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 Peregrine wrote:

 feeder wrote:
Just because public transit sucks now doesn't mean it has to suck in the future.

It does when the reasons it sucks are largely things that can't be changed. Public transit in the US is difficult because we're so widely dispersed, the number of routes required to serve everyone would be massive and many of those routes would have very few users. Providing funding and respect for public transit doesn't make people magically consolidate into dense urban areas.

Suburban sprawl exists only because car companies bought up and dismantled as much public transportation as they could and made sure that city planning would be done mainly in a way that makes owning a car necessary. It would be a lot of work but it's perfectly possible to change this.

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 feeder wrote:
Just because public transit sucks now doesn't mean it has to suck in the future.

It does when the reasons it sucks are largely things that can't be changed. Public transit in the US is difficult because we're so widely dispersed, the number of routes required to serve everyone would be massive and many of those routes would have very few users. Providing funding and respect for public transit doesn't make people magically consolidate into dense urban areas.

Suburban sprawl exists only because car companies bought up and dismantled as much public transportation as they could and made sure that city planning would be done mainly in a way that makes owning a car necessary. It would be a lot of work but it's perfectly possible to change this.

No it really isn't. The cities and roads are already built there isn't existing space to lay down tracks for light rails systems. To do a project like connect the cities of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill with a rail system it would be cost prohibitive to buy up all the land required (either from willing sellers or through forced eminent domain purchases) to clear lanes for a rail system. Working around our existing road system and centuries of development/growth without a rail system are massive challenges that are often insurmountable given the constraints of municipal and state budgets.

Prestor Jon wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 feeder wrote:
Just because public transit sucks now doesn't mean it has to suck in the future.

It does when the reasons it sucks are largely things that can't be changed. Public transit in the US is difficult because we're so widely dispersed, the number of routes required to serve everyone would be massive and many of those routes would have very few users. Providing funding and respect for public transit doesn't make people magically consolidate into dense urban areas.

Suburban sprawl exists only because car companies bought up and dismantled as much public transportation as they could and made sure that city planning would be done mainly in a way that makes owning a car necessary. It would be a lot of work but it's perfectly possible to change this.

No it really isn't. The cities and roads are already built there isn't existing space to lay down tracks for light rails systems. To do a project like connect the cities of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill with a rail system it would be cost prohibitive to buy up all the land required (either from willing sellers or through forced eminent domain purchases) to clear lanes for a rail system. Working around our existing road system and centuries of development/growth without a rail system are massive challenges that are often insurmountable given the constraints of municipal and state budgets.

It 100% is absolutely possible. It's just not a priority.

America put a man on the moon and dominates the globe. Mass transit would be a piece of cake if you guys wanted it.

Prestor Jon wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 feeder wrote:
Just because public transit sucks now doesn't mean it has to suck in the future.

It does when the reasons it sucks are largely things that can't be changed. Public transit in the US is difficult because we're so widely dispersed, the number of routes required to serve everyone would be massive and many of those routes would have very few users. Providing funding and respect for public transit doesn't make people magically consolidate into dense urban areas.

Suburban sprawl exists only because car companies bought up and dismantled as much public transportation as they could and made sure that city planning would be done mainly in a way that makes owning a car necessary. It would be a lot of work but it's perfectly possible to change this.

No it really isn't. The cities and roads are already built there isn't existing space to lay down tracks for light rails systems. To do a project like connect the cities of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill with a rail system it would be cost prohibitive to buy up all the land required (either from willing sellers or through forced eminent domain purchases) to clear lanes for a rail system. Working around our existing road system and centuries of development/growth without a rail system are massive challenges that are often insurmountable given the constraints of municipal and state budgets.

Buses exist. A light rail system doesn't have to be the only solution and it isn't something I've mentioned.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
A human driver who was paying attention would have had two seconds to spot the cyclist and react.

Key point: paying attention. This is a bad assumption to make.

Not really.

The 'car' in this case was paying attention 100%. But if a human had been driving and even remotely paying attention there would have been time to slow down and/or swerve to the left. Which would have significantly reduced or eliminated injury to the pedestrian.

Even the most distracted driver has to be paying some attention to the road to stay on it.

Exactly.

The key point here is that the human "safety" driver wasn't paying attention, and didn't get the 2 seconds reaction time she should have had, to stamp on the brake.

