Hacker News Reader

Comment by fleitz | Hacker News Reader

Fully agree, just had the critic argument with my roommates about this. It doesn't really matter if everyone gets on board this plan, what matter is that with a 90% utilization rate and cars that can move themselves, someone like ZipCar/Uber or whoever can offer something like $30/month for unlimited car usage within 40KM.

It doesn't matter to me if everyone else doesn't get on board what matters to me is that a service at those rates may be possible in the near future. People still have phones that only text and call, but it's becoming a rarity.

View on HN

exactly. all those car-sharing services may become much, much more useful and prevalent when you can use your smartphone to whistle the car to come to you. that would also spell doom to taxis.

perhaps then only the very rich, those who live in remote areas, and true car enthusiasts will want or need to have their own car.

a bit like a 100 years ago, everybody from the middle-class up had a maid, but now only rich people do because machines now do most of the household work for us.

I'm not buying that last point... Having a maid or not is more to do with relative wealth.

You're missing his point. At any given time it has a lot to do with relative wealth. But the change over time is the result of things like vacuums and washing machines changing housekeeping from a full-time-plus job to something that can be done in the evenings/weekends.

He either has low standards of housework or a Japanese robot... Yes, vaccuming, laundry and dishes are a bit quicker, but they still take a lot of effort, and what about dusting and ironing? I'd hire a maid in a shot if they were a bit cheaper.

It's not just devices, modern cleaning solutions are a huge improvement over what people had even just 100 years ago. As to dusting a good air filter and regular vacuuming dramatically cuts down on dust accumulation. All together the modern household with about 5 hours a week of effort get's better results than you would have from a 20 hour per week maid using methods from 1911.

PS: People still use home cleaning services but the number of hours they work is a lot less than what you would expect from a maid a 100 years ago.

>laundry... a bit quicker

Ever tried hand washing your clothes with a bucket and a stick, then running them through a mangle yourself?

It ain't quick. It is orders of magnitude more effort than putting your clothes in the washing machine, which takes about a minute and no physical exertion whatsoever.

Yep. You also have to consider the time spent on boiling the water, ironing with irons that have to be reheated on a stove, hanging the clothes out to dry (and hoping that it doesn't rain), and so on.

>a bit quicker

That's a ridiculous understatement. Have you ever done laundry, or dishes by hand? What about waking up to start all the fires around the house?

Or have you ever attempted to cook a meal from scratch, how about 3 meals a day.

Modern conveniences easily save 8 hours a day, on daily chores.

Yes, yes, and yes. I wasn't born yesterday, and I am from a fairly isolated part of the world. They all took much longer, I agree. Perhaps this is a reason that both members of a couple can usually work nowadays - but I don't think it is the reasona that less people higher maids. All I am saying is that the maids issue is economic; no matter how little housework there is, I would still pay somebody else to do it if it were economical.

>I would still pay somebody else to do it if it were economical.

Of course you would, but, for most middle class people, maids have moved from necessity, to luxury.

The marginal utility of a maid has gone down, they used to save you 10 hours a day, now they may save you 1 or 2. Most modern middle class people can manage an hour or 2 a day, but not 10, so the demand has gone way down. Most people aren't willing to sacrifice in order to afford a maid b/c they don't need one.

It will be the same with cars. If you can rent a car with 90% of the connivence of owning one, owning one will become a luxury.

Many people sacrifice a large percentage of their income because the feel a car is necessary. When it's merely, nice to have, most middle class and lower will no longer do so.

> everybody from the middle-class up had a maid, but now only rich people do because machines now do most of the household work for us.

You'd be surprised how many people hire household help. Pretty-much every dual-income couple I know over a certain age has someone come in every week or so. And no, it's not a generation thing, that "certain age" has remained stable for at least 15 years. (I didn't notice before because I was too young.)

Yes, there's an income threshold, but at $150/month, the starter cost is suprisingly low. (That's San Jose prices.)

You're assuming that having driverless cars is more desirable than having human controlled cars. I doubt most people see it that way.

Why not? I'm seeing numerous, huge advantages to the driverless cars. The only advantage to a normal car is that sometimes they can be fun to drive. Frankly, I'd be more than happy to make that tradeoff, and I suspect I'm not unusual in that regard.

Would you also like to cut off your legs and replace them with computer controlled wheels?

Once again HN and techies in general are a ridiculously small percentage of the population. Normal people do not see things the same way.

People have already replaced their legs with wheels to a very large degree. The computer control is just an added nuance.

I'm not convinced that trade-off would exist. It can't possibly be hard for a driverless car to kick control over to a human driver.

There is a significant potential saving in temoving the now-redundant controls. Also, as computers become safer than humans, human drivers may be actively discouraged.

Wait until, driverless cars are mandatory. Do you have any idea how many people die each year in car accidents. The vast majority of those are caused by human error.

Human error extends beyond the act of driving... it could be bald/frayed tires, non-existent brakepads, old wipers, missing turn lights, etc.

If those are addressed by driverless cars (ie, johnny-cab) then we're probably going to see a significant drop in freeway accidents.

On the other hand, will those driverless vehicles be capable of handling the unpredictable human drivers on the road?

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration only 5% of accidents are caused by mechanical failures.

Drunk driving alone (at least in 20004) is the cause of 30% of fatal accidents during the weak and over 50% during the weekend.

So even if car maintenance is still left to humans, we'd see a massive decrease in car accidents and subsequent deaths.

>will those driverless vehicles be capable of handling the unpredictable human drivers on the road?

With certainty, yes they will, and with much better reaction times than humans. In 2004 at the DARPA grand challenge the farthest any car got was 11.78 km.

1 year later 22 cars got farther than that, and 5 completed the race (240 km).

Self driving cars have only kept improving over the last few years. The Google car has never had an accident while in autonomous mode, only while a human was in control.

Self driving cars will be here. When is going to be dictated legislation, but when that time comes, they will save tens of thousands of lives per year.

The majority are pedestrians cyclists etc. Those deaths wont suddenly be solved.

In 2008 pedestrian and cyclists deaths accounted for only 14% percent of traffic fatalities in the US.

Where did you get "The majority."

Also most of those deaths were caused by human errors, why do you think they won't be solved by removing human error from the equation? Do you think driverless cars will keep running down pedestrians at the rate humans do?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com