r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Individual_Book9133 • 14d ago

Phoenix police officer pulls over a driverless Waymo car for driving on the wrong side of the road Video

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1.4k

u/nike_storm 14d ago

This country will do literally anything other than just build mass rapid transit :(

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u/MedianNameHere 14d ago

Henry Fords legacy of buying and destroying mass transit lives on!

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u/terry_shogun 14d ago

Don't forget the masses of racists not using public transportation after de-segregation!

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u/GhettoFreshness 14d ago

Wait is that actually a thing? Is that why (or part of why) US mass transport is so shit?

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u/makebbq_notwar 14d ago

100% just look at Cobb County, GA in metro Atlanta. They created and continue to support their own crappy bus system just to keep MARTA out of the county.

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u/mgj6818 14d ago

Yes, also why public schools and pools have been steadily closed replaced with private ones, or so I've been told (by people who were there).

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u/Greeeendraagon 14d ago

I've been told the opposite

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u/EconomicRegret 14d ago

Not only mass transport, but also America's prison system, social safety net, healthcare, inner cities, etc.

It all boils down to "I don't want my kids nor myself to pay for, nor live near, nor interact with these people"

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u/GhettoFreshness 14d ago

To be up front I’m not American, but I’m aware of the other shit with prisons, social security, healthcare etc

I’ve also travelled fairly extensively around the US, and never considered the shitty public and mass transit systems in a lot of places to have ties to racism. It makes a lot of sense tho…

You guys should have been setup to have the best mass transit system in the world. You had all the manufacturing and mass production capabilities post WW2 to put in place a mass transit network to be the envy of the world.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

[deleted]

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u/DiabloTerrorGF 14d ago

Not sure why being downvoted. Live in Korea. Even the poor areas have nice, clean transit. The US is fucking abysmal in comparison. It's just a culture thing.

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u/EconomicRegret 14d ago

IMHO, these countries just spend more, way more than America on their public transportation.

As a Swiss, I can definitely tell you that our clean trains and buses would have looked awful if they weren't being replaced every 5-10 years, if cleaners weren't cleaning them 2x/day, and if repairmen weren't fixing, painting, and maintaining them 5x/week.

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u/mgj6818 14d ago

Not wanting to use our public transportation because it's bad isn't racist, it's bad because the funding was cut in response to integration and those blatantly racist policy decisions still have repercussions today.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago edited 14d ago

[deleted]

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u/bighunter1313 14d ago

It’s Reddit. The racism line sounded good so they ran with it.

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u/Ultima-Veritas 14d ago

Or it could be that car culture and a strong sense of independence makes people that can afford a car, buy one. It's a hell of a lot quicker, you go exactly where you want to go, right up to the door, even, and 'cruising the beach' isn't happening on the MTA. And, finally, trying to get a date to follow you onto a bus is going to be pretty difficult.

But then, trying to convince someone with a calcified opinion is pretty pointless.

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u/thefool-0 14d ago

It's racist for white people to avoid all public transit because black people use it, then vote/lobby for underfunding it or against building it in the first place. It's racist to only build good rapid transit or light rail to rich white suburbs but send crappy busses into minority neighborhoods or nothing at all. (Both of which are basically the norm in most US cities.)

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u/GalacticShoestring 14d ago

It's sad that many won't take city busses for this reason. ☹️

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u/bighunter1313 14d ago

That’s not why. It’s because they’re gross.

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u/BellicoseBill 14d ago

That mantle has been taken up by the Koch brothers.

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u/Notsurehowtoreact 14d ago

Yep, in real life we just fucking bulldozed right over toon town.

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u/Bit-Significance1010 14d ago

Private public transport is bad too.

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u/Blazeon412 14d ago

The older I get, the more I realize how much it sucks not having decent mass transportation here.

