[This is a follow up to a post from two weeks ago.]
I rode a driverless Zoox in Las Vegas. I wanted to see if “self driving” hype is for real.
First observation, I hate that self driving cars are intended to look like shit! CEOs of self-driving (and most EV) companies just hate pretty things. It’s like some douchebag in a suit kicks in the door and screams at engineers: “Make it look like Tupperware fucked a Lego and then birthed a lunchbox.”
Looking at that gimped out loaf of bread on wheels I secretly hoped it would suck. I like operating real machinery. I savor the skill of driving my vehicle well. It’s not just about getting from A to B; I think a lot about freedom. Also, a dude that willingly rides a motorcycle in the rain isn’t chickenshit about risk in traffic.
So that’s the first thing. A driverless car is a mirror. It shows you yourself. Your initial reaction to driverless cars matches how much as you like or hate driving.
The Zoox completely eliminated any pleasure I’d get from piloting my own vehicle. It eliminated any stress I’d get out of the same activity. People’s opinions about “self driving” are predictable and grouped. Commute in miserable city gridlock? You’re likely to go all in on “driverless”. Ride fast, know how to use a clutch, like to explore off road, or enjoy polishing chrome? You’re likely to detest the idea.
Anyway summoning a Zoox on the Las Vegas “strip” was a pain in the ass but that’s only because I’m a Curmudgeon. You need a smartphone surgically implanted in your head. (I’m exaggerating but only a little.) You need the app installed. You need to let the app know banking info. You need to let the app know location info. You you need to spread your cheeks for the probe, etc…
That shit pisses me off but it’s normal. Everyone else already lets their smartphone know everything. So Zoox is no different than the rest of the modern world.
Next thing is it was a pain in the ass to summon a Zoox to a useful location. It came only to certain places and would drop off at only certain places. And it would come only if was damn well ready to do so. Otherwise I’d say “please pick me up” and it would say “fuck you, I’m busy” and that was that. (It was more polite than that but only a little.)
I finally managed to summon one to pickup point A. I was a few blocks away. It bitched at me. “You’re not at Point A, you’d better fuckin’ run.” I ran. I got there in time.
The pickup point was jointly positioned for taxis, Uber, Zoox, and (I think) valet. When the Zoox showed up it only opened for me (or rather my phone). This is where it became so much better than mass transit like a bus.
I looked around the pickup point. One dude was so drunk I thought he’d barf. Another one reeked like he was birthed by Cheech and Chong. A couple was nearby, semi-drunk, half dressed, and not far from doing it in the streets and scaring the horses. Public transport necessarily involves a scrum of dipshits I’d rather avoid.
Self driving is a partial solution to the low trust society we are creating. You know what ain’t happening on a Zoox? This:
The machine drove smooth. Perfect actually. I’m going to say it was probably safer than a human.
When a tipsy woman stepped across the median on the strip(!) it slowed down and gave a wide berth. It should have had a recorded message to simulate a taxi driver: “Get off the fuckin’ road ya lunatic! I’m drivin’ here!”
We were locked in a little bubble of “safe”. Compared to light rail or a bus it’s a clear win. There are no meth heads, freaks, and murderers in the vehicle you hired for yourself. This may be the thing that makes them rise in popularity until they eat Uber for lunch.
Once you’re in a Zoox you’re in it. The doors close and you are no longer in control of anything. It’s a prison on wheels… but a nicely appointed one. The AC was great. There was an audio stream and you could pick your own music or turn it off.
Obviously, it could get dystopian fast. It doesn’t have to be a James Bond supervillain’s plan or HAL refusing to open the pod bay doors. Our existing commercial infrastructure is already evil. Corporations will do to you what you allow them to do and it’ll surely be annoying. “Our records show you were near the riot last week. You’re going to the nearest police station to explain why you’re an insurrectionist.” “As a white male, you will pay more for this ride.” “Records show you haven’t paid your taxes this year, you’ll be transported to the authorities.” “We have detected a MAGA hat, the ride stops here and you must leave the vehicle. Hater!”
How about this terror: “While you ride please enjoy this mandatory infomercial about our favorite brand of toilet bowl cleaner.”
