The robotaxis are coming... the driverless car, AV thread. Waymo, Zoox, and others

we should prob have a separate thread for driverless cars given the Waymo growth?

― sleeve, Wednesday, June 25, 2025 1:48 PM (five hours ago)

As someone who bikes a LOT in San Francisco, I'll say this much: the Waymos are by far and away the safest cars to bike near and around. They are very cautious, drive slow and politely, always let me move in front of them, and I generally feel super safe around them. This has NOT been the case for many years around most human drivers and especially old school cabbies when they were more of a thing prior to 2015. Nearly got run over by them a LOT. If Ubers are replaced with robots like they replaced cabbies, as a cyclist I'm all for it.

I've yet to ride in a Waymo though.

the previous discussion

As an SF pedestrian my opinion on Waymos is...neutral. But not thrilled, honestly. For a couple of years in the early pandemic, as I did my morning walk, I saw a prototype regularly out at the same time I was, with a human driver clearly putting it through its general paces, getting it used to the blocks and areas, things like that. Vaguely interesting to note. But the couple of times I've been near them when out and about is weirdly uncanny, and I can't see myself ever actually using one. As was said in the discussion sleeve linked, knowing that any accident will involve Alphabet hiding behind as many lawyers as possible to avoid either paying up or admitting fault doesn't thrill me much. (And I don't knock octobeard's point at all but my sis, who lives in the city and is a biker herself, was in an accident the other year -- while driving in this case. The other driver was very much at fault and there were recordings to readily prove it, and while it took a while for insurance claims to go through and the legal niceties to be observed, pretty much that other driver's insurance knew they'd have to pay and did, earlier this year. I half suspect if it were a Waymo then by now Alphabet would be on its twentieth motion of 'but what IS an accident really' and trying to fob my sis off with a much smaller settlement.)

I do vaguely worry about them being hacked and turned into 1.5 tonne killing machines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOVhz1PllJU

you're leaving out the part where a driverless car does not have a driver

― a (waterface), Wednesday, 25 June 2025 20:40 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I didn't really get this as a slam-dunk, is the point a) you need a soul to drive, who will be listening to Springsteen records if it's all robots or b) robots will be able to drive better than people but it's important that more people die on the roads.

it's not meant to be a slam dunk. cars should have drivers. don't know why you're being all cute with the Springsteen reference--which doesn't really make sense. i also don't recall saying anything about people dying--but if that's your point, the idea that robots can be better drivers than people, and will kill less people on the roads--is foolish

sorry, how is that foolish ?

how about we take the tactic where you explain to me and give evidence that robots will eventually be better drivers than people and that would should continue to invest time money and infastructure in cars versus other forms of public transportation

Is there anything that robots cannot do better than humans ? We're early in the technology and safety is already presented as an argument in favor of AV, so imagine in 5-10 years.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48526-4
https://citiesofthefuture.eu/driverless-cars-far-safer-than-human-drivers/

Maybe you meant more as an ethical concern though ? I certainly feel differently for Elaine Herzberg (first person to die in an AV road accident) than Bridget Driscoll (first person to die in a road accident).

Ethical is not quite the right word, I mean establishing the chain of responsibility / liability.

Of course it comes down to ethics, because people are not going to treat these cars the same. Example here, go to about 4:40. Waymos are programmed to be safe--which has a limitation when you're trying to merge on a highway and for a few seconds, a human driver would do a slightly "unsafe" thing like butting into the merge lane versus the Waymo which just sits there. I don't know how you fix that one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4ldcJmf1a0

Is there anything that robots cannot do better than humans ?

lol

make a meal
write a book
create a piece of art
love another human

also that second study you linked to WAS WRITTEN BY WAYMO

Recently saw this article about bringing these things to London

https://www.businessinsider.com/i-took-chaotic-robotaxi-ride-through-london-impressive-one-question-2025-6

The city's hodgepodge of Roman and Victorian roads are a mess of cycle lanes and pedestrian crossings, with complex road layouts that often serve more as a rough guide than a rulebook for the millions of drivers passing through the city each day.