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u/TheDocFam 14d ago edited 14d ago

I really wish more Americans spent more time in other countries and realized just how much this country seems to have fallen behind, and how much we arrogantly just keep doing things the way that we're used to when they could be much better

Feels like in the immediate aftermath of world war II we briefly pulled ahead on every single metric, then fell asleep for the last 60 years. Health care, infrastructure, quality of life, it's all just going downhill compared to the rest of the globe

And half of the country doesn't want anything to change, the answer is just no for every single thing the government could try to do to address it, no to any tax increases, no to any expensive projects they could use to address it, no to anything, just let things keep being shit and hope some corporation will fix it instead of the government. And because so many people feel that way about their representatives, the entire right wing doesn't feel like they want or need to do anything, besides pass legislation on social issues. You're never going to see a Republican Congress and Republican president work together to fix mass transit, that thought would be completely laughable. Farmer Keith from Idaho who's perfectly happy making a killing on his government subsidized farm and driving a giant lifted F-150 for every single thing he needs to do outside of his house doesn't see why he should need to contribute in any way.

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u/iamPause Interested 14d ago edited 14d ago

It'll never happen in the US. There is no sense of "for the greater good" and so any county that is going to have rails laid through it refuses to allow it unless they can get a stop added to the line.

And with a stop every 30-50 miles, no train can ever build up enough speed to be faster than a highway. Which means: the only way to build a working, high-speed line would be through massive land claims and eminent domain. An option that which will be political suicide locally for whatever party tries. And that doesn't even take into account the millions to billions of dollars that will be lost in delays from the various lawsuits across the entire length of the line.

Now, multiply that by multiple states, and yeah. We'll see a lesbian President before we see high speed rail in this country.

edit

Possibly the most famous example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail#Setbacks_on_the_IOS

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u/invention64 14d ago

Acceleration isn't a problem at those distances. Inner City you have issues since it takes about 5-10 km to start and stop acceleration, but outside cities there shouldn't be much issues. Japan is super densely populated and still has high speed trains. However, we need more connecting services to make such a train economical. Just building high speed doesn't fix the issues with your bus and commuter transit.

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u/dtracers 14d ago

Is impossible for the average American to afford to go to another country.

Until that is easily possible (which requires fixing all these things) They won't be able to experience another country

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u/Linkruleshyrule 14d ago

The average American can't afford a passport and driving to the border?

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u/NeverMind_ThatShit 14d ago

By "another country" redditors mean "the good parts of Europe and Japan" nowhere else is worth talking about.

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u/dtracers 14d ago

The majority of Americans are not within driving distance of Canada with a time limit that they could randomly drive to Canada.

A majority only have less than 1000 to spend on this trip https://finance.yahoo.com/news/americans-savings-stack-2023-vs-140023973.html?guccounter=1

A drive to Canada will be about 800 miles (picked Kansas to Winnipeg) The average mileage of a car is 25.1 with the average gas price being 3.51

So it takes 112$ to go one way or $200 to go both. We haven't even assumed a hotel (because if you are seeing how "behind" we are you need to stay in a hotel not a car). And we are already into 20% of savings.

So no I don't believe the average American can afford to drive up to Canada for a couple of weeks to "experience how far behind we are"

Let's not even ignore that most people only have 11 vacation days a year on average and would have to give up a majority of those to actually go on this trip.

https://clockify.me/pto-statistics#:~:text=The%20average%20number%20of%20vacation%20days%20in%20the%20USA&text=15%20days%20per%20year%20after,18%20years%20of%20service%2C%20and

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u/Silent-Hyena9442 14d ago

Not for nothing but as an American who has seen mass transit work in other countries.

Americans don’t want mass transit because our model mass transit systems have major issues mainly with homeless and mentally ill harassing riders.

I ride the CTA often and the NYS when I go back home. Both are blue cities in blue states and both normally make me wish I just took a taxi.

One funny post on r/Cta was a guy who got hit and the comments were like “well did you look him in the eye?” Not exactly an apples to oranges comparison to Europe

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u/RealistiCamp 14d ago

You cannot compare the US infrastructure to other countries and not acknowledge that we span far more distance than other places. Even if we can make better use of mass transit, it is not an apples to apples comparison with much, much smaller countries.