All of that sounds ridiculous, but you were there in 2020. I don’t know if there ever was a “norm” beyond which things are “unthinkable” but there isn’t now. “Please provide your vaccination identification to complete this ride”.
When you’re not in control you’re not in control.
It would absolutely improve the life of people who can’t drive. Old people need to get to WalMart. Kids need to get to school. Maybe we can coax the fucknut with six DUIs out of his car?
How about special situations where you’re temporarily unable to drive? Zoox would be perfect to get a drunk back to their hotel. There have been times when I’ve needed a doctor but was in no shape to drive. Zoox might be perfect for “feeling bad but not ambulance bad”.
We’re still focusing on dweebs commuting to cubicles when there are so many possibilities. If I wanna’ go backpacking in the middle of nowhere, why not a driverless ride? One trip to drop me and my gear at the trailhead. A different one to pick me up on the other side of the ridge two days hence.
Could one be mildly hardened against civil unrest? Driverless supply of materials to cops? Or cops themselves? Driverless evacuation of injured people from mass accidents?
It already recognized it as a plastic prison; lets explore that idea. Consider cops using one. If you’ve The Joker in handcuffs you need a squad car to handle him but many times it’s a lesser issue. A tweaked Zoox could haul a low level dipshit college student protester or some dickhead who got in a bar fight. A self driving vehicle could haul a minimum risk offender straight to the jail for processing. During riots use a fleet of them, toss jackoffs in the vehicle, hit go, and line up the next vehicle. It takes care of that person completely and humanely. It gets them out of the crowd without depleting cop manpower. Right now we aggregate hyped up radical spazzes in a big handcuffed herd. It’s almost the worst possible way to defuse angry mentally ill whackjobs. Perhaps fifteen individual Zoox cars with a single dipshit in each would be better? A ten minute ride with nice air conditioning and quiet (and most importantly separation from peer pressure) might allow a person some cool down time?
Conclusion, driving on the road felt like a “solved” problem. At the moment it’s limited in scope but that’s just while it goes through growing pains and the rabid lawyer phase. Think of the limited scope as any other vehicle that limits it’s range of motion.
Zoox is a personal trolley car that runs on rails of software.
I didn’t hate it. The Genie won’t go back in the bottle. The machine drives well enough. It sure as hell beats riding with a seething mass of humanity on a bus. It could be used for evil.. and it will. It can be used for good… and it will.
What matters most is the degree to which the technology is voluntary. In a perfect world, passengers of driverless cars should have nothing against human drivers. Rednecks and gearheads rolling around with 33″ Super Swampers or restored Studebakers would have not reason to bitch about driverless cars. They could (and should) happily ignore each other; even on the same road.
Will they? Of course not! Americans are not mature enough to peacefully let both solutions persist simultaneously. I’m not sure any human society is that mature.
A.C.
A couple of weeks ago, my boss related to us that an aquaintence of his who has a Tesla with self driving features. A little up in years, this person was driving in an isolated stretch of highway when he detected a bit of pressure in his chest. He had no fellow passenger – he was the sole occupant. He realized he could ask the vehicle to deliver him to the nearest hospital. And it did.
Now THAT is pretty cool. It turned out to be nothing, but the car delivered big time.
That’s impressive!
Our company has a big contract in Atlanta right now so I’ve been spending a bit of time there over the past 6 months or so.
Waymo has driverless taxis in Atlanta. They’ve contracted with Uber so if you summon an Uber, if there’s a Waymo closer, they’ll give you that option. You can pass on it and wait for a human driver if you want.
Waymos aren’t that ugly…they’re basically Jaguar SUVs with sensors all over them. The car itself looks like every other modern SUV on the planet (basically a next gen station wagon) but the sensors do make it look a bit ridiculous.
I tried one on a weekend trip from the grocery store back to my hotel. It was less than a mile and I’d walked to get there, but carrying grocery bags back was a bit much so I summoned an Uber, a Waymo was available and I accepted.
You’re absolutely right about the lack of control. Once you get in and buckle up, you’re at their mercy.