This wouldn't have saved the collision but it would have been less damaging.

The "safety" driver probably wasn't paying attention because she was relying on the car's self-driving function.

We are still left with the question of why the self-driving function failed. Apparently the Uber cars use non-visible light sensors and should have "seen" the cyclist even though she was invisible to a human driver more than 50 yards away (or whatever.)

The worry has to be that the car was not programmed to deal with the situation of someone rather stupidly pushing a bike across the road like that. A human driver who was paying attention would not have caused such a serious collision.

That is exactly the problem. Self-driving cars will continually have programming gaps which lead to tragic accidents like this one. Even more concerning is that at least on paper this scenario should have been easily within the detection range of the car, and yet it did nothing.

A slightly unrelated note is that the headlights on the car seemed to not be very strong. I know on my car the cyclist would have been lit up from a much farther distance.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
A human driver who was paying attention would have had two seconds to spot the cyclist and react.

Key point: paying attention. This is a bad assumption to make.

Not really.

The 'car' in this case was paying attention 100%. But if a human had been driving and even remotely paying attention there would have been time to slow down and/or swerve to the left. Which would have significantly reduced or eliminated injury to the pedestrian.

Even the most distracted driver has to be paying some attention to the road to stay on it.

Bit more than a second there to notice it. Human reaction time: Reaction times vary greatly with situation and from person to person between about 0.7 to 3 seconds (sec or s) or more. Some accident reconstruction specialists use 1.5 seconds

Not all that good odds. Maybe if he had been happening to looking at left bottom at the time human MIGHT have been able to but what if he/she had been looking right? Nope.

Still betting AI having better chance at stopping there than human.

 Overread wrote:
The key advantage of the AI is its ability to react faster than a person. When the detection equipment is on par or superior to a human then the machine can react far quicker than a human. Furthermore the machine won't in any way panic. As a result things like sudden deceleration should be done "properly".

A person will not only have potentially a greater lag time on reaction, but can also panic and might well do the wrong thing; or do the correct action but in the wrong way. This is especially true if the person has no prior experience of such an event happening to them before.

The key element with the machine is its ability to see and interpret the information it can see. Indeed its often in this interpretation area where the problems lay (eg the afore mentioned situation where the machine saw the white lorry and interpreted that information incorrectly and drove into it thinking it was clear and open roadway).

Humans also have the ability to interpret other humans. I've avoided a lot of trouble just by thinking, "Something's off about that guy. I'm going to slow down and be wary."

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:
In fact, I'd like all drivers in this thread to list three things that most irk them when behind the wheel. This is to demonstrate and highlight areas where an automated vehicle would be superior.

Here's mine.

1. People just sitting at junctions. You pull out when it's safe. Not when there's no traffic for a three mile radius.

2. People mucking about at lights. Typically the first car. Who wants to wait whilst they put their seatbelt back on, start their engine, find the right gear, just in time for them to creep over the line before the lights change again (genuinely witnessed as above. More than once)

3. People who don't understand how filter lanes work. Zipper folks, Zipper. One passes, nip in behind, one passes, nip in behind. Fault on both the filterers and the established vehicles here. AND STOP USING THE HARD SHOULDER TO TRY TO JUMP THE QUEUE. Particularly, when on the motorway, if you're coming up to a slip road joining the carriage way, do try to leave that lane clear. The number of accidents I've almost been in, or seen narrowly missed because someone just pootles along on the motorway with no regard to anyone else....grrrr.

Talking. I absolutely can not drive properly while talking to someone. It's even difficult to drive while just listening to someone else talk if I'm doing anything other then driving on a straight road.

I've yet to get into an accident because of this, and I've been driving for about 8 years, but I tail-gate like a melon-fether when distracted, and also miss turns/exits constantly. It drives my parents mad.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
But who do you hold responsible for the accident?

At what point does the AI mean the driver is simply a passenger? If your vehicle is determined to be the cause of an accident - is the manufacturer responsible, or the programmer? Where does the true liability lie? Where does the causal break kick in?

Insurance companies will accept the financial liabilities, with the manufacturer accepting criminal liability in the event of a hardware malfunction/loophole (much like today).

