Hacker News Reader

Comment by phoghed | Hacker News Reader

Different 30 people in the US. I’d drop my car if Waymo was around and financially made sense. You’ll never catch me wasting my time on a bus though. We’ll never even be close to Europe or elsewhere wrt where public transit was even decades ago in those places.

People here only ride the bus when there’s no other option for them.

Waymo could make a bus too anyway, especially after they’ve been in an area a while and have data about where they’d have the most impact. Internet at large would probably decry it as enshittification.

View on HN

> Waymo could make a bus too anyway

Oh hell no. Cars are bad enough from the damage they can cause by kinetic energy, but a bus? Especially a bus where people don't wear seatbelts or, worse, are standing?

It would probably be safer than most bus drivers currently, so I don't see the issue. The discomfort around damage being caused by statistical anomalies vs individual error is not a rational one if the former is, in the aggregate, smaller than the latter. Individuals have stories, but societies operate more closely in line with the laws of physics: probabilistic at the small scale, deterministic more broadly. From that view, we are just replacing one statistical possibility with another, one which will result in less people dying; or, more importantly, less likelihood you or your loved ones will die because of a bus accident.

> don't wear seatbelts

I just want to point out that the safety record of public transit drivers is typically impeccable. There is no safer vehicle out on the roads except buses and trains. I have been a rider of public transit for 50 years, minus about a decade when I owned a car, and in 3 different major cities, and literally I've never been aboard a bus that hit another vehicle, hit any obstacle, or had a reportable accident. Literally never happened. (I was aboard a light rail train that collided with an SUV, but that's a whole other ballgame.)

I've never felt unsafe without a seat belt on board a bus. Seat belts in cars may be a bit of a panacea, but I challenge you to find any metropolitan area where the buses have accidents, much less injury accidents, on a weekly basis.

Well, you'd need to crash for that too be an issue. We have to wait for the data to prove it out, but I much prefer a Waymo driver than a human one, especially if I'm walking home right after the bars close.

Bus was just fine in Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco.

> Bus was just fine in Portland

Yes, if you live within about 1 mile of downtown and also work there. If you live downtown and your job is in Beaverton, you're likely in for a 90 minute commute. Or if you live in Beaverton and your office is downtown. Portland's mass transit is adequate for a subset of people and completely impractical for most.

Source: I've lived in and around Portland for 50 years. Worked downtown much of it, and have lots of friends and former colleagues who used public transit. You have to really want to not have a car because the time commitment is real.

Okay, but clearly there’s a difference between, “the bus makes sense if you live or work near downtown,” and, “people only ride the bus when there is no other option,” as the GP said.

Yeah theres a couple spots that it’s fine for people that have never experienced what’s actually possible.

That 90 minute commute by bus isn't one where you're driving though. A strict time comparison ignore the fact that the bus or train ride merely requires you to get out when you reach your destination. You don't have to sit in stop and go traffic driving. Sitting in traffic driving sucks unless you have comma.ai or equivalent. Mentally it's just exhausting by the time you get home/to work. If you have to drive and can shitpost HN for those 90 minutes, vs trying to do that while driving (don't do that), then who cares if it takes a bit longer? There's obviously too much longer, but still.

Bus is fine in select areas at current fares, but would be less popular if people realize each drive costs more like $16 in total instead of the $2 fare they pay.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com