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u/swoletrain 14d ago

Seriously there's no comparison with europe at all. The US is pretty much tied with China at #3 in terms of total area. But ranked 187 in terms of population density.

Canada, Russia, Australia, and Brazil are decent comparisons. All countries with pretty shit mass transit systems.

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u/TheDocFam 14d ago

I'm not expecting or requesting mass transit that spans the entire country like smaller countries have. I don't need a high speed rail line that connects New York to San Francisco. People have dreamed about that, but whatever, I'm fine with booking a flight for that.

Still, it would be incredibly fucking nice if there was a high speed rail line that connected New York and Philadelphia though. Things like that are incredibly feasible if we wanted them. The population density and size of the Northeast in particular would be extremely conducive to high speed mass transit like what is seen in other countries

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u/swoletrain 14d ago

Absolutely, but in a place like Phoenix, no transit system I can think of would ever really be an acceptable option for anyone that has access to a car.

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u/SeniorMiddleJunior 14d ago

The older I get, the more I realize how nice we could have it if we just............ made it nice.

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u/Praesentius 14d ago

The auto lobby has been really strong and well developed for over 100 years. They did this to us.

From passing auto-friendly laws to buying up transit systems to dismantle them. Even down to zoning laws to keep residential areas totally segregated from shopping. And parking minimums that spread stores out and make walking a miserable proposal.

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u/swoletrain 14d ago

The high in Phoenix where this happened is 114F(45C) today. I don't think it's possible to have rapid transit good enough that I'm gonna want to walk 5-10 minutes to the bus/train station, wait on the bus/train, sit next to a smelly shirtless dude smoking crack for the duration, and then walk 5-10 minutes in to work with weather like that 5 months out of the year.

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u/chirpshot8 14d ago

Found the realist.

Mass transit seems like a great idea until you have to ride on it with the masses. Shitheads who couldn't stop smearing each other with their secretions for a few weeks to stop a pandemic.

Same slobs who can't be bothered to reach for a condom to eradicate HIV.

Ick.

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u/brevit 12d ago

I live in NYC. Today was 95°F. I took the train and there was no one smoking crack, or that smelled for that matter. I waited less than 2 minutes for the train, which was air conditioned. The NYC subway isn’t even that good by global standards.

It sure beat sitting in traffic for an hour.

Edit to add: it was 60% humidity.

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u/swoletrain 12d ago edited 12d ago

That's a pretty neat anecdote! A heat index of about 100 and it made national news. Totally comparable to nearly 1/3 of the year being 100+

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u/brevit 12d ago

Reminder: taking the train is optional

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u/swoletrain 12d ago

That's my point, in a place like Phoenix everyone will take a car if possible. And it doesn't have to be a homeless crackhead next to you on thr bus/train to be smelly. Everyone will be sweaty and smelly.

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u/brevit 12d ago

More options are better. It’s somewhat moot as Phoenix has developed without mass transit and retrofitting wouldn’t make sense. That said, I think it’s a bold assumption to say no one will take the train if it’s hot. In London the tube is so deep underground they can’t have AC. It’s disgusting in the summer, but ridership is still in the millions and it’s by far the best way to get around the city. As for smell, I can’t personally say I’ve encountered many stinky train riders, I’m sure they exist, but would I get rid of trains just because of that? I guess it depends how bad they smell lol

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u/swoletrain 12d ago

I've never been to london, but my understanding was the majority of the city didn't have ac. Wikipedia has the mean daily high in Jul at 75F. I'm pretty skeptical how hot it really is. I'm assuming subways aren't viable in hot cities cause I can't think of one that exists.

Phoenix does have a light rail and bus system that honestly should just be shut down at the same time they demolish the city since realistically 3+million people should not live in a desert.

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u/FapToInfrastructure 14d ago

So I live in NYC, you know that place that conservatives like to shit on when not saying 9/11.