People intuitively think that with the driver taken out of the occasion liability will be a bigger issue, but it won't really. At the end of the day it's all about risk management, meaning that as long as profit overtakes expenditures from payouts, everyone will be happy. If Ford sells 10 million automated cars a year, and 1 million end up in catastrophic accidents that Ford is liable for (big number for the sake of argument, in reality it'd be like 50,000 for every 10 million or even less) that's still 90 million in sales. If Geico insures 10 million automated cars and they have to pay out for 1 million accidents that's still 9 million people who are paying every month for insurance while not costing Geico any money.

Insurance will work the same way insurance has always worked.

Rosebuddy wrote:
Suburban sprawl exists only because car companies bought up and dismantled as much public transportation as they could and made sure that city planning would be done mainly in a way that makes owning a car necessary. It would be a lot of work but it's perfectly possible to change this.

Lolwut? No, that has nothing at all to do with it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Rosebuddy wrote:
Buses exist. A light rail system doesn't have to be the only solution and it isn't something I've mentioned.

Buses don't solve the problem because they don't work with low population density. Giving sufficient bus coverage requires running bus routes that serve a handful of people and often run empty just to keep to the schedule. And when there are that few people on the bus it becomes a really expensive and fuel-inefficient private car.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Not really.

The 'car' in this case was paying attention 100%. But if a human had been driving and even remotely paying attention there would have been time to slow down and/or swerve to the left. Which would have significantly reduced or eliminated injury to the pedestrian.

Even the most distracted driver has to be paying some attention to the road to stay on it.

You have a much more optimistic view of bad drivers than me. There are plenty of accidents by human drivers where you think WTF, how could they possibly be paying that little attention to driving. Being able to stay on the road does not at all mean that you're paying enough attention to see obstructions in the road.

For inner-city mass transit the best option is Gondolas (the hanging basket on a cable thing, not the Venisian boat).

A gondola moving constantly at 4 mph will actually get you to an area faster than a bus or subway that starts and stops.

They are also cheaper to operate than buses (few man-hours).

Compared to subways they are something like 1/250th the cost per foot of travel to construct. Also, you can more easily adapt them to new routes if your city dynamics change. You also are less likely to run into construction problems (digging under existing structures will do that).

Rosebuddy wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 feeder wrote:
Just because public transit sucks now doesn't mean it has to suck in the future.

It does when the reasons it sucks are largely things that can't be changed. Public transit in the US is difficult because we're so widely dispersed, the number of routes required to serve everyone would be massive and many of those routes would have very few users. Providing funding and respect for public transit doesn't make people magically consolidate into dense urban areas.

Suburban sprawl exists only because car companies bought up and dismantled as much public transportation as they could and made sure that city planning would be done mainly in a way that makes owning a car necessary. It would be a lot of work but it's perfectly possible to change this.

No it really isn't. The cities and roads are already built there isn't existing space to lay down tracks for light rails systems. To do a project like connect the cities of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill with a rail system it would be cost prohibitive to buy up all the land required (either from willing sellers or through forced eminent domain purchases) to clear lanes for a rail system. Working around our existing road system and centuries of development/growth without a rail system are massive challenges that are often insurmountable given the constraints of municipal and state budgets.

Buses exist. A light rail system doesn't have to be the only solution and it isn't something I've mentioned.

Our cities hav buses they sit in the same traffic as the cars. Lack of buses isnt the reason we have terrible traffic in cities like LA. Cities have commerce and jobs but they also have the least room for housing and therefore the highest cost of living. The vast majority of the millions of people that work in a city don’t live in the city. The further out suburbs and other communities are from the city the more dispersed the commuters get and the less practical buses become. The more dispersed housing requires a larger area to get a bus load of people which places more people further away from bus stops that are farther away from the city so there are longer intervals between buses and harder it is to synchronize bus schedules and working hours. This leads to inefficiencies as more people opt to drive themselves which leads to greater inefficiencies of buses with few passengers sitting in traffic with commuters driving themselves.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 cuda1179 wrote:
For inner-city mass transit the best option is Gondolas (the hanging basket on a cable thing, not the Venisian boat).

A gondola moving constantly at 4 mph will actually get you to an area faster than a bus or subway that starts and stops.

They are also cheaper to operate than buses (few man-hours).

Compared to subways they are something like 1/250th the cost per foot of travel to construct. Also, you can more easily adapt them to new routes if your city dynamics change. You also are less likely to run into construction problems (digging under existing structures will do that).

