Originally published at: Driverless taxis: chaos and copulation on the streets of San Francisco | Boing Boing
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Do they have a driverless flush and clean?
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Picturing that as a movie title…
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I imagine a day when we get back all the real estate currently dedicated to our car culture. It’d be wonderful not to have gas stations and parking lots wasting space. An on-demand fleet of cars could always be there when we need it, and transportation becomes quick and cheap for all. That day seems very far away.
Unfortunately I have to agree we’re not going to see that anytime soon in the U.S. Too many vested interests, too much greed. The closest one can get to it is living car-free in a 15-minute city with good public transit, and that’s not cheap these days.
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The F**ks And The Furious?
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Of course that begs the question why they’re running this taxi fleet in San Francisco, which actually does have a pretty decent public transportation system. Plenty of people who live there get by fine without cars.
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Cruise is in Marin. Waymo probably in SF or on the Peninsula.
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We know the answer. The companies’ first priority is investors. They’re going to roll out the proof of concept first in the expensive cities where the money lives and where, consequently, self-driving cabs are least needed (except as novelties and toys as described in the article).
It’s the same reason you only see those funny little delivery robots trundling down the streets of neighbourhoods where dozens of restaurants and at least two supermarkets are within a 10-minute walk from your front door.
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I’ll take your word for that but their website still seems to be pretty focused on San Francisco.
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They are actually HQ’d in SF. Marin is across the Golden Gate, I think there are also offices there. I was mistaken about the HQ location being there.
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An on-demand fleet of cars could always be there when we need it, and transportation becomes quick and cheap for all.
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And if pubic transit is anything like other cities, plenty of people get it on just fine on public transit.
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Well, my point was that SF’s public transit isn’t like that in other American cities because it’s actually relatively convenient and easy to use. Much moreso than a lot of places.
There are no shortage of large cities elsewhere in California that have much worse public transportation systems. Obviously the best answer is to build better public transportation, but until that happens a fleet of robotaxis might at least have a glimmer of a hope of meeting an unmet need. But in a city like SF (which has the second-highest “walkability score” of any major California city) that need is basically already met. Robotaxis would make much more sense (to the extent which they make any sense at all) in a city like Twentynine Palms, which has an abysmal walkability score and a population that includes a lot of seniors who can no longer drive themselves around
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Since these “taxis” are private property of the company operating them and you are agreeing to something when you use one why couldn’t they just put cameras in them?
And then sell that footage to Max for an updated Taxi Cab Confession…
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They do have cameras in them, as the article makes clear. The people who are screwing or drinking or smoking are doing so in full view of the people monitoring the vehicles, not to mention all the people outside the vehicle itself. The only difference between screwing in a driverless cab and screwing in a conventional cab is that there isn’t a human driver to kick your horny butts out of their vehicle.
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You wrote a very meticulous and thought out answer that took the subject of public transit seriously.
I was making a joke about people “getting it on” as in sex on public transit, since copulation in robo taxis was mentioned. I should have put a after get it on.
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conversely, can you spot the cheap and quick public transportation in this image?
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“The street finds it own uses for things.” – William Gibson
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I can see the public transportation that would be quick if private vehicles weren’t in the way.
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Sure, fine. But I’d reckon it’s all fun-and-games until your robo-car gets into a scrape with, say, a firetruck, another passenger vehicle or maybe a patrol car. 
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