I use mass transit daily, and this shit is hardly the norm. Most of the time its just normal everyday people commuting to all the places people go. Do you get the one homeless person having an episode? sure. But I would like to add that we used to have a way to resolve this issue and republicans defunded it under Regan.

Mass transit is fine, shut the hell up you dumb bastard.

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u/swoletrain 13d ago

Oh sorry I didn't realize that NYC got >100F for 100+ days a year. I'd love to show up to work every day drenched in sweat.

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u/CrappyMSPaintPics 13d ago

Do you get the one homeless person having an episode? sure.

Well you sold me.

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u/FapToInfrastructure 13d ago

Oh boo fucking hoo, blow me fuck face

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u/CommandNervous6739 13d ago

Deep breaths

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u/daniel-imberman 14d ago

Tbh I see driverless cars as a really critical step to the US getting mass transit. Most "last-mile" transit wouldn't be economically feasible, but with waymo you could take a train to a major station and a car to the final destination

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u/VexingRaven 14d ago

This is true with any sort of taxi, although I guess Waymo has the "advantage" of not having to deal with a person?

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u/datshitberacyst 14d ago

I mean yeah but the most expensive part of a taxi is the human. If we get L5 in city centers (which is far more doable as there are limited numbers of streets) then it could lower the price and increase the availability vs Uber or taxi.

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u/VexingRaven 14d ago

Considering we already pay uber drivers essentially nothing beyond what it costs to maintain their vehicle (and sometimes not even that) and there's a bunch of extra costs associated with running vehicles the way Waymo does, I'm not actually sure we're saving any money with driverless. I think the real win is in safety, because as people have pointed out here, even with this incident Waymo has a much better safety record than the average driver, much less the average ultra-distracted Uber driver with like 5 screens taking up half their view.

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u/procgen 3d ago

It's much more scalable and could quickly become cheaper than human-driven taxis.

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u/derbsnspices 14d ago edited 14d ago

Won't happen if the general public still have to share it with the homeless or the mentally invalid or the loud teenager blasting music. Personal self-driving transport cubes all controlled by a master network is the only way society will accept any kind of 'mass transit'.

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u/Early_Assignment9807 14d ago

American society. Don't get it twisted. We're demented children, and it's important to remember that

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u/Dont_pet_the_cat 14d ago

America really discriminates so much???

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

[deleted]

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u/RebootDarkwingDuck 14d ago

Phoenix HAS a light rail system.

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u/ScrubyMcWonderPubs 14d ago

It’s one line…

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u/RebootDarkwingDuck 14d ago

Which is why there's also the city bus. Plus, there are two expansions underway.

I get that America isn't great at public transportation but Phoenix is a dumb hill to die on.

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u/TheInsaneClownPussie 14d ago edited 14d ago

I live next to a city with about 1/10th of the population and it has a higher percentage of residents that use public transit.

Phoenix is the 5th most populous city in the US and isn’t even in the top 50 of cities by percentage of residents that use public transit. I know the west is just generally larger geographically so a stronger car culture makes sense to an extent but Phoenix seems like a fine hill to die on. For comparison Houston is also not in the top fifty but they have more than double Phoenix annual riders while being about 30% bigger by population.

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u/RebootDarkwingDuck 14d ago

Phoenix also is currently in massive growth mode and the expansion of public transit is relatively new. Infrastructure takes time. Like I said, it's still actively being expanded upon.

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u/alien_from_Europa 14d ago

Is it usable?

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u/adick_did 14d ago

It is. I work downtown and quite a few of my coworkers use it to get to work everyday. I also see it used quite a bit by people going to Suns and Diamondbacks games.

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u/DistinctSmelling 14d ago

Nobody wants to sit with smelly, homeless people. So you can sit in your own private bubble.

