
Self-driving taxis are a fantasy - realitycheckx
https://medium.com/@alek_m/self-driving-taxis-are-a-fantasy-ea6f8eb039b7
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yongjik
I find it interesting (well, actually, sad) that the author chose that picture
for the image of a "public toilet", instead of, say, anything like here:
[https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=지하철+화장실](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=지하철+화장실)

(The query says "subway restroom")

It's a classic failure of imagination. When you live your entire life using
(or refusing to use) abysmally dirty public transit system, you kinda assume
that it's a part of inevitable human nature. And then of course it stays
unchanged, because everybody in the town _knows_ it can't be helped so why
waste precious budget on it?

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anovikov
I'd say the opposite: i used public transit whenever i can and, having lived
in many countries, bought a car in just one (Cyprus) because there is no
usable public transit there. Cars are not something 'desirable' for most
people, they ride them because they have no other choice.

Also it's easy to put a webcam inside an SDT to monitor what's going on - it's
not a problem with a human-driven taxi that he could see you, so it shouldn't
be seen as a violation of privacy. If you do something nasty a machine vision
system can detect it, lock the car down, and drive you to that aforementioned
police station.

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realitycheckx
Are you familiar with the outrage that NSA spying of people's communication
caused? What makes you think that after all the data breaches and privacy
violations, people will be okay with someone recording them in a car? The
recordings are permanent, unlike the taxi driver's vision. Plus, the point of
the self-driving car is to free people up to do other things. It's like your
own room. The ability to lock the car down is frightening, because as it was
stated, in a centralized system it could be used by government in any way they
want, the same thing they're doing with data - they said they're gonna collect
just metadata, but the truth is much more disturbing.

Wouldn't people rather be in their own semi self-driving car, where they are
not recorded and can go anywhere they want(including very long distances or
bumpy terrains), plus they could take control of the car anytime they wanted?
That would be a more reasonable option for many, not a taxi that you have no
control over and where you're recorded like a rat in a laboratory.

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dalke
Umm, many if not most taxis have a security camera recording things already.
As do buses.

2008, "All licensed cabs in Windsor will have on-board cameras by the end of
August" \-
[http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/news/story.html?id=1ea2956...](http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/news/story.html?id=1ea29561-df0a-48bf-b7e6-a36d27b815aa)

2000, for NYC "The in-vehicle security camera system takes digital photo
images of the entire passenger area of the vehicle, and consists of a small
camera with integrated infrared lighting that is installed above the vehicle’s
rear-view mirror." \- [http://www.taxi-library.org/tlc-
cameras.htm](http://www.taxi-library.org/tlc-cameras.htm)

2015 Uber driver with dash cam - [http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-
uber-rider-arres...](http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-uber-rider-
arrested-20151101-story.html)

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rmason
If self driving taxis were run by a government entity I'd buy your argument.

But if run by private enterprise they will either figure out how to deal with
the problem or go out of business.

Capitalism isn't in vogue now but it is a tremendous self regulating mechanism
that government will always lack. If you question that imagine how long a fast
food restaurant could survive with bathrooms like the one in your picture?

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schoen
Perhaps the taxi operators could make people put down a monetary deposit in
order to be a taxi customer, which they forfeit if the next customer finds the
previous customer has done something bad to the interior of the taxi. (That
might be a challenge for taxi riders' anonymity, though -- which has already
been a problem with services like Uber and Lyft.)

~~~
dalke
So if I barf on the seat I can say it was there when I got in the car and get
the previous person to pay for it? Sweet!

~~~
schoen
That's a good point. I wonder what Zipcar is doing about adjudicating the
disputes like this that come up today (since they don't have a human agent
inspecting the car for dirt or damage when it's returned).

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dalke
Why the hatred against poor people? Don't forget that LBJ peed on his Secret
Service agent(!) and supposedly justified it as "That's my prerogative."

In any case, the relevant comparison is a car-share club.