I had a little hiccup on my ride. The car got to the street my hotel was on, but if it turned toward the hotel, it would have been on the left side of the road. Apparently it’s not fond of U-turns so I guess it decided the best bet was to go around the block so it would be going the right way to pull over to the right and let me out on the sidewalk. There was a spot right by the hotel it could have pulled into from the right side of the road, but it apparently didn’t know that.
I didn’t know it didn’t know that, and I didn’t know what it was “thinking”, so when it turned left away from my hotel rather than right, I was a little taken aback. I pushed the button to talk to a human being through the communication system but by the time they responded I’d already figured out what was going on.
The trip took a few minutes longer than it should have due to going around the block, but it got me where I was going.
The next day I mentioned my adventure to someone who lives in Atlanta. They told me a story that was a bit frightening. Apparently not so long ago there was a high speed chase that culminated in a shootout on the street. While the cops were actively engaging the bad guy, a Waymo vehicle with passengers in it sedately drove right through the scene with bullets flying every which-a-way. Luckily neither it nor its passengers were hit, but it definitely exposed a weakness in the system.
So…pluses:
No obligation to chit-chat with the driver during the ride (huge plus for me).
No expectation of tipping the driver (another big one).
The vehicle drives very conservatively and provides a smooth ride.
Minuses:
You can’t ask the driver “what the heck are you doing” when it does something unexpected.
It takes a couple of minutes to contact a human being when things go sideways. A couple of minutes can be a long time depending on the situation.
Might be driven through the middle of a gun fight on the street.
Not something I think I’ll be doing regularly, but it was worth experiencing it once just to see what it was like.
You might not have to “tip the driver”, but I bet a tip was already included in the fare for the ride. Maybe not explicitly , but…
At least for my ride, the price listed was the same for a Waymo vs an Uber, but with Uber I’d have been expected to tip, so Waymo saved me a few bucks.
Not saying that holds true for everywhere, for every ride, but that was my experience.
“How about this terror: “While you ride please enjoy this mandatory infomercial about our favorite brand of toilet bowl cleaner.””
I actually worked for a company (Ferrograph) that produced a system called CabVision which did just that. It consisted of a computer in a box in the boot (trunk, to you Americans) and a screen in the passenger area of the taxi. You could turn the sound off but not the video. It advertised hotels, entertainment (shows, museums etc.) restaurants etc.
Look at the Early History section here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabvision
Peter Da Costa was a man you did NOT want to cross, even slightly.
So your nightmare scenario was already in existence by year 2000 …
Phil B
That’s horrifying! I never rode taxis much so I never knew that.
It sounds like a great thing for cities and such where kids never learn to drive because they don’t have the need to fish or hunt or drive the old man home at 12 years old after bowling league.
Kids these days are lazy, I tell you. And I bet these robot-tubes won’t even drive you out to a bonfire in a field where the kegs are cold and tapped….
I was a kid when the drinking age was nudged from 16 to 18 to 19 to 21. It seemed to me that the whole goal was to take teenagers who might be drinking beer semi-supervised in a bowling alley or bar or whatever and make them drive to the middle of nowhere and play with fire in a field without an adult for miles. Like, if you were trying to kill off a few percent of high school seniors what would you do differently?
On the other hand I sometimes drink whiskey alone while dispersed camping solo. It was sketchy when I was young and surrounded by a dozen idiot peers and that was mostly shitty beer… it’s probably just as sketchy in a different way when I’m retirement age and 20 miles out in a dirt bike. I never unlearned the lessons of youth I guess.
My neighbor, a retired school administrator with a remarkable love of vehicles (he has 5 of which 3 are stick shift) sold off his Ford Flex wagon and bought a Tesla economy model. He keeps asking me to go for a ride and extols how he can go all over town to do his shopping without having to steer. He also took some extended distance trips of 3 or 4 hours duration to test it out. I like the guy but absolutely refuse to be in any vehicle that drives itself and can lock you inside if anything glitches, let alone catch fire spontaneously. Does that make me a Luddite or am I just leery of things that can kill me without ability to defend? Oh, his garage is a scant 15 ft from the corner of my house and he parks the thing in there Yeah! I am not a fan but am equally happy we are not (yet?) importing China made vehicles, just go and look at the frequency of roadside BBQ cars in the U.K. and soon Canada…..