Exactly.
If they are not really in the transportation-providing business then surely they’d be willing to donate to charity 100% of their cut of the money that’s changing hands. Or to simply reduce their cut of that money to zero.
You (e.g. Steophan and the other apologists) say they’re not willing to do that? Then I conclude they’re in *a *business. And since the money stops flowing exactly when the transportation does, clearly they’re in the transportation business. A regulated industry.
QED.
I don’t care if they are or not. If the car is in a safe condition and the driver is legally allowed to drive then I’m perfectly happy to give them some money to take me where I want to go.
They get money, I get transported.
I don’t get the hate. I assume the drivers are not forced to do this, nor are potential customers limited to only using Uber.
Sounds great. I’m sure where Uber break the law they’ll be stopped from operating. Where they aren’t I’ll be happy to use them.
I just don’t see why their business model is so terrible. I’ve worked in London and have used them, as have lots of colleagues. Never a problem. Good price and a good service and within the law.
if they aren’t, then it isn’t “ride sharing,” it’s a taxi service.
Uber (the corporation) is trying to skirt regulations by lying about what their service is.
…in New Zealand Uber has been giving advice to their drivers which has resulted in their drivers being fined, getting kicked off the roads, and instructed them to purchase useless insurance policies. They dropped their rates by 20% overnight essentially putting all the profitable drivers (who were talking about forming a union and helping out the new drivers) out of business.
There is plenty to hate about New Zealand Uber. Their recent change in business model (dropping rates and telling their drivers they do not have to have a P endorsement when they actually do) have screwed over the drivers doing it properly and is taking advantage of the drivers who have gotten “in over their heads.”
So Uber are using a business model that isn’t profitable for their drivers (who do things properly), advise their drivers to break the law, and they are a bad corporate citizen.
Thats more than enough reason to earn a bit of hate from me.
And, of course, the drivers make waitstaff wages. Because, free market, or whatever.
The difference is: those things you mention were evolutionary changes but a fully-autonomous self-driving car is a revolutionary change. Therefore the time from invention to application will be fundamentally different.
The biggest issues of moving to fully automated self-driving cars are not the technologies necessary for the cars themselves but the massive infrastructure adaptations and changes as well as the behavioral, sociological and psychological changes.
I wonder if it would be possible to maintain the current status quo (powerful computer managed safety and convenience systems but with driving still being the full responsibility of a human driver) right up to the point where fully-autonomous self-driving automobile system (cars and infrastructure) is rolled out.
I hope so because I think this transitory phase that some have mentioned here—where the car drives itself, sorta, but people still have to pay full attention just in case something goes wrong—is a non-starter. I don’t think human “drivers” are psychologically capable of paying attention when they believe, and have seen, that the car they’re in can drive itself.
As I’ve stated at length on these boards:
It is the INFRASTRUCTURE that will keep manual cars around for many more generations.
People talk as if the entire country is 100% highways and controlled intersections.
It’s not. There are still ancient iron bridges with 20’ roadways and now labelled “5 TON LIMIT”.
There are still culverts which flood.
There is MUCH more than "New Center Lines and Lane Markers. Even the 1 1/2 lane country roads (and bridges) will need to be leveled, widened, and re-paved before it can even be ready for upgrading to autonomous standards.
But yeah - expecting people to retain concentration in something they are only watching is a fool’s dream.
Ever fallen asleep while watching a movie/TV program?
We may have cars which will allow us to “control” them - until the control becomes really, really important and then the car takes over.
This might be a good way to determine if you are ready to be allowed to use the cars autonomous feature - if your car has judged you capable of operating it in serious conditions, maybe you can be trusted to let the car control itself.
Hear hear …
But one thing I will say also - our taxis are DREADFULLY expensive!
And that’s the thing. Are we going to move toward self-driving cars only because we have an emergency driver and a computer tech in board? OK. I understand this is meant to be a temporary step. But where do you go from there? Trusting Joe Six-pack to babysit the automating driving? No. Joe Six-pack thinks that if he’s in a self driving car he can lay back and watch wrestling while drinking his six-pack and leave the car to drive itself.
Given that Joe Six-pack tends to be the kind of guy who thinks he can exit from the central lane just because he wanna, he’d appear like the perfect example of “when is the car a safer driver”.
But as I alluded to earlier (I don’t know the post number) The problem here is not with technology, but with the nature of people. If people are riding in a vehicle they consider to be fully self-driving, they are not going to keep the attention needed to manually drive the car when necessary. They are going to be asleep, having sex, watching the Shopping Network or otherwise zoned out. I don’t see a way around this. Therefore, to me, an effective implementation of self driving cares in may decades away.
Yes. I think it would be. But I’m talking about an interim phase where cars are not yet fully autonomously self-driving and Joe Six-pack is still supposed to keep a watch over the car just in case something goes wrong with the self-driving mechanism. I don’t trust poor ol’ Joe to do that when he believes that the car is fully capable to drive itself and therefore he is free to read girlie magazines.
