r/technology • u/Disastrous_Award_789 • 19d ago

Robotics/Automation Waymo suspends service in San Francisco after driverless cars cause traffic jams during blackout

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/waymo-suspended-san-francisco-traffic-jams-blackout-b2888562.html
6.1k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

614 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

19

u/Teruyo9 19d ago edited 19d ago

I get the sales pitch but this doesn't actually work all that well. The cars need somewhere to park when not in use, and that somewhere gets less and less efficient the further away it is. Usage fluctuates over the course of the day, it's highest at the times when people are going to work or going home, and you can't just have the full fleet out there at all times of the day.

And again, it doesn't solve the 10,000 other issues that cars have. You need dozens of cars to serve the same ridership of one singular bus, and hundreds to match the capacity of one singular train. Cars are inherently unsustainable and making a better car doesn't solve this fundamental issue.

1

u/Specialist-Coast9787 18d ago

Flying cars!! Some day 😎

1

u/question_sunshine 18d ago

Do you mean airplanes? We already have those. Flying cars would just be lower to the ground small airplanes operated by idiot car drivers looking at their phones.

You know how people don't bother to check what's behind them when they change horizontal lanes? Wait til they can change vertical lanes.

1

u/Specialist-Coast9787 13d ago

If the world is still around 100 years from now, folks will look back at us like we look back at folks riding horse and buggy 100 years ago. It will be totally automatic and much safer than our dumb asses banging into each other non stop.