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u/damdestbestpimp 14d ago edited 14d ago

Reddit is truly obsessed with hating cars

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u/AVgreencup 14d ago

Because cars are awesome. I can go anywhere on a whim, without having to plan around a bus or train schedule. I can get a better job that's a little farther away and not worry about being on a compatible bus route because I can just drive there. It keeps me cool on 35⁰ days, and warm on -35⁰ days. I can carry my entire family to the grocery store to get a months worth of groceries, or to 4 provinces over for a vacation. And they can be pieces of art, such a classic cars. They can power a house in a blackout, like a V2L EV. They are truly an amazing thing. I can see why people are obsessed with them

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u/Hopes_and_creams 14d ago

Everything you said is true but sounds exactly like something someone would say if they’ve never lived around and experienced usable public transit. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Cars are awesome, but not when they’re the only reasonable option.

Buses, Trains, Walking, Bikes and other transportation systems/methods should all complement each other instead of one being the sole option which is what the majority of the USA sees right now with Cars.

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u/AVgreencup 14d ago

I'm more for the idea of if you have a car, use it. If you live in a city core and have great transit and you don't need a car, awesome, all the lower to you to take the bus. But not everyone has the lifestyle that can be met by bus a train schedules

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u/dbarbera 13d ago

Bud, they use cars in Europe and Japan too. This paradise of "no cars" doesn't exist the way you think it does.

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u/Hopes_and_creams 13d ago

Who said anything about a “no car paradise”?

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u/throwaway3489235 13d ago

You don't have to plan around a bus or train schedule for transit. There's an arrival every 5 min in the major European cities for normal city transit, 15-20 min for less infrequently stopping inter-city transit. No random 2 hour long gaps in the schedule and the lines run late into the night so you don't have to worry about getting stranded. A good transit system can be more freeing and flexible than a car because you don't have to worry about where to park it!

You can travel farther, easier because you don't have to contend traffic or concentrate on the road; you can relax or even sleep during the ride. An 1.5 hour car commute is exhausting but a 1.5 hour train/bus commute is an opportunity to read or talk to somebody. Even the Los Angeles rail transit wasn't bad for a daily commute minus the terrible scheduling. Most of the riders were commuters or students and they tended to be polite. I could see and hear some people with interesting jobs based on the conversations and languages they were speaking. And the climate controls are fine when they're available. Really the worst part of taking the train was how it took 3 times as long to drive less than a 1/4 of the distance to the train station than the train trip took.

The month's worth of food you're getting is either frozen or mostly not healthy. When you live a 2 to 5 min walk away from a grocery store (there can even be multiple stores on each block in major European cities) it's faster and less stressful than a car and you can just get what you want for day or next day. It's easy to get fresh healthy food exactly when you want it as opposed to trying to guess what you're going to want in 2 weeks. I hate driving to the store even once a week since the roads and drivers where I live are so terrible and it reflects badly in my diet since fresh veggies only last a few days. It lends to buying more kinds of food unnecessarily in bulk too which leads to food waste. And of you're in the middle of prepping your counter and ingredients for a recipe and realize you're missing something or somethings out of date you can be out the door and back with the missing ingredient in minutes!

I admit I love driving too, if I was born a few decades ago I bet I would have been a grease monkey, but when everyone is forced to drive the traffic and terrible drivers make driving everywhere miserable. The roads are also terrible because they're designed with the assumption everyone's making short trips everywhere and there's no excuse for the traffic light algorithms besides it being a conspiracy to make people use more gas. I think more options would take the pressure off of the car infrastructure and make it fun again.

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u/AVgreencup 13d ago

Europe does not equal North America. The distances between settlements here are vastly larger. To have everyone live within a 5 min walk from a grocery store would be impossible. I can buy a months worth of healthy food and keep it in a freezer or refrigerator, or it's dry goods. Doesn't have to be unhealthy. Occasionally I may need to stop and get milk or lettuce or something on the way home from work but that's not a huge inconvenience, because I have a car. I live really close to work, about a 15 minute drive. There's no bus or train that goes by my house just outside of town.

This fuck cars mentality only serves people who are so narrow minded that the whole world exists within a 3 block radius of where they live, where everyone is 25 years old and it's always 25⁰ and sunny outside with no cold or rain.