For Wayve, that complexity is the point. The company says its AI driver — which runs on an end-to-end AI model, an approach also adopted by Tesla — is capable of generalizing and reacting to the physical world in the same way a human would, unlike rivals like Waymo, which rely on high-definition maps and sensors.

Kendall said that this allows Wayve's software to drive anywhere, even places it hasn't seen before, and deal with the kind of unexpected encounters that are an everyday occurrence on the streets of a major city like London.

"I can't wait to see another autonomy company come into London because I think it's extremely challenging," said Kendall.

"The advantage of starting in London is that we've been forced to develop a system that can operate on complex roads and deal with all of these unexpected scenarios," he added.

In the first few minutes of our drive, we encountered multiple jaywalkers, including several who darted out across the street without warning in front of the robotaxi. We also had to inch through narrow gaps between rows of parked cars.

And yeah this thing is going to cause crashes on the North Circular within hours.

Also there have by definition never been any "jaywalkers" in England and the fact that this prick doesn't know that say a lot about quite what a prick he is.

Also 'hodgepodge' instead of 'hotchpotch'

The simple reality is that while AVs might drive more safely than humans under optimal conditions, conditions are rarely optimal, either due to human, infrastructure, or environmental factors. This fact alone means that they will never be able to fully integrate into current systems.

That they also stifle investment in public transportation infrastructure and further silo people away from each other is another compelling argument against them.

And finally, I admit that I am also opposed to them because unlike many people here, I actually *enjoy* driving, and I always have. I walk and ride my bike quite a bit, and I take public transit quite often, too, but I love my little ten year old Subaru. Even in the context of Philadelphia, which has some of the worst roads and scariest drivers of any city in the US, I still love driving.

I guess this is maybe for the controversial opinions thread but my thinking is that there are way too many dangerous/distracted/bad drivers out there and it seems very likely to me that autonomous vehicles will on average be much better than humans at driving. For every suboptimal condition where an autonomous vehicle might perform worse than human drivers there are probably dozens of totally normal conditions where human drivers make mistakes or drive dangerously where a robot driver will do much better so overall I think AVs come out ahead (if not now, then eventually, inevitably).

All that being said, I of course think investing in mass transit will always be a better use of resources than investing in individual cars, no matter how they are being driven.

Aren't computers way worse than people at interpreting and making decisions about the VAST NUMBERS OF THINGS we see and interact with in everyday life?

My understanding, which might be out of date now, was that the only practical use for fully autonomous driving would be for ex long-haul trucking on optimized highways where traffic largely follows norms and drivers interact with each other much less. So trucks would drive between nexuses where freight would have to be picked up by human drivers. (Honestly I wish this would happen in NYC because full size semis regularly go down streets they're not cleared to use and get stuck.)

I guess I should make clear that I don't think a robot driver will be necessarily be better than a human driver at his best, just that a robot driver will be better than a typical tired and distracted driver who is speeding because they are late for work. Humans are very good at plenty of things, including driving, but we're just not always operating at 100%.

I don't know, maybe it's just that I live in a city with a bad driver reputation. I feel like the robots would do better even if I think they will be far from perfect.

Remember that driverless taxis are operating in multiple cities in the US right now (and have been driving around in those cities for 2+ years now). This isn't an argument about IF they can handle real-world conditions, they already are. More data is needed on their safety record vs human drivers but early signs are that while they get in more minor accidents, they cause fewer serious/fatal injuries per driver mile at their current level of ability and are getting better. Human drivers, it needs to be said, are getting worse, especially post-COVID.

it's not meant to be a slam dunk. cars should have drivers. don't know why you're being all cute with the Springsteen reference--which doesn't really make sense. i also don't recall saying anything about people dying--but if that's your point, the idea that robots can be better drivers than people, and will kill less people on the roads--is foolish

― a (waterface), Thursday, June 26, 2025 6:43 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

sorry, how is that foolish ?

