Category Archives: Transportation
Pandemics, like Coronavirus, and our RoboTaxi-driven autonomous future

The big news right now is the Coronavirus outbreak that began in China last fall. CoVID-19 as it is more formally known is a relatively highly infectious disease, that the human population has no immunity against, and a relatively high (2%) mortality rate. Given those figures, governments around the world…
San Francisco mulls congestion pricing, seeking safety and climate change solutions

Major cities like San Francisco often have traffic congestion problems. During heavy traffic times, cars are typically gridlocked with slowly moving traffic, and the number of vehicles means a concentration of toxic exhaust fumes. Many cities around the world have implemented congestion pricing to limit the number of vehicles and…
An inexpensive AI computer kit for understanding autonomous self-driving cars
Digital redlining with scooter and car sharing services
Timisoara RO, curiously plans to buy light rail cars with batteries
Expensive taxi rides brought us Uber/Lyft, but should we be driven by amateur drivers?
Uber test driver in self-driving car in fatality accident was streaming Hulu

Last March an Uber self-driving car undergoing testing in Tempe Arizona struck and killed a pedestrian. Previously we had been told the “test driver” in the Uber autonomous car was monitoring output from the on-board monitoring system. Video of the driver, Rafaela Vasquez, shows that she was inattentive, spending most of…
Misplaced trust in driver assist (Tesla Autopilot) systems can cause huge problems
Uber self-driving car fatality: Everyone is to blame

March’s pedestrian fatality from an Uber self-driving car can be blamed on Uber’s faulty software, an inattentive operator, and an inattentive pedestrian, according to an initial NTSB report into the fatality. There’s blame to go around, and perhaps it is Uber’s software that is most to blame? I don’t understand…
Uber self-driving car fatality blamed on faulty software

Uber seems to have determined their own software was, unsurprisingly, the primary cause of last months fatal self-driving car accident. In that accident a pedestrian crossing a street was struck by an experimental Uber self-driving car, and died of injuries shortly thereafter. According to sources within Uber cited by “The…
Self-driving vehicles need to crawl before they walk, and walk before they run
Rapid adoption of self-driving cars considered harmful, a plea for caution
Uber, Lyft, reduce car ownership and car travel

Traffic congestion is one of the negative sides of the car-dominated transportation system. The road system wasn’t built to handle the amount of traffic currently on the roads. Building more roads is not the solution since traveling in that direction simply leads to more sprawl because of geometrical requirements placed…