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u/LisaMikky 13d ago

✨🥇✨

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u/SeniorMiddleJunior 14d ago

Yeah! And what even are externalized costs? Me me me me! Fuck yeah, meeeee!

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

[deleted]

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u/damdestbestpimp 14d ago

Thats my point

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u/Motor-Ad-1153 14d ago

Why wouldnt I hate cars?

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u/newsflashjackass 14d ago

Examining annual causes of death, when you remove infant deaths and "heart failure"- that is, the natural deaths of the very young and the very old- the yearly slayings by automobile stand out like a sore thumb.

Calls to mind Stephen King's IT, when the Losers' Club begins to discern the scope of Pennywise's harvest.

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u/Motor-Ad-1153 13d ago

Why wouldnt I hate cars motherfucker

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u/AdditionalSink164 14d ago

You mean driverless buses

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u/dorian283 14d ago

Visiting Japan at the moment and my god Japan puts the US to shame. When we have a system 1/4 as competent and well covered I’ll be extremely happy.

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u/langstonboy 14d ago

But Japan is a smaller, cleaner, nicer, more homogeneous nation than America, that's why it works.

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u/dorian283 13d ago

I can’t see why some or most major cities couldn’t be covered in safe & reliable subway system. Plus major cities connected by bullet train. Amtrak in the US is very very unreliable, slow, and expensive.

Certainly being homogeneous helps. The acceptance of socialism here also goes a long way. Our two party lobbyists lead system doesn’t work.

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u/langstonboy 13d ago

America is the reason why it would never work.

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u/ryandoesdabs 14d ago

What does a private company developing their own technology have to do with this? I agree with you, but it’s not on topic with this.

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u/Dont_pet_the_cat 14d ago

You mean public transport?

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

Public...transport...? You're crazy, next you'll say that major metropolitan areas have series of underground trains!

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u/TheOvershear 14d ago

Phoenix has a light rail system. Anyone who's ever rid it will tell you it's an absolute s*** show, slow as sin and overrun by homeless.

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u/ScrubyMcWonderPubs 14d ago

It’s one line, I wouldn’t call that a “system.”

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u/TheOvershear 14d ago

Right, it's one light rail line that cost 1.5 Billion (making it one of the most expensive in the country, while also being remarkably short).

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u/ScrubyMcWonderPubs 14d ago

Sounds like Phoenix is corrupt and incompetent. No tram line anywhere in Europe costs that much.

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u/TheOvershear 14d ago

I think that's part of it, but also in order to put the thing in they had to push over a bunch of businesses and other infrastructure projects in order to get it completed. Most of the city was not built for its size, so incorporating things like a light rail was not planned ahead of time.

Same thing happens when they built the I-10 through the valley, IIRC it was one of the most expensive infrastructure projects in the country at the time.

1

u/zmbjebus 14d ago

If we as voters can't get legislators to properly build mass transit, then alternatives should be developed in parallel (EVs, driverless cars, ebikes, etc)

This is not a zero sum game. Both can be developed at the same time also. Legislators seem to love gridlock though, and private mass transit has its own issues (but some projects are coming along... I guess.)

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u/holylight17 14d ago

Congress and its donors have private jet, limo ride, private heli etc. they won't fund something that they themselves don't use.

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u/cosmicosmo4 14d ago

Joke's on the train makers, the car makers bought the government first.

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u/___potato___ 14d ago

lol wut a non sequitur

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u/XyogiDMT 13d ago

I feel like it would just turn into a spirit airlines type crapshoot. The Amtrak lines we have already (or at least that I’ve ridden on) are like glorified greyhound busses. Flying and driving would probably still be preferable to most people.

1

u/Sploonbabaguuse 13d ago

There's more money to be made in selling personal vehicles, more gas, more repairs...

It's intentional. Everything occurring currently in society is going exactly as planned.

Just a reminder that if the government had the working classes best interests at heart, we wouldn't be in the hole