― Naledi, Thursday, June 26, 2025 6:45 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

how about we take the tactic where you explain to me and give evidence that robots will eventually be better drivers than people and that would should continue to invest time money and infastructure in cars versus other forms of public transportation

― a (waterface)

airplanes

autopilot on airplanes

humans are horrible drivers, and we're getting worse

i also think ai-guided autonomous everything is bad. i also wish there were no cars, that everyone walked and biked, and that public transportation in the country i live in wasn't destroyed in order to facilitate as many cars as possible. just getting that part out there, because that counterpoint always comes.

but in the meantime, it might be fun to go back to when autopilot became a feature on airplanes and see what people said about it

(yes, i also i understand that autopilot on a plane is different than the problems of doing it on highways with cars and a million different objects and weird situations)

(but i also think it's a hilarious self-own when people jump on some self-driving car accident/death as proof that it will never work, while ignoring the tens of thousands who die every year in the u.s. from their own terrible driving, let alone the much larger number of people who get severly injured)

again not saying anything about accidents, deaths, injuries, etc. i am just saying show me where a robot is going to be a better driver than a human and show me your work.

humans are horrible drivers, and we're getting worse

https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-2023-traffic-fatalities-2024-estimates

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration today released its early estimates of traffic fatalities for 2024, projecting that 39,345 people died in traffic crashes. This represents a decrease of about 3.8% compared to the 40,901 fatalities reported in 2023 and marks the first time since 2020 that the number of fatalities fell below 40,000.

The quarterly fatality declines that began in the second quarter of 2022 also continued, with the fourth quarter of 2024 marking the 11th consecutive quarterly decrease in traffic fatalities.

“It’s encouraging to see that traffic fatalities are continuing to fall from their COVID pandemic highs. Total road fatalities, however, remain significantly higher than a decade ago, and America’s traffic fatality rate remains high relative to many peer nations,” NHTSA Chief Counsel Peter Simshauser said. “To reduce fatalities further, USDOT is working closely to partner with the law enforcement community to enhance traffic enforcement on our roads, including speeding, impairment, distraction, and lack of seatbelt use.”

but there ya go, there's your accident stats. we are still high compared to other countries, but i would imagine that's because we have more drivers

AND BIGGER MORE DANGEROUS CARS

yeah, the baseline here (speaking just about the USA) is that with human-piloted cars there is a vehicle fatality about every 12 minutes. consider just some categories of fatalities that would be entirely eliminated with driverless vehicles - distracted driving, speeding, and drunk driving are the top three causes of vehicle fatalities and autonomous cars do not do those things.

what is driving off the road and into a fire hydrant if not "distracted driving"?

yeah, the baseline here (speaking just about the USA) is that with human-piloted cars there is a vehicle fatality about every 12 minutes.

There are plenty of ways to solve this problem that don't involve robot cars and making money for huge corporations to sell us cars and taxis that drive themselves

consider just some categories of fatalities that would be entirely eliminated with driverless vehicles - distracted driving, speeding, and drunk driving are the top three causes of vehicle fatalities and autonomous cars do not do those things.

sure but now replace drunk driving with a new category "a computer made an error and drove a Cybertruck onto a sidewalk and killed a bunch of pedestrians not to mention the people in the car"

xp
those aren't my accident stats. there's a lot of ways to look at stats, and a lot of ways to cite them.

