That’s a heck of a strawman.
They manage in cars today. This implication that people’s ability to manage their evacuations will wholesale change in an autonomous EV future is a really strange hill to die on.
How so?
Sam_Stone seems to be asserting that because HE doesn’t need to think about restroom breaks, then restroom breaks are inconsequential to anybody in an autonomous vehicle; you seem to be falling into the same trap. That’s allowing his needs and preferences to dictate how he thinks everybody will act/react.
In cars today, the person using the car is supposed to be paying attention to the road, meaning you will notice the signs that say “next services 40 miles” and plan accordingly. Sam_Stone is positing a new paradigm in which the person using the car is focused on productive work and meetings, and therefore isn’t necessarily aware of their surroundings in the same way, or even at all. Yes, that is a pretty wholesale change in what it means to travel by car. I am surprised this strikes you as novel or controversial.
I’d say you’re doing the exact same thing on the opposite side of the debate.
The idea that people will be unable to multitask and be aware of their surroundings is frankly bizarre. It’s not like there’s that many stretches of road in the US where bathrooms are so scarce as to make this a real problem. If you’re on one you’ll probably need to adjust your focus a tiny bit. They’ll already be managing when the car needs to recharge and where they might want to stop to eat…something we balance today as passengers in cars.
To be honest, this is feeling like a massive hijack and you’re beating a dead horse. We get it, you think people will be pissing themselves if cars don’t have bathrooms and that not having bathroom will drive the majority of travelers to HSR.
For what it is worth, I drove across country 3 times. Drove up and down the California coast once. Drove to New Orleans from New Jersey twice and many trips from NJ to Florida. Also a lot of shorter runs that were still long drives others might fly or take a train for.
I always planned bathroom and gas breaks. Planning it with an autonomous EV should be easier than it was back when with a Rand McNally Road Atlas and maybe some AAA state maps.
Starts? Fine with me, though he’s ignoring the different preferences of others. But ISTM he’s made a conclusion, based on nothing but his own preferences. That seems pretty silly to me. There are tons of factors that would go into the choices people make about whether to use rail or car, and Sam has only mentioned a very few.
He’s mentioned several actually…but you’re really wrapped around the axle on bathroom breaks.
Yeah, I gotta say while Sam has some holes in his argument, a whole lot of the objections sound like throwing anything against the wall and see what sticks. We’re seriously arguing that autonomous cars will make bathroom breaks difficult?
I’ve only seen a few - being alone seems to be the main one, along with door to door service. Bathrooms were brought in by others.
Why?
After all, that’s pretty much the point of Quiet Cars on Amtrak: a place to concentrate on your work without being distracted (an idea brought to Amtrak by regular commuters on the Philadephia-to-DC run). For that matter, look at Sam_Stone’s idealized version upthread:
[emphasis added]
He’s positing a trip in which he is so engrossed in the work and meetings and surfing the internet that the car has to tell him he has arrived, whereas you think it is “bizarre” not to be aware of your surroundings. What makes your version less bizarre than his?
Never travelled much out west, or indeed outside of major metro areas, have you? I’m in Kansas; there is a stretch of interstate leading out of our state capital that is 45 miles to the next restroom (or food stop, place to get fuel/recharge car, place to stretch your legs, etc., etc.). At the full design capacity of the road, that’s a minimum of half an hour; at the current speed limit, about 40 minutes; if there is traffic, weather, smoke (an issue in the Flint Hills), etc., add some unknown additional time.
Not at all. However, the presence of bathrooms, and cafe cars, and the ability to get up and walk around whenever you feel like it, are convenience factors that many people will take into consideration when deciding on mode of transit, and if you are going to be making decisions about what modes people will choose, you’d better be factoring those in as well.
For example, current CDC guidance is that travelers get up and walk around every 2-3 hours to reduce the risk of deep vein thrombosis. On a train, that’s easy; on a plane, less so but still possible; in a car, that means stopping at a rest area. It’s not at all difficult to do so, but it needs to be factored into the plan, which means allowing time and making sure facilities are available. If you are basing your travel plans on riding five hours straight through, but reality dictates a 20-minute break in the middle, then your travel time is longer than five hours. If multiple breaks are required, then add those times into the overall journey. Don’t just pretend it will be five hours by autonomous car if the real schedule is six hours.
Your emphasis dramatically changes the meaning of that comment. And no, he’s not at all positing a trip in which he’s so engrossed in his work that he’s unaware of his surroundings. He’s simply laying out the events that would occur in the hypothetical, it doesn’t carry the implication you added. You’re literally building the strawman before our eyes.
How am I changing the meaning? He’s watching the video on-screen; he literally says that. If he is paying attention to the video, how much attention is he paying to road signs?
These things have been available for more than a century (well, maybe not the movie thing). Just fucking hire a chauffeured limo and be done with it. The assumption that you well not be stuck with an expensive subscription fee for your car’s piloting software seems to be unfounded, based on the current direction of the tech industry. The assumption that that subscription will be a great deal less than a chauffeur is questionable.
The way things are now,…
If I’m working at home I can’t take a break whenever it’s convenient. If I’ve got a 30 minute break, and then 2 solid hours of meetings, I’ll go use the bathroom now.
…or…
If I’m on a long road trip, driving is the only thing I’m doing. I see a sign for a rest area ahead, and my bladder is full (or close enough) I can stop and relieve myself and not worry that it conflicts with some other task I have scheduled for the same block of time.
The future could present a hybrid of those methods, but I don’t think it’s insurmountable. If I’m doing work and attending scheduled meetings in my car, I could give the car access to my Google calendar. If the car sees that I’ve got free time now, and a block of meetings starting in an hour, maybe it pulls into the next service plaza. It knows that the battery is only down to 50% charge, but better to recharge it now (and attend to other human needs) so it won’t have to interrupt other items on the schedule.
The majority of adults can hold it for 40 minutes. If you can’t, I guess you probably shouldn’t use an EV to make this specific trip. The technology will survive. Also, this route is not representative of a high-volume commuter/tourist route where this HSR vs. EV debate really matters. If it were…there’d be rest stops and other amenities on it.
No it’s not, at all. This technology ONLY makes sense if it’s a commodity. That’s where it’s going. Every AI/Robotic innovation is valuable because the cost of it is so low relative to human workers. Even at today’s early-adopter prices the Tesla FSD feature costs $10,000 which is more than I want to spend, but it’s unquestionably cheaper over the 10 year life of the car than hiring a chauffer for all my trips for a decade. What a patently ridiculous argument.
Presumably, by the time AI is smart enough to be able to drive you from point A to point B across the country without requiring human intervention, it will also be smart enough to do something as basic as “notify passenger prior to entering stretch of route lacking services for XX miles”
I was going to post something similar. By the time cars are driving themselves, we won’t be relying on road signs to tell us where the clean restrooms are.
I do find human/computer interfaces to be fascinating. On our hypothetical journey, I don’t know who will take the lead in scheduling comfort breaks. Will the car say “we’re coming to a stretch of highway with no bathrooms; you good for another 45 minutes yes/no ?” or will the human have a button that tells the car “hey, find me a restroom in the next half-hour or so.”
Off topic: I heard a term once for a bathroom break, probably some years ago, and I thought it was oddly clever and funny. While posting to this thread, it’s been kinda nagging at me but I’ll be damned if I can remember exactly what it was.
Everyone calls these bio breaks at my work. I find it a little grating.
How about “Time for everyone to balance their fluids”?