Tesla is reportedly planning a reveal of its self-driving robotaxi on the Warner Bros. lot amid widespread anger in the industry over the brand’s controversial CEO, Elon Musk, resulting in a rejection of its cars.
Tesla is reportedly planning a reveal of its self-driving robotaxi on the Warner Bros. lot amid widespread anger in the industry over the brand’s controversial CEO, Elon Musk, resulting in a rejection of its cars.
I have a lot of safety questions about a driverless taxi. Unless the car gets inspected between every ride (doubtful), what’s to stop someone from staying in the car past their stop? Will I get jumped by the previous passenger? What if someone left something dangerous in it? People innocently forget things all the time, which sucks on its own, but malicious actors could easily exploit an unmanned public(ish) vehicle.
Hell, who cleans it? If someone vomited on their trip home from a bar, will I be greeted by their mess when the taxi comes to me? From what I know of people, rules for passengers can and will be swiftly ignored without a driver in charge to make sure the rules are followed. Cameras wouldn’t stop everything, and honestly, who would want to be monitored by a camera throughout a taxi ride?
It’s obvious that Elon’s never ridden in a taxi in his life.
Sure but those are solvable. Personally I’m nowhere near as optimistic about the self-driving. I hope we eventually get it and current tech is truly amazing but it’s just not acceptable.
So far self-driving has mainly proven
Okay, dweeb lord.
Everyone cool just pays Elon for the vomit taxi.
There are cameras in the cab. In the event of someone vomiting in the cab, it’ll be taken out of rotation and cleaned.
But how does the company know that someone vomited? There aren’t smell sensors, and even if there are enough cameras to get a view of the floor, the tech for detecting spills and other issues is not really there yet. Unless you think a person is going to remotely inspect each vehicle between each ride. But that seems highly unlikely. If a company is not wanting to spend money on a driver, then they aren’t going to spend money on someone to watch the cameras at all times. The point is they don’t want to hire people at all. Just have computers that don’t have to take bathroom breaks or food breaks or have any downtime and can work in unpleasant conditions. Customer service is a big part of what drivers do, even if that doesn’t mean talking to the customers directly, just knowing how to make then comfortable, not just the driving. If it’s just the driving, then public transportation makes more sense to automate than individual cars.
I’m guessing it’s done in part by customer feedback? If I order a cab and it’s not a condition I would approve of to ride in, I should have the ability to flag that cab at which point it’s pulled out of the rotation until it’s in a suitable condition for service.
Yeah, not the best service though, if the customer now has to wait for another cab. It will end up like how often I get opened, likely returned items from Amazon a lot these days because they just put returns back in the pile even if they were returned for defects or were returned after opening/use.
They don’t care to fix the problem and rely on enough people accepting the defective items eventually, because it’s too much trouble for them to return. But it’s a pain in the butt for someone who wants a new, non-defective item and has to return things all the time. I so often don’t get what I paid for the first time so with anything I order for a project, I always have to figure in double the time for it to arrive so I can get a replacement.
So, I’d rather have a human driver monitoring it so that I get a clean cab the first time rather than having to budget the time for getting to my destination so a second cab can arrive in case the first is too unsanitary to handle.
I think you have to weigh the probabilities.
Are vomit cabs really so frequent that we need a human present at all times just to avoid a single failed pickup?
Providing X free rides after an incident is likely more economical than a full time human vomit detector.
Yes, yes they are. If you aren’t familiar with the industry ask a cabbie who has worked in an entertainment area of a major city at night how many times they’ve cleaned up vomit, urine, feces, blood, or any other bodily fluids.
They already exist in San Francisco: https://waymo.com/waymo-one-san-francisco/
Not sure they’ve been around long enough for the problems you suggested to come up.
Those things have cameras inside, they just won’t move if another passenger is still inside. There’s definitely questions about how reliable driverless cars are from a safety POV, and a future where you don’t own any transport and are at the mercy of some private corporation, but the stuff you mention is easy to figure out.