check out "national statistics", here, and look at the excel sheet: https://cdan.dot.gov/tsftables/tsfar.htm#

it only goes through 2023 and back to 2010, but per capita (number of people, number of vehicle miles traveled, etc), fatalities have only gone up. injury rates have gone slightly down.
--

but again, i think all of that is pointless. is 30,000-50,000 deaths per year from cars the gold standard? plus 2 million or so injuries? is there a way to transport people that doesn't kill that many, every year? again, i fucking hate the ai stuff everywhere, i'm just saying, i wouldn't mind if less people died

sure but now replace drunk driving with a new category "a computer made an error and drove a Cybertruck onto a sidewalk and killed a bunch of pedestrians not to mention the people in the car"

well, if you include "fantasies I had about autonomous vehicles killing tons of people" in your stats then they're gonna skew towards human drivers being better but I was thinking we'd stick to those causes of vehicle fatalities that actually happen in large numbers

sure but now replace drunk driving with a new category "a computer made an error and drove a Cybertruck onto a sidewalk and killed a bunch of pedestrians not to mention the people in the car"

and sorry (this is my least popular opinion here, or one of them i think), but yeah go ahead and do that! replace the drunk driving category, which is a really high number, and replace it with "computer error", which i think will end up being a much lower number

xp

there is a way, it’s called rapid rail transport and local public transit infrastructure

xpost once again i will remind you that i agree with you that fewer people should die and that is not the argument i am having, but it seems to be the argument everyone wants to have because having robots drive cars is kind of indefensable but sure go ahead and continue to bring up the grim spectre of death and avoid the idea that you have to mount up a defense of why technology should be allowed to drive cars

there is a way, it’s called rapid rail transport and local public transit infrastructure

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

also did it occur to any of you robotstans the idea that there are fewer crashes with the robot cars because THERE ARE FEWER ROBOT CARS ON THE ROAD

i also think ai-guided autonomous everything is bad. i also wish there were no cars, that everyone walked and biked, and that public transportation in the country i live in wasn't destroyed in order to facilitate as many cars as possible. just getting that part out there, because that counterpoint always comes.

― z_tbd, Thursday, June 26, 2025 11:23 AM (thirty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

also did it occur to any of you robotstans the idea that there are fewer crashes with the robot cars because THERE ARE FEWER ROBOT CARS ON THE ROAD

yes it did waterface

jfc

why post

me, i mean

why post

like LLMs and other AI models, it comes down to people who are resigned to it and those who are dead set against it, and imho those who are resigned to it have no spiritual backbone

did anyone read anything i posted

i might ask you the same question

didn't you incorrectly cite stats in a really obviously cherry-picked fashion, ignored everything i said about wishing cars didn't exist in the first place, and then called me a robotstan?

I don't have animosity to spare for z or hazel or anyone here. I save mine for people (I have heard at least one person say this) who say "I want driverless cars because I personally dislike driving and want to be driven." INSTEAD OF LIVING SOMEWHERE ELSE OR IMPROVING TRANSIT WITH YOUR CULTURAL CAPITAL AND MONEY. Once again we see the uptake of "AI" driven by people's desire to be served, to live and feel like whatever passes for our current aristocracy.

did anyone read anything i posted

i did, z, but some of your other posts betray being resigned to AVs and okay with then in some ways.

yeah! i'm into the idea of fewer people dying

it's because of my spiritual emptiness

yep, a very worrying thing about this is the craven deference governments often show to tech companies

which is why the boosters of this technology get a huge side-eye from me

like i don’t deny that there are good sides to it, sure, but that so many people put so much trust in these horrible corporations— the technology that they rely upon destroying communities and the planet— is absolutely insane to me

it's sort of insane that the city would allow companies to operate AVs without some kind of system to rapidly deal with malfunctioning vehicles. like, imagine a tow truck driver having to call customer support and wait on hold for an hour before towing an illegally parked car.

they should also be required to surrender all data they collect for public use, but you know

― fluffy tufts university (f. hazel), Thursday, April 9, 2026 1:29 PM (nineteen minutes ago)

I hadn't quite finished the article earlier, but at the end it reveals that:

There’s little the SF MTA can do to change this workflow, the city agency says. “California law gives permitting authority over AVs to the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC),” the transportation agency tells Fast Company in a statement. “San Francisco does not regulate AVs or set conditions on their operations – either day to day or in relation to disaster and emergency response.”

not great!

and yeah table, I wish the environmental impact was discussed more as well

I mean, DMV/CPUC or city council, same failure.

