barrier, but I'm sure the pizza robot won't bump a bike into traffic"?
Another problems is that it's very hard for a machine to replicate what humans are expecting right now. One of the problems with self-driving cars is that they're often overly cautious in the presence of uncertainty (or certainty for a human, but uncertainty for the AI). If one of these pizza robots suddenly stops short with no reason to be doing that, it can cause accidents. We've seen self-driving cars cause accidents that "aren't their fault" by normal road-fault standards, but are kinda their fault. Stopping in weird ways, making odd judgements about what to do, etc. might lead to accidents.
> Would most of the safety objections go away if it just went faster and/or became easier to pass (i.e. smaller width, stay to the right side
Realistically, no. You can't really make them smaller in width. You need to be able to hold a 16" pizza and you're going to need at least another few inches on either side at a minimum. 22" is probably as small as they can go. Have you ever tried to ride side-by-side with another bike? It isn't realistic on a street with traffic.
The objections would probably go away if we were willing to dedicate a 10-12' lane in each direction to vehicles around 15MPH (with a curb that cars couldn't cross). Then there would be room to avoid problems. The issue right now is that most often bikes don't have any lane, the lane they have is often obstructed by double-parked cars, delivery vans, cones, etc., and even good lanes are narrow (think 3-4 feet). There isn't room for a self-driving vehicle that is likely buggy and likely to make odd decisions trying to get around a delivery van blocking its path - decisions that might endanger bikers.
One thing I'd ask drivers to remember is how angry they get when they're inconvenienced on the road. If a delivery truck stops in a car travel lane, drivers lean on their horns. If you live in a city, remember the last time someone was looking for a parallel parking space while you were trying to get somewhere. Imagine self-driving cars just kinda randomly stopping, sometimes too quickly when there's no reason to stop causing you to run into the back of them - and then you're at fault for it! Heck, just imagine them holding up traffic because they got confused. Heck, just remember the last time someone was in the wrong lane, but wanted to make a turn. Maybe you're an awesome and chill person, but you've definitely seen drivers who aren't.
Biking is wonderful, but it's not well-supported in a lot of places and our roads have become more hostile in many ways. Drivers are choosing larger, heavier vehicles with higher hoods which are many times more likely to kill cyclists and pedestrians in the event of a crash. More and more people are watching all sorts of entertainment in their vehicles and taking their eyes off the road to fiddle with touch screens. Pedestrian deaths are rising in the US...And now it's like, "hey, since we've been doing so much for you lately...um...I can't recall any of those things...maybe we could throw some lightly-tested AI-driven pizza bots at you...we certainly hope no one dies...but if anyone does, we won't hold anyone responsible for those deaths...have fun!"
As an aside, I think one of the big things is that no one will really be responsible for these pizza robots. If you kill someone with your car, at the very least your insurance is likely to get hit hard. You'll likely feel bad about it. There's the possibility that you'll go to jail for several years. With these pizza robots, if they kill a cyclist, what happens? A corporation loses an amount of money that they don't even notice? Except that they have the lawyers to make sure they don't even lose that?Would the company be willing to stipulate that they take responsibility for any accident involving the pizza robots (regardless of any determination of fault) and that any death requires 10% of shares to be assigned to the victim's family? Would they be willing to risk their business on this?
On a more realistic level, who is criminally responsible for any negligence that the pizza robots might do? If you're negligent driving, you're responsible. You can be put in prison. Do we put the CEO of the pizza company in prison? The software engineers? It seems like there's little incentive for the pizza robots to act well in the bike lanes. Why not try to monopolize them and push out cyclists? Why not park in them? If you're developing this delivery-robot tech, being a bad actor in the bike lanes potentially means that you'll get to privatize that part of the road for your delivery-bot fleet.
That might sound absurd, but it happened with cars. Streets used to have people in them, but as it became clear that the new cars didn't mix with people well, the people got pushed out. Heck, street cars didn't mix well with cars (because they stopped frequently to let passengers on/off) and cars hated getting stuck behind them and having to go around them so we mostly removed those.
As a biker, these pizza-robots feel like someone saying "yea, you only have a scrap of the road, but we want you to share that scrap."
I don't know where you live and things can vary a lot based on geography in the US and it's certainly not a silly question. In my city, I can see these pizza robots swerving unexpectedly to avoid road imperfections, stopping randomly, getting confused about turns, potentially trying to make an L-turn (going straight on the green and then turning/orienting left on the other side and waiting for the green the other way) and blocking the bike lane going forward, just plain not identifying a bicycle and hitting someone, having issues with rain or other weather, or just stopping in the bike lane while waiting for the pizza-recipient to retrieve the pizza since there's no place to pull over.
Realistically, I think the question might be something to think about in reverse: why would sharing a road with self-driving pizza-cars be annoying for cars. Well, it would get to its destination and then park in the traffic lane blocking traffic for two minutes waiting for the person to collect the pizza; it would have trouble understanding certain situations and cause you to rear-end them - and the company would use its lawyers to make sure you were deemed at fault to protect the reputation of their new pizza-cars; etc.
If I bike at 15mph (and other cyclists are faster), what is supposed to happen? Do I stay to the right, or if the bike lane is too small, get out of the bike lane and onto a ramp when safe? If the bot can do that (like a rear-facing LIDAR), then would the bot be more bearable?
> And if I am biking at 5mph, will it stay behind me?
Good point. I hope they have solved or will solve that.
> If it's going down the bike lane on the wrong way then I agree, that's bad and should be corrected.
15 mph is close to top speed on a bike on even ground (for me at least). If I'm causally biking to dinner, I'm not going that fast. The robot could be "coming at you" from behind.
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Beside the risks of the robots malfunctioning, I think this would be bad for bicyclists if it goes well.
Right now the bots are pretty rare but let's say this is a huge success and a really cheap way to deliver food in a city.
I can imagine there being stretches of bike lanes where the right-lane is a bunch of delivery-bots. That does not leave much room for bikes in the bike lane. "Bike lanes" become "delivery lanes".
Whether or not this is a likely outcome is another discussion but making it a rule that robots can use the bike lane could have bigger consequences than this trial run.
edit: bikes go faster than 15mph
For me, on my $300 Trek hybrid, traveling on flat land, that's about as fast as it can go.
I'm sure someone in good shape on a nice road bike can go faster.
Does anybody yet have delivery robots that actually work?
It doesn’t feel very different from just allowing scooters in the bike lane - I don’t think that would be a good idea.
1. I am short on time, energy, or groceries
2. I want to treat myself, but to not have to leave the home to get it
Better comparison: Yes, I dress myself at home instead of having a person or not come it for me each time.
I'd say being able to bike somewhere is an edge case for most people.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Hint: if your comment leads with "It's infuriating", you should probably pause.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180623224226/http://www.fdot.g...
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2019/05/10/cyclists...
[1] https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/01/03/study-cyclists-dont-b...
In the US, for experienced/aware/agile cyclists who ride often and defensively, it's usually safer for them to not wear a helmet because:
i) Vehicles statistically give helmet-less cyclists more space.
ii) Unconscious personal safety anxiety and risk-aversion that comes along with a rational cyclist not wearing a helmet. Something they must never forget.
While there are imperfect operators of every mode of transportation, don't forget that also applies to drivers and pedestrians.
Aside from that, riding on sidewalks is legal in Austin. You clearly aren't familiar with the situation.
Also, they take up less room. The density of cars is ridiculous. You have narrow sidewalks with hundreds of people and then 5x the space for 10 people in one car each. Not to mention the cars with no people at all just sitting there taking up space.
It's legal to ride bikes on sidewalks here.
When I see for-rent scooters dumped blocking public commons, I stop and throw them in the nearest gutter, dumpster, sewer, or river to hold the companies responsible for their users monetarily.
If I see a pizza-delivery robot going 5 mph in a bike lane, I'm going to kick it to the curb or run-over it. And, I'll make sure everyone else does the same. They can pay bike messengers who need the work rather than being job-stealing, pointless automation assholes.
Docks take-up too much room and would suck-up real-estate from the public commonwealth for private, exclusive use... too much of that is already happening. Underutilized "bikeshare" pod programs stole large areas of curbside real-estate while offering nothing in return for all residents (unless they paid money).
It's a Tragedy of the Commons-situation knowingly-created by these irresponsible, asshole rental companies for $$$ by not demanding proper parking from the asshole segment of their customer-base.
I've seen piles of these goddamn things on street corners, rendering entire sidewalks unusable in orthogonal directions.
Elimination of all asshats who throw scooters in the middle of public commons and thoroughfares. These incidents are why they are banned from large areas of town and on certain campuses.
They should just be banned period. Full stop. Bring your own, or rent one you can carry and must return. Ephemeral transactionality leads to this sort of Idiocracy-backdrop bullshit:
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversup...