Airnb, like Uber, needs to be run out of town

Quote:

I am not a supporter of Uber but its main argument is based on being cheaper.

Conversely, I think the main argument against it is that it's a publicly traded company.  If Uber were a worker-owned co-op I think we'd hear more about how it's better to support independents than to line the pockets of the owners of Beck Taxi.  But as long as Uber also has owners, we hear how they're driving those long-suffering Beck drivers out of business by slashing costs and making a ride too convenient.

Well, public transport is not adequate everywhere, as we all know.

I don't know whether it is an air b&b or just noisy neighbours but there is a place on the street behind mine (across the lane) where they seem to be partying late at night at least on the weekends and sometimes during the week. They woke me up, and my bedroom is more towards the front of the flat. I'm sure I'm not the only person pissed off about this.

I have friends in the Plateau, just south of here and they are infested with air b&bs.

Another problem is that the hospitality industry should adapt. There should be more hotel rooms with a kitchen nook at least; most people I know don't want to go out to restaurants 3 times a day. No, they aren't necessarily cooking; some are just opting for takeaway.

Rev Pesky wrote:

From voice of the damned:

We're cool with the idea that we don't need to actively steer an elevator to get from one floor of a building to another, so what's so awful about applying the same principle to cars?

​Normally there's only one elevator in an elevator shaft. Normally, the elevator has very restricted movements. That is, it goes up and down. It does not turn, go side to side, speed up or slow down for no apparent reason, etc.

If you had a road that was absolutely straight, only one car on the road, and a preset number of stops, it could operate as an elevator does. It would also be more or less useless.

Right. I was assuming that, in the scenario of driverless cars becoming a reality, they would be more or less as safe as elevators(this is usually the claim made about them), or at least no more dangerous than cars are now. Obviously, if DCs are going to kill more people than currently die on the roads, it would indeed be sick to want them as the norm. But I'm not sure if that's what North Report meant by "sick".

North Report:

The article you linked to is fairly long. Would you be able to write up a short TL/DR explaining how it argues that driverless cars are the sign of a sick corporate culture?

voice of the damned wrote:

So then, driverless cars will lead to more accidents? 

Not if there's only driverless cars on the road. You can't mix the two.

The Paris métro line 14 is fully-automated, and also has anti-suicide (and nowadays, anti-falling-in-while-texting) barriers that only open when a train arrives in the station: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_M%C3%A9tro_Line_14 While fairly straight by Paris métro line standards, it has a couple of turns. You will also note that several of the stations are farther apart than in older stations, but the stations have several other lines feeding into them.

I'd rather see the automation used for improving  public transport. I think it could also make some public transport service possible in smaller centres.

Rev Pesky wrote:

Driving out to do errands yesterday I was delayed somewhat by road construction. There were flagpersons there directing the traffic.

Tell me what software would respond to flagpersons, and to other 'not normal' road conditions.

This is something that is not hard to imagine. They could even have transponders to interact with driverless cars. Driverless cars have cameras and sensors of course already. This is not a big obstacle.

I am more concerned about hacking but even that may be fixable.

Rev Pesky wrote:

From Sean in Ottawa:

This is something that is not hard to imagine.

​Okay, then imagine it for me, because I do find it hard to imagine. A driverless car comes upon a site of road construction where there are multiple signs directing traffic, cars weaving in and out, flagpersons directing traffic while constantly observing the situation, and you're telling me they would fit them out with transponders so they could take time out of their other activities to direct driverless cars. Sorry, but that ain't going to happen. How would they even know a driverless car was on it's way?  What if there's more than one driverless car, travelling in different directions?

​Like I've said before, I don't have a problem with driverless cars, but you can't mix drivered and driverless cars on the same road. Even up in the sky, where there's a lot more room than there is on most urban roads, they do not mix the traffic. Air space is very tightly controlled, and if you want to find out how tightly, just fly your Cessna into any large airport. 

 

For now these are supposed to be driver assisted. So a transponder at the scene could send a warning and disable the driverless function. There are ways to do this safely since driverless cars are able to pull over and park.

Second driverless cars can be outfitted with an ability to interact with a transponder on the person of each person on a construction site. The cost of these transponders is not that much and over time would leave them all safer. In fact all cars -- driverless or not -- could intereact with these including sending warnings, even reducing speed of cars.

The technology is there. The implenetation you are complaining about has not happened.

You are referring to an incompatibility that does not exist in theory and to technological constraints that do not exist. There is nothing here that cannot be done.

Then to make matters more silly you refer to this transponder as taking time out of their day. You clearly do not understand much about technology or road construction when you say this. There is a lot of set up and planning to these. The programming would be done in advance and the people would simply click on and pick it up.

There is no point in attacking a technology without the knowledge making borad statements that are not informed or factual.

We also are aware of driverless crash trucks being used to improve the safety of crews. Crews are interested in htheir safety and will embrace technology that offfers that.

You can start by simply reading up on the infrastructure and technology that is already a part of driverless cars before you make such pronouncements. Even the breathless warning articles admit that this is being worked on and that there are technological solutions. The design of construction zones is ongoing. You can, and many people do, point to obstacles such as security and complexity, but these are comparing the present with the future. Making broad statements like incompatibility is unhelpful. There are many situations where there has always been a broad range of automation and technologies introduced to accomodate this. It might be that all cars will have to have some sort of secure transponders and it is known that there are prerequisites to make something happen and it is okay to acknowledge that. But this does not make sweeping incompatibility arguments true.

"Pack a highway with broadcasting beacons, and you can tell a connected, autonomous car that a construction zone is up ahead, and maybe even how to get through it safely. The National Highway Safety Administration plans to mandate that all new cars come equipped with this "talking" tech by 2020."

"The good news is that because the first fleets of fully driverless cars will stick to constrained areas, you don't have to get the whole country on board before trying this out—just a municipality or two."

Rev Pesky wrote:

Now imagine a driverless car tootling along at twenty km's over the speed limit, as it's software tells it to do, and getting caught in a radar trap. The officer with the radar gun steps out onto the road to flag down the car, and gets run over for his trouble. After all, the car can't stop every time someone waves at it. Now, as above, you might say the police could have an override to allow them to stop the car, but who's going to pay for that? Not me.

I would not presume that a technology suddenly goes into a present context without changes to that context. This is an evolving technology and I object to the sweeping statements of what is possible or not. I think that is the wrong approach. To point to a practical present challenge as a reason why something would never be possible is the kind of logic that would make no future technology possible. If the present challenges would already be finally be worked out then this would not be an emerging or future technology or development, it would be a present one.

There is no base incompatibility that you have pointed out -- only challenges based on existing practices and contexts.

As for the public cost of implementing enabling technologies there would have to be a rationale for it. And there may be. The technology could lead to better flow and fewer accidents along with greater social options for transportation.

Just as 120 years ago people may have objected to the idea of greater use of aircraft and the public expenditure on airports, there were public purposes in them.

It is unclear what the infrastructure will look like and how it will work but far too early to say that this is undoable and incompatible.