Gondolas could work as they could be built over existing roadways and be cheaper and quieter than elevated trains. I think their construction would have to coincide or be prefaced by modernization of the power grid and telecom since so much of it is already above ground alon the roadways presenting an obstacle and safety hazard to gondola construction.

Prestor Jon wrote:
[

Gondolas could work as they could be built over existing roadways and be cheaper and quieter than elevated trains. I think their construction would have to coincide or be prefaced by modernization of the power grid and telecom since so much of it is already above ground alon the roadways presenting an obstacle and safety hazard to gondola construction.

That's kind of the point. I'll see if I can find the in-depth article from a few years ago, but it laid out a lot of stats about gondolas for mass transit. Gondola pole construction would require significantly less obstruction to roadways during their construction than elevated trains, and in many cases even less than subways (they have to make sure of no collapse of surface streets). It would also require only a fraction of the power of an electric train system, so upgrading the power grid is less of an issue. They also cause fewer injuries and deaths than trains, subways, or buses. In addition suspended gondolas that are constantly in motion are less likely to be vandalized by graffiti, thus need less maintenance time.

They also keep regular traffic flowing faster as opposed to busses. Stopped busses, or even those in motion, cause choke points in traffic in addition to using up valuable road space.

The overall cost reductions, ease of maintenance, few needed man hours, and adaptability of the system also makes it readily available to smaller communities that would otherwise not be able to accommodate other mass transit.

Something else of note, assaults per person-mile on gondola systems is lower, thus making mass transit safer from attackers. Why this happens is a bit of a mystery, but it may have something to do with the ratio of seats to standing people.

 Peregrine wrote:

Buses don't solve the problem because they don't work with low population density. Giving sufficient bus coverage requires running bus routes that serve a handful of people and often run empty just to keep to the schedule. And when there are that few people on the bus it becomes a really expensive and fuel-inefficient private car.

Then increase population density.

 Peregrine wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:
Buses exist. A light rail system doesn't have to be the only solution and it isn't something I've mentioned.

Buses don't solve the problem because they don't work with low population density. Giving sufficient bus coverage requires running bus routes that serve a handful of people and often run empty just to keep to the schedule. And when there are that few people on the bus it becomes a really expensive and fuel-inefficient private car.

But 'the problem' only exists in high population density areas, so that point is moot. Low-density areas don't tend to have a lot of problem with traffic, because you know, low density. You don't need to improve bus coverage in areas where it is not needed, just in the areas where it is.


Public transport is one of the areas in which I feel European cities (and maybe American cities too) can learn from Russian cities. Most Russian cities have a very extensive network of buses, trolleybuses and marshrutkas (a marshrutka is sort of a cross between a bus and a taxi, it travels on a set route but without set timetable and is privately owned) on top of a metro network in larger cities, that cover virtually every place in the city. You are rarely more than one or two streets away from the nearest stop, and the transport fee is very low (like only a few eurocents low) meaning you can travel anywhere in the city and neighbouring cities/suburbs in a short time for virtually nothing. Of course, this gives rise to new problems, particularly the problem that metro and buses are totally overcrowded on the hours that everyone travels to work/school. Ultimately, I think the problem of crowded roads/transport can never really be solved by improving roads/transport, but only by changing the fact that the entire country needs to travel to their work/school at the same time.

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Buses don't solve the problem because they don't work with low population density. Giving sufficient bus coverage requires running bus routes that serve a handful of people and often run empty just to keep to the schedule. And when there are that few people on the bus it becomes a really expensive and fuel-inefficient private car.

Then increase population density.

How? Mandatory relocation of the spread-out rural population? Round up people at gunpoint, confiscate their existing houses, and force them to move into a more convenient city location?

How can it be that there are excuses for bad public transportation in the US in high and low population dense areas? European cities with higher and lower population density than major US cities can manage to get this stuff working:
http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-125.html

This explains a few thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy#Other_factors


Also, apparently Uber's self-driving system is one of the worse ones:
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/leaked-data-suggests-uber-self-driving-car-program-years-behind-waymo/

The key statistic: prior to last Sunday's fatal crash in Tempe, Arizona, Uber's self-driving cars in Arizona were "struggling" to go 13 miles between interventions by a safety driver—known as a disengagement.

