never forget: we didn’t ask for robot cars. when polled US majorities have always wanted action on climate, good public transit & safe streets. but our leaders act without our consent.
last year, 78% polled wanted increased investment in US passenger rail, a number that went to 80% among women and 82% in cities and 91% among Black people. this year, 76% polled in the US said they are afraid of self-driving cars & just 9% say they trust them and that number is declining year to year
easy to blame the American individual for buying and driving enormous vehicles. but automakers invested $20.8 billion last year alone in manufacturing consent and desire for these! as biological mammals driven by evolutionary patterning, humans are easy to manipulate, especially when you have advanced marketing techniques and near infinite resources.
on one hand we know in our gut what we want, on the other hand we are convinced to purchase the opposite.
@seachanger this state has way more to offer the world than manufacturing in general, but that'd be a huge improvement over being so reliant on the pointless auto industry
@seachanger Totally with you on rail (and anti-sprawl). I think there’s room for EV fleets: transportation/busses, residential utilities/solar/plumbing, farms, municipal/emergency services.
when you look at all the conflicting currents of our transportation desire as expressed by polls, markets, and popular conversations, it can feel opaque and chaotic. but i think it's really simple. we want to feel safe, healthy, and happy, but billions of dollars are invested in convincing us those feelings can best be found in several $35,000 SUVs per family, even if that forces debt and the loss of leisure
@seachanger
Good thing you're so "don't tell other people how to mastodon".
Like I've said, I agree 100% on most you've said, including the concerns about self-driving cars. There are problems. Big problems.
I was just pointing out that for some people with certain challenges, "we didn't ask for robot cars" is a lot of speaking-for-everybody. Some did. Some absolutely did, and do, and will.
I know the block is coming, but I graciously invite you to be more resilient & gracious than that.
@seachanger a national rail program would also be the type of blue collar manufacturing-heavy jobs creator that politicians usually love. it’s maddening.
@feelnotes maddening! i'm trying to grapple with the psychology of political consent this morning. like we express over and over again via polls, vacation choices, film or creative content, that we want to live in a particular kind of society. but then our desire is twisted by marketing (capital) and we are convinced to pay for things we don't actually want! those of us who aren't as susceptible to the marketing are stuck being dragged along with all these trends we don't consent to. maddening.
@seachanger public opinion data describe whether respondents support or oppose specific policies in the abstract, but i think those same polls often miss how people weigh various policies/opinions/interests against one another. the question isn’t if you support a policy, but how much? a voter might like the idea of public works projects or unions or healthcare reform, but not as much as he likes voting for the guy who validates his sense of white racial grievance
The last time I was in mexico, back in 2016, having fled across the border in the horror at Trump's election, my wife and I rented a car. We thought it would be convenient. But it turned out that it was just costly and a big bureaucratic hassle. Public transportation was cheap and got us everywhere we needed to go. Sometimes poor countries are better for people who have less. Just sayin.
@seachanger Having a public transportation system worth its name is something that should be of vital importance in the U.S. It’s embarrassing when I’ve traveled overseas in my life (in Europe and Asia) and you can take a train almost anywhere, while we clog up our roads with cars and cities look like parking lot wastelands.
@seachanger Latest stats show that on an average it costs. more than $1,000/month to own, insure and maintain a car. I would certainly consider going carless if there
were decent public transportation options.
For those who claim that robot cars free up time for commuters? For what purpose? You still have to pay attention while riding. The only time I have been able to relax during a long commute is
on a train, bus, or ferry boat.
@seachanger such a good point. So much of the awful situation we find ourselves in has been driven by the greed of "entrepreneurs" with little thought for the consumers. I always think that everyone should watch "Who killed Roger Rabbit?" to realise that LA had one of the world's finest public transport systems, but that did not suit the motor car manufacturers.
@seachanger
People are afraid of self-driving cars because it is something knew, and humans are a bunch of curmudgeons when it comes to any new technology.
The angst over self-driving cars is a completely unrelated issue to climate change.
Organizing society and economies around the automobile has proved bad for the economy and the environment. It's time to undo those mistakes.
Could this be because, as in most ‘advanced economies’, there’s been a corporate coup d’etat in the US & your government no longer (if it ever really did) dances to the tune of its electorate?
“The United States, like many industrialized countries, has undergone a corporate coup d’état in slow motion, cementing into place a system of control the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls inverted totalitarianism. Inverted totalitarianism retains the institutions, symbols, iconography, and language of the old capitalist democracy, but internally corporations have seized all the levers of power to accrue ever greater profits and political control.”
@seachanger Guesa I'm not in the target demo because after 60 years on the planet no one asked me about the items you listed. Were these large sample sizes?
@seachanger I honestly don't know which is more dangerous - a computer controlled car or a car driven by somebodywhile playing space invaders on their phone,
@seachanger When I drove home the other night after 9pm the problems I had were with human drivers who appear to have been impaired either from drinking or looking at their phones. I was not nearly as concerned about the Waymo/Cruise vehicles. Citing opinion polls and not acknowledging the increased safety that AVs provide only tells part of the story. Just improving public transit won't solve the safety problem because many still won't take the bus.
@seachanger This is a good example of when the "invisible hand" of the market is just bullshit & antics.
That said, as someone who works in autonomy I feel like I need to defend the usefulness of the tech even if I disagree that automated heavy machinery is the end goal. There's a good need for autonomy and the tech at large, but it probably won't be "self-driving cars" as we imagine them today.
I wish I could talk about what I do without automobiles taking up all the air, there's a lot of cool applications that don't involve tonnes of steel and glass and plastic intersecting our homes and streets.
@seachanger although the demand is low for personal autonomous vehicles, we are learning a great deal about automotive and vehicular safety by developing the technology behind the scenes. We have better sensor tech now, like thermal imaging, that can see pedestrians at night and could engage the brakes to prevent hitting them. That tech can be implemented into any vehicle.
Even if full autonomous cars never hit the road, the key leanings have been valuable for us who work in the field.
@seachanger self-driving cars (and EV’s in general) are being foisted upon us for the benefit of the powerful auto industry but don’t forget the influence of entrenched labor leaders.
@seachanger losing my mind at the # of people in the replies to this that believe those things will become "safer than human drivers" and it's just a matter of when, not if.
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