(in Texas, as per usual, Austin wanted to regulate driverless vehicles so the GOP-led state legislature immediately steamrolled them and said they couldn't be regulated by municipalities statewide)

agreed of course, just seems especially bad that something that is so entangled in municipal life and governance is regulated at the state level. idk maybe there's 100s of examples of that same thing, but in this case it seems to be causing some obvious problems

in a sane world I could see an argument that having different regulations in every municipality would itself be bad given the nature of what cars do, but essentially zero democratic control over this emerging system is what we have instead

dunno about CA but in TX it's a pawn in the larger game of Republican state government trying to wrest as much local control as possible, especially in blue cities. it's a neat trick, decrying federal interference while interfering egregiously at the local level and losing basically zero support from their base.

but that so many people put so much trust in these horrible corporations— the technology that they rely upon destroying communities and the planet— is absolutely insane to me

on the other hand american society has allowed traditional car companies to completely dictate the shape of american life since henry ford. any region in america that has experienced significant post-WWII development has basically done so in service of the automobile

(I mean it's great here in Montreal too, but you know), but it's depressing that a city like that has such inadequate mass transit

― obvious old hat (rob), Thursday, April 9, 2026 12:39 PM (two hours ago)

honest q, how much time have you spent in american cities? any that weren't NYC, SF, philly or boston?

I'm a US citizen who lived there from 1980 to 2014, plus I still have family and friends all over. The two real cities I've lived in were Atlanta and Chicago, plus a handful of other places that don't qualify: Augusta, GA; the Hudson Valley; Athens, GA; Eugene, OR.

I would say both ATL and CHI also have depressingly not-great public transit, though obviously Chicago's is significantly better than Atlanta's (I took the MARTA a handful of times when I lived there but otherwise always drove, whereas I took the CTA 5 days a week in Chicago). Still, Chicago is a more car-dependent town than it should be, and while I don't live there anymore I have heard the El has declined even further since then. It did seem noticeably slower last time I took it, but that could be because the Montreal Metro is indeed pretty fucking great.

Eugene, OR

!!!

yeah I lived there 2011-14 and never picked up on the fact you were there too!

xp thank you! it's helpful to know your priors

i grew up in philly and now live in nyc. each time i travel anywhere in america that wasn't a city during the original 13 colonies i become incredibly depressed at how it was built for the automobile and how non-existent public transit is.

yeah I absolutely love that you can walk around Montreal and see a decent chunk of it (and barring that, the subway & bus system is robust; lots of bike lanes here now too), never lived anywhere else like it. I used to love driving, but ten years in Chicago soured it so hard -- so much crawling down Ashland just to get groceries, and I used to commute to Hyde Park from the North Side and eventually switched from the constant panic attack of rush hour on Lake Shore Drive to a twice-as-long but calm train+bus commute.

And then when we lived in Eugene, it would drive me nuts that we had to drive to do much of anything (partially our fault for wanting to live in the hills, but we were seduced by exotic redwoods and rhododendrons). We brought our car to Montreal where it pretty quickly became more of a burden than useful, and we sold it a few years ago. There are a couple of car share services if we want to go hiking or to the woods for the weekend or w/e.

on the other hand american society has allowed traditional car companies to completely dictate the shape of american life since henry ford. any region in america that has experienced significant post-WWII development has basically done so in service of the automobile

nobody wants or likes this either but at least you could raise a family working at the ford plant

i think of Chicago as having excellent public transport but i guess i have low standards as a midwest American

like for instance it doesn't completely shut down at 11pm

yeah tbf I think a lot of my problem with the CTA is more about the city itself being very large and sprawling

_but that so many people put so much trust in these horrible corporations— the technology that they rely upon destroying communities and the planet— is absolutely insane to me_

on the other hand american society has allowed traditional car companies to completely dictate the shape of american life since henry ford. any region in america that has experienced significant post-WWII development has basically done so in service of the automobile

yeah and this is insane and should change? not sure of your point

Apparently waymo has been allowed into Oakland… I am lowkey looking forward to my city’s criminal creativity at this new opportunity for innovation!

The Department of Emergency Management, the city’s 911 service, did try to engage Waymo, but the company was unresponsive

this is the sort of thing that needs to be written down in a contract. an SLA essentially. or your license to operate gets yanked.

like you don't even have to fix it but you at least have to pick up the phone and pretend to try.

https://road.cc/news/driverless-taxis-veering-into-cycle-lanes-normal-practice-says-waymo

The Zoox blocking a lane of traffic on the block with a major freeway onramp during rush hour in order to merge into a lane that human drivers use as a onramp lane when the zoox was not getting on the freeway … it sat there for 10-15 minutes… No amount of honking would change its behavior.

Like … that’s one of the core problems for me … most humans will respond to the negative responses of other drivers… honking usually works. Worst case scenario is a human going up to the driver side window… how does that work when the robocar is wrong?

But just consider this. While it was sitting there it immobile and blocking traffic it was not spoiling the company's statistics of safe driving without an accident!

HAL… get out of the merge lane, HAL. get OUT of the merge lane, HAL!

https://www.expressnews.com/business/article/waymo-recall-san-antonio-flood-22254607.php

Waymo recalls entire U.S. robotaxi fleet after vehicle swept away in San Antonio flood
The company is recalling nearly 3,800 robotaxis after an unoccupied vehicle entered floodwaters on a San Antonio road and was washed into a creek.

Waymo is recalling its U.S. fleet of robotaxis after one of the autonomous vehicles was swept away when it drove into floodwaters in San Antonio.

The voluntary software recall stems from an incident during severe weather April 20, when a Waymo vehicle “encountered an untraversible flooded section of a roadway,” the company told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Though the vehicle detected the flooded road, it continued into floodwaters at reduced speed.

“We are working to implement additional software safeguards and have put mitigations ​in place, including refining our extreme weather operations during ​periods of intense rain, limiting access to areas where flash flooding ‌might ⁠occur,” Waymo said in a statement.

The vehicle swept away was unoccupied ​and there were no injuries, but the incident prompted Waymo to review similar scenarios and issue an interim update to its self-driving software. It also suspended operations in San Antonio, a city prone to flooding and where the April 20 incident was the second recent local instance of a Waymo vehicle struggling with flooding.

to be fair, people do this all the time but I would not want to be a helpless passenger in this event

it's good for those eggheads at google to encounter weather conditions that aren't sunny california

I know Helsinki isn't in the US, but this sounds a lot easier than managing and maintaining fleets of AVs in dense urban areas:

https://www.politico.eu/article/helsinki-no-traffic-death-roads-eu-accident-finland-driving-transport/

Love this

In many parts of the city, roads have been narrowed and trees have been planted with the deliberate goal of making drivers uncomfortable — the rationale being that complex urban landscapes force drivers to move more cautiously through populated areas.

i mean yeah, europe kicks the crap out of the us by just about every driving safety metric

we've already discussed the relative ease/difficulty of getting a license in america vs. just about every other country in the world itt

My 85 year old mother-in-law in Savannah GA retook her driving test because we were concerned. We were fully expecting her to fail because she is a bad, bad, BAD driver and she did just fine and now she will not listen to any sort of talk about her not driving. We don’t let her drive the grandkids and she is eternally pissed about it.

I was flabbergasted how simple the Florida road test for my wife was compared to what I had to do in Virginia. Turn into a spot, back out of a spot, stop at a stop sign. Let's put "road" in quotes because everything was on a closed course going 5 mph

It almost seems like rural areas could benefit from robo taxis/minibuses more than urban areas.... I can walk, bicycle or hop on a bus or light rail here in the city. My aging stepmother lives in the country and would probably love something to take her to the dog park

As with all transportation modes, the problem is that as you spread things out, access to a vehicle is more desperately needed, but also difficult to make work economically - you just don't get enough rides per square mile. With trains and bus lines, this manifests as the issue that prople still have to get to the mass transit stop, which becomes nonviable at low densities, and you can't run a route down every winding subdivision lane (even if they'd let you) because the ridership would never balance out the cost. With taxis (robo or otherwise), you don't have to lay the track or run that one unprofitable route all the time --- but you have to run many, many unprofitably distant rides from one random remote place to another.

School buses and Access-a-Rides do this, but neither are expected to pay for themselves, let alone turn a profit. Taxis charge by the mile to cover their costs (though they'd still rather be doing business downtown where they're more likely to pick up the next fare quickly). The upshot is that in this model your stepmother might expect to pay $25 for each trip to and from the dog park. The robot version doesn't have to pay a human driver, but we all know Uber is already barely doing that, and any savings are probably offset by the cost of developing and maintaining the robot system, bribing officials, public relations campaigns to soften people up to robot cars, etc.

imagine if we weren't wasting trillions on pointless military hardware that gets turned into scrap metal by $20k drones, we could in fact cover the last-mile costs for a comprehensive transportation network with mass transit for dense areas and and p2p rides for rural populations

your stepmother might expect to pay $25 for each trip to and from the dog park

couldn't the cost/risk be spread by a subscription model? and maybe subsidized for low income folks

xp I was shocked on one of my Sweden trips when I emerged from the forest in the middle of nowhere, saw a bus shelter and probably ten minutes later I was sitting on a stockholm-bound bus for like five bucks

The subscription would have to be very expensive to subsidize those exurban rides, so people living in town would just keep using Uber rather than sign up for it - so there would be no money to do the subsidizing. At prices people are willing to pay, providing transportation services to far-flung locales is not a profitable market, so there's not going to be a market-based solution.

Public subsidies for low-income folks sounds great to me, but at least in the US is a very very hard sell politically. There are plenty of places where even maintaining access-a-rides for people with disabilities is a non-starter.

My partner's grandma recently moved in with family in highly suburban Dallas, and her world has REALLY shrunk from the Catholic church-sponsorrd complex of efficiency units linked up by courtyards and walkways where she was before. It's a bummer. Long-term we should be building a denser world for many reasons - these are big among them IMHO!

in my maximalist approach to a less shit society we both build a denser environment AND subsidize the grannies getting rides to far flung spaces

I concur but we gotta find a way to implement it that doesn't turn into yet another state subsidy/incentive *encouraging* car-centric development.

deathrobocab for granny is the worst tribute band at the senior millenials fest

https://findingspress.org/article/161870-millions-of-trips-waymo-empty-miles-california-s-first-thousand-days-of-commercial-robotaxi-service

Abstract

Autonomous rideshare services, generally referred to as robotaxis, have been scaling up rapidly in the United States. However, there is very little visibility into the operations of these services and their impact on urban congestion, particularly when vehicles are cruising without passengers onboard. We analyzed the composition of more than 86 million total vehicle miles traveled over approximately 14 million Waymo robotaxi trips, using data reported to the California Public Utilities Commission from August 2023 through December 2025. We found that only about 54% of all miles traveled by Waymos in California are driven with a passenger onboard.

yeesh. worth noting that's about the same as Uber/Lyft no passenger miles

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-official-more-money-is-now-spent-building-data-centers-than-the-government-spends-on-transportation-95fcd513

public transit will never be a priority in america

related https://www.king5.com/video/news/local/car-drives-onto-light-rail-tracks-in-seattle/281-d9060181-e235-430c-a36c-75e6276be6b0#