The Times points out that, in 2017, Waymo's self-driving cars in California traveled 5,600 miles between incidents in which a driver had to take over for safety reasons. Cruise, GM's self-driving car subsidiary, had a safety-related disengagement once every 1,250 miles in the state. We don't know either company's statistics in Arizona because Arizona law doesn't require them to be disclosed.

 Peregrine wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Buses don't solve the problem because they don't work with low population density. Giving sufficient bus coverage requires running bus routes that serve a handful of people and often run empty just to keep to the schedule. And when there are that few people on the bus it becomes a really expensive and fuel-inefficient private car.

Then increase population density.

How? Mandatory relocation of the spread-out rural population? Round up people at gunpoint, confiscate their existing houses, and force them to move into a more convenient city location?

Honestly? Somewhere someone thinks that's a viable solution...

 Just Tony wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Buses don't solve the problem because they don't work with low population density. Giving sufficient bus coverage requires running bus routes that serve a handful of people and often run empty just to keep to the schedule. And when there are that few people on the bus it becomes a really expensive and fuel-inefficient private car.

Then increase population density.

How? Mandatory relocation of the spread-out rural population? Round up people at gunpoint, confiscate their existing houses, and force them to move into a more convenient city location?

Honestly? Somewhere someone thinks that's a viable solution...

Quick! Everybody name a communist country!

 Peregrine wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:
Suburban sprawl exists only because car companies bought up and dismantled as much public transportation as they could and made sure that city planning would be done mainly in a way that makes owning a car necessary. It would be a lot of work but it's perfectly possible to change this.

Lolwut? No, that has nothing at all to do with it.

Actually that was exactly the cause of the problem, at least in my hometown (Los Angeles). You can even find old pictures of the light rails and other transit stuff before it was ripped up.

 Just Tony wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Buses don't solve the problem because they don't work with low population density. Giving sufficient bus coverage requires running bus routes that serve a handful of people and often run empty just to keep to the schedule. And when there are that few people on the bus it becomes a really expensive and fuel-inefficient private car.

Then increase population density.

How? Mandatory relocation of the spread-out rural population? Round up people at gunpoint, confiscate their existing houses, and force them to move into a more convenient city location?

Honestly? Somewhere someone thinks that's a viable solution...

In many countries the widely spread out rural population are relocating themselves into cities as fast as they can, because that is where the jobs are. Japan, Spain and Italy, for example, have various government sponsored programmes, designed to lure people back to rural areas.

However, it isn't rural areas that cause the commuting problem, it is suburbs, actually.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Buses don't solve the problem because they don't work with low population density. Giving sufficient bus coverage requires running bus routes that serve a handful of people and often run empty just to keep to the schedule. And when there are that few people on the bus it becomes a really expensive and fuel-inefficient private car.

Then increase population density.

How? Mandatory relocation of the spread-out rural population? Round up people at gunpoint, confiscate their existing houses, and force them to move into a more convenient city location?

Honestly? Somewhere someone thinks that's a viable solution...

In many countries the widely spread out rural population are relocating themselves into cities as fast as they can, because that is where the jobs are. Japan, Spain and Italy, for example, have various government sponsored programmes, designed to lure people back to rural areas.

However, it isn't rural areas that cause the commuting problem, it is suburbs, actually.

And the suburbs aren’t going away. There isn’t enough housing in the cities for all of the people who commute to jobs there consequently driving up the price of what housing is in the cities so when housing is available it’s far too expensive for the majority of commuters anyway. Hence the problem that suburbs don’t have the proximity or population density to make mass transit viable compounded by decades of urban sprawl without adequate transit planning. Fixing this problem will not be easy, fast or cheap which is why there is never a lot of political will to do it and the projects that are done to address it like The Big Dig are epic boondoggles because the easiest way to get political support for them is to turn the projects into corruptive cash cows that don’t do enough to help the actual commuters.

Apparently SIngapore is very keen on autonomous busses because they can't recruit enough human drivers.

Electric powered, autonomous busses would be an ideal solution to the problem of suburban transport in the USA too.

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Buses don't solve the problem because they don't work with low population density. Giving sufficient bus coverage requires running bus routes that serve a handful of people and often run empty just to keep to the schedule. And when there are that few people on the bus it becomes a really expensive and fuel-inefficient private car.

Then increase population density.

How? Mandatory relocation of the spread-out rural population? Round up people at gunpoint, confiscate their existing houses, and force them to move into a more convenient city location?