That is an example of the age old saying, “perfect is the enemy of better”. We really should be driven (ha!) by what the stats actually say.
If the amount of accidents through fully manual driving (i.e. as it is now) is less than the amount seen through fully automatic driving (even with all that sleeping, shagging and shopping) then it will happen, and it will happen quickly because once the insurance companies understand the adjusted risks there will be big insurance discounts on offer to those choosing autonomous transport.
of course that should read **more **not less, but I 'm sure you know that anyway.
Agree with you and the other similar posters that one thing people will not do is pay enough attention to be able to take over timely in a malfunction or emergency. Expecting them to do so is a fool’s errand.
Which is why nobody who’s actually building self-driving cars is expecting that. Test vehicles driven by professional testers, sure. Real live production vehicles sold to Joe Sixpack? No way. People keep bringing this up in one thread after another. And it’s always a red herring.
Further, I have no idea what you’re talking about with infrastructure. The whole and entire cause of the current shortcomings with self-driving cars is that they must operate in the existing infrastructure just as it is. Amongst the existing pool of human drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians just as they are.
Nobody, nobody who’s actually building self-driving cars is talking about upgrading bridges, and repaving roads en masse. It may well be that the first production vehicles are limited to self-driving only interstates. To be followed a couple years later by ones able to handle urban and suburban traffic. And finally rural or off-road conditions. Assuming the latter market is big enough to bother with.
All this infrastructure stuff, just like the snow stuff, is just one big red herring trotted out in every one of these threads. Does dealing with current infrastructure and with snow represent an obstacle to be overcome? You bet. Insurmountable? Of course not.
I for one don’t see a future for cars with no controls beyond a Google maps-style search box to type in an address plus a [Go there] button. There will probably always be a way to directly control speed and steering. Even then the car will be paying attention and learning and watching out for you backing into that tree while trying to park at that campsite.
If they stop when they’re actually found to have been breaking the law, then they are operating within it. But the only reason they’ve been found to be breaking it in the first place is that taxi monopolies put pressure on politicians to change the interpretations of the rules. Uber are simply making it easier for people to get, and to provide, rides, and are doing so in a way that gets round unnecessary, and in some cases actively damaging, regulations.
They are not a service that does that, as far as I’m aware. The point is that the drivers provide the vehicles, not Uber.
…and the New Zealand examples shows this to be untrue. I’m sure you can find many others. In New Zealand the “Taxi Monopolies” didn’t need to get involved. New Zealand law is pretty clear. If you drive passengers in exchange for money you need a P endorsement. Uber told its drivers they didn’t need the endorsement. So Uber drivers started to get fined and kicked off the road. There was no change to the interpretation of the rules. Politicians didn’t even get involved because there is a separation here between politicians and the people who enforce the law.
Uber doesn’t get to decide what is unnecessary and what is damaging. The people of New Zealand have elected representatives whose job it is to set the laws of the land and our nation employs people to enforce those laws. Uber is required to follow the laws of the land and if they want to change the laws then they are required to lobby to change the laws. They can’t just decide they don’t want to follow them any more.
The law is in place for a reason. The intent of the NZ law is not to keep a monopoly for Taxis but to stop people who shouldn’t be driving passengers to stop driving passengers.
If Uber is about “drivers providing cars for other riders” (gee, just like those hippy communes of yore - all about sharing!):
Why are they using (illegally) self-driving cars in SF?
Who is providing those cars?
Uber can’t wait for the day it can field a fleet of driverless cars and keep the few pennies it currently has to pay its “drivers”.
The deal with taxis: Yeah, everybody would love to get only the business execs going from the Hyatt to the airport. And we’d all love to jack up the fares every Dec 20 - Jan 3. The Taxi Commission won’t allow that - we have to take grandma from the market (with her cart full of groceries) to her apartment out in a commercially dead area.
Uber can gouge rate pricing and can be invoked only by smartphone - which means no “losers” are going to be calling up Uber and asking for a ride.
If you think Uber is out to cut prices of rides and “share” the wealth, I’ll assume you’re just young.
The first “Cable TV” companies liked to compare themselves to the guy with the big antenna who let his neighbors tap into his antenna line.
Yeah, Comcast is all about “sharing” an antenna, ain’t it?
ALL drivers have to know and obey the traffic laws.
If the law says you need a “P” license, then every driver in the country should know that.
It’s the driver’s responsibility to have the correct license for the type of vehicle he is driving, and the type of use he makes of it.
If Uber lies to its drivers, in writing–then a driver without the “P” who loses his license could probably sue Uber in court for damages. Has anybody done this? Why not?
I’m not a lawyer, but this seems similar to a malpractice claim against a professional who intentionally gives you misleading advice. For example: a tax accountant who informs you in writing that you owe no taxes on your business vehicle, but then your car is impounded for not paying taxes. I’d sue the guy.