AIBU to think we don’t want driverless taxis?

I think they are a great idea, especially for lone women at night.

We are arable farmers - big tractors have “driven” themselves for decades. We drive on roads and field to field but once in the field at work it steers its self from GPS. It still needs a driver in the seat though, although smaller autonomous tractors are appearing they are very expensive at present. The tech has been around a long time now, it’s not a new thing. I have no concerns about a driverless taxis safety.

I think driverless cars will be the norm pretty quickly - I think the powers that be will discourage car ownership and you’ll just call a driverless uber type service, a hybrid of taxi/public transport, in city’s anyway!

Your first sentence reads as though you did it - 'by me' - you may want to edit for clarity as I don't think that's what you mean.

They are incredibly safe, far safer than your average human driver.

Quite honestly taxi drivers have been taking the mick out of people for long enough so I don’t see the issue.

They can only be a good thing.

A young woman was run over and killed by me yesterday, the taxi driver is currently in police custody being held on suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs.
i’d much rather have a driverless car than a drugged up knobhead behind the wheel.

Of course it can crash They said tge same about the Titanic.

And when the driverless taxis are driving around in big, empty, completely flat, paved plazas, of the sort beloved of town planners' illustrations, then this might sometimes be feasible. (Even though shopping bags, suitcases or anything else one is carrying make short, steep ramps through narrow entrances difficult and dangerous.)

But in the reality of the British street scene, cluttered with parked cars, varying kerbs, bollards, bins, sandwich boards, heaps of building sand, wheel-unfriendly surfaces, etc etc, this is not an adequate solution.

With a human driver there's a lot of, "Oh, you can let me out here because I can see all those obstructions over there mean there's no possible safe place to stop the car, extend the ramp, give me road space at the bottom of the ramp and give me a safe route to a dropped kerb and up onto the correct pavement where I need to be."

Even once out of the car, it's easy to be marooned on a bit of road or pavement without a dropped kerb in sight – and if there is one, someone's parked across it.

My kids bloody love a Waymo, DS did a whole preschool show and tell based on them after our last trip to San Francisco. They are incredibly cautious, I think the stats bear out that they are safer for pedestrians than human drivers. Agree it's another problematic AI related job loss though. My brother Ubers on the weekends to save cash for a deposit and he's pretty worried about that income stream drying up.

Then make sure only you have access to your account? Simple fix

Mentioning the risk to women - this would depend on who has control of the taxi. Is it done via the Uber app? If so, all it would take is an abusive partner/stalker/etc. to get control of your account then it's not so safe.

I do see the point of taking away human error, but I worry about hacking the system by Russia, terrorists etc. I sound like a loon I know but surely it is a possibility?

London Taxi cabs are wheelchair accessible unlike most minicabs or Ubers. No reason that future models couldn't have a ramp - especially for pre-booked cabs.

I've always thought the the ultimate goal for the insurance industry is to have driverless cars, less accidents but charging the same pemiuims so they make more money.

We can all think of circumstances and road layouts near where we live that a driverless car probably won't cope with.

Theres videos online of driverless cars getting stuck in cul de sacs or reversing at 2am making a noise. Or fleets of them hanging around in quiet streets getting confused and honking at each other.

I don't mistrust them that much in themselves but legislatively and physically it is a challenge to have both human driven and automated vehicles sharing the road. I think the tech is largely working but our laws and systems are not ready for it.

Remember pre Covid everyone was saying self driving cars were imminent, like a couple of years away. But it's not the tech that is the limiting factor so much as how it's regulated.

I'd care about safety of the road users, pedestrians and deaths. Also the safety of the occupants. It doesn't bother me if people go out of work. You can choose driverless or with a driver. If the people want driverless that's how it is.

It will be B2B deliveries that get hit first - where there is someone to handle the loading and unloading. Driverless vehicle pulls into your loading bay, you unload/load and send it on its way. No doubt the loading and unloading will also be handled by robots in the not to distant future.

Independent and internal data strongly indicate that Waymo robotaxis are significantly safer than human drivers, experiencing drastically lower rates of crashes and injuries.

I can't wait!

It would be great for people if this were the case, and I wish you well in this, however, I think the government would put the kibbosh on this in some way.

Like they must have a qualified driver in them 'just in case'.

But then that would be hard to argue if these taxis were ferrying people about who had no licence, wouldn't it?

They'd find a fecking way though.

They gave waymo in the USA. It's fine. Good on it for technological advancement

I'm not saying that this isn't true for some people like yourself, but I think that for the majority it would be no way.

Some people do make decisions on some things on logic alone. I appreciate that.

Like logically there's no need to be terrified of spiders in the UK but people still are.

I'm not able to drive so a driverless personal car, if it genuinely was driverless and didn't need a driver in it 'just in case' would be a game changer for me.

A concern with driverless taxis is accessibility - e.g. people who use wheelchairs needing a person there to assist them - if these become the default, it could put the onus on the disabled passenger to arrange separate support at additional cost.

No computers won’t be distracted like a human could be but they can misinterpret things and are susceptible to software failings. Such as the case I mentioned where the car’s computer couldn’t recognise a person in the road because they weren’t at a pedestrian crossing where the car had been programmed to expect people. The problem is that these cars are driving around people and people are unpredictable. Lots of human drivers do silly things and can be unsafe of course. If every car on the road was driverless maybe it would be safer than them driving amongst people ?

Also, some rural areas near us have road markings that need to be repainted or signs that are covered by overgrown trees, I’d be curious about what would happen if the car couldn’t register these signs. It’s not ideal for human drivers either especially if you don’t know the area, but where a human could logically think “I need to be vigilant here, the road makings are very faint”, a computer might just see no stop sign and think therefore there is no need to stop. A human would spot the junction or whatever and stop out of common sense (hopefully)

I think I'd rather have a driverless taxi than a regular one. Yes, a fault could result in a disaster but have you seen the average taxi driver?! One second of distraction kills and computers can't be distracted. Humans can. Not to mention the risk to women. I wouldn't get in a taxi alone unless it was a dire emergency.

For some people. I rarely use taxis, but id be happy to use a driverless one (and I’d prefer it if they were statistically safer).

There are so many reasons that this could go wrong imho. PP stating they cant crash?
Perhaps not but whats stopping other vehicles crashing into them?
I'll take the bus Ta very much!!

I agree. My only reservation is whether they will be another threat to the traditional black cab trade. I’m a big supporter of black cabs, they offer a far superior service and vehicle. WIGIG