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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

>but to get away from that you need gradual steps

Given that you bring up the space program in the same post I'll stick with the metaphor and point out that you can't go to the moon by climbing up trees, or as Russ Ackoff said, doing the wrong thing right is worse than doing the right thing wrong, because making the wrong thing more efficient just makes things worse.

If you want fully automated, efficient transport this technology already exists, it's train and subway systems. We even know how to virtually automate them 100% already, 24/7. With the tens of bilions if not more spent on driverless cars you could have actually rebuilt a decent chunk of infrastructure.

Having individual people drive around in two tons of steel to buy a bag of groceries is fundamentally stupid and its destroying cities, whether the car is electric or automated doesn't matter that much and there's no gradual change away from it, only a disruptive one.

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Trains and subways don't get you from anywhere to anywhere. They are incredibly expensive and take many years to add new lines, disrupting all kinds of things in the meantime. And they often take way longer to get you places. My time has value. There's a million things I'd rather be doing than waiting for a train, or waiting while a train makes tons of stops along the way that a car wouldn't.

And are you expecting me to carry bags of groceries on the train? How's that work? I sure hope the train has a stop in front of my house.

"With the tens of billions if not more spent on driverless cars you could have actually rebuilt a decent chunk of infrastructure."

According to this, it costs 3 billion a mile for subway. Maybe that's an extreme.... but still. You know how many miles of road there are that are currently used by cars? https://sf.curbed.com/2018/6/18/17464616/bay-area-subway-tra...

Also, one nice thing about software compared to trains: once you've built the software, each additional copy costs nothing. And the vast majority of the self-driving car initiative is in developing the software.

Also, trains don't help with avoiding things like making grocery runs altogether. Self driving cars (and other robotics that are benefactors of the technology) can make it practical to eliminate the vast majority of grocery shopping and other typical errands, having a robotic system deliver it to your door more cheaply than going to an old-school grocery store.

As for your space analogy.... sorry, but this is just different. This deals with existing infrastructure, existing culture, and so on. We need a smooth transition.

They have it rough in Tokyo — you would hate it there.

> And are you expecting me to carry bags of groceries on the train? How's that work?

What exactly do you think people without cars do, or people who live in London? Or New York City? It works perfectly fine. Or you get can groceries delivered pretty easily and cheaply.

Sure. I mean, you can. I live in San Francisco and as often as not, walk to the grocery store. But it's a pain carrying bags around. Not everyone in the world is going to be ok with that when they are used to just packing a bunch of bags in a car. It's ridiculously unrealistic to think that everyone... including the elderly, etc ... will be happy to just use a train that might be a many block walk on each end.

Yes you can get groceries delivered fairly cheaply, but it will be cheaper with self driving vehicles and robot loading and delivery.

If going to get groceries only takes you a couple minutes each way then it becomes much more reasonable to carry a backpack full of fresh groceries rather than a car full of food that will become stale.

Density enables rapid transport as well as many more shops in a given area.

I see the elderly in LA carry groceries on the bus all the time. They use a grocery cart. Solves the problem.

The thing you want is micromobility (ebikes and scooters). A car isn't a good way to get groceries, it's a money pit that makes you out of shape while also being entirely capable of killing you or someone else's children. It's designed for the highway and not good for anything slower than that.

There’s a significant percentage of the population for whom ebikes and scooters are an impossibility, but who can still drive or be driven.

And for how many of their trips do they actually need a two tonne automobile instead of e.g. an electric rickshaw or golf cart? Sure not everyone can walk, not everyone can bike, but its still insane to think that for every trip most humans take, 95% of the energy consumed is going to just moving the vehicle around versus you.

Children and heavy groceries can use bike trailers as well.

Golf carts are definitely less dangerous but they still fail the “makes you out of shape” test. I’m going to make you exercise and you’re going to like it.

Definitely, but the context was about people who can't walk or bike presumably because issues with mobility. Getting in shape is important but if you can't move at all because of other health reasons, asking someone with terrible knees and no endurance to bike everywhere is not going to be realistic. They practically need paratransit.

>If you want fully automated, efficient transport this technology already exists, it's train and subway systems

You still need cars for going from point A to the train station and from the other train station to point B.

That's what buses, bicycles, and your feet are for, in many places.

I'm in my 30s and I don't have a drivers license. You don't need a car at all in any city that's built around public transportation. I've lived in Tokyo for many years, the greater metropolitan area has something like 38 million people, and I think a majority of households does not own a car in the prefecture. God gave us two legs, they work wonders between train stations.

Not everyone lives in a city. I don't want to spend hours walking to the nearest equivalent of a konbini and back.

I use my skateboard for that. Fits between my legs on the train and under the desk at work.

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