Honestly? Somewhere someone thinks that's a viable solution...

Quick! Everybody name a communist country!

...

I was speaking of US politicians.

 Just Tony wrote:


...

I was speaking of US politicians.

Ah of course, because people with different political opinions than me are totally out to steal our frreedums guyz!


inb4 lock

Having watched that crash, I think crappy street lighting killed that person. Any human is going to hit that person, and it appears that an automated car will hit them as well. But if that road was actually lit up then both human and AI drivers are going to be able to react in time.

It says a fair bit about how weird our society is. We spend billions on robot cars that will help some unknown amount at some point years from now. But we don't build streetlights that will save lives right now.

 Just Tony wrote:
No, I do not. We don't have ANY reliable AIs in our simple machines that don't need babysat for its daily operations.

"AI will never replace all humans" may or may not be true, I don't know AI well enough to guess either way. "Developing AI will replace more humans" is a basic reality, though. An improvement in AI might reduce the number of babysitting humans from 5 to 2. If these improvements weren't happening, there would be no profit to be had from developing AI and companies wouldn't be doing it.

Which is nothing different in itself. It's just how productivity improvements work, we improve processes so less labour is needed to produce the same amount, allowing us to either make more stuff or use less labour (mostly some combination of the two).

Historically freed up labour has shifted to new industries. At the simplest level, the industrial revolution was labour freed up from collective farms moving in to cities to become part of the growing industrial base.

The problem is that unlike the past, it is hard to see where the freed up labour will shift to. It is very hard to point to some blue sky industry and confidently say that will employ tens of millions of people in the future. Carrying on expecting some new industry to absorb displaced workers isn't something we can just assume any more.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Rosebuddy wrote:
Suburban sprawl exists only because car companies bought up and dismantled as much public transportation as they could and made sure that city planning would be done mainly in a way that makes owning a car necessary. It would be a lot of work but it's perfectly possible to change this.

There have been some specific and very famous instances of car companies sabotaging public transport, but it really isn't the primary cause. Suburban sprawl happens because people want to live in suburbs. They want the house on land. They want the garden and space for the kid's swingset. When people do that then public transport becomes a much less desirable option.

Look at cities where public transport works and makes up a large share of total transport, you find a city where people have chosen medium and high density housing for a lot of historical reasons. Look at cities where public transport is small and marginally useful - you see low density housing that people chose for a range of historical reasons.

Sort of my point, in the end. Say that the 5 robots on the finish end of my line "replaced" 8 human work stations, which may or may not be accurate, we have 3 people still watching those work stations, the obligatory floater, and the other four were moved to either another line to run a different machine OR to a spot on the line that isn't automated yet.

Do I think specific jobs/activities will be replaced with robots? Absolutely, we're currently in the process of automating a couple cells right now that are hand run.

Will those people be displaced? Currently there is only one person running that cell per shift anyway, so no change to our staffing.

Will it take over ALL jobs like this mythical force of nature that some tout it as, where most of the human populace will sit around doing nothing while the government pays us free money? Not even close. I'd be willing to bet it'd be at least a century until we get to the point that self driven vehicles outnumber manned... sorry, personed vehicles.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ScarletRose wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:


...

I was speaking of US politicians.

Ah of course, because people with different political opinions than me are totally out to steal our frreedums guyz!


inb4 lock

Feel better? Did you feel like you actually contributed to the conversation here? And also tell me that you honestly think that there aren't people in power who are working to do EXACTLY that.

Rosebuddy wrote:
Then increase population density.

This is happening. People love to have a big block, but as cities grow then just having new big blocks further and further from the city becomes unappealing. Space to kick a ball is great, but if it means a 90 minute commute people are more likely to by something smaller closer to the city. Similarly big blocks close to the city start being more valuable as subdivisions. So you get in-fill, transforming low density to medium density.

But there is another solution - redirect traffic. A huge part of congestion comes from people all driving in to the city for work in the morning, then driving back out again in the evening. Just encouraging more commercial hubs can solve a lot of the congestion. Also encouraging firms to move their employees to staggered starting times can do a lot of good.

Where I work we can start any time between 8 and 10, and leave any time after 4, so long as we put in our 7 hours and are available from 10 to 4 for meetings and so on.

Of course it's a huge publishing office, so there isn't machinery that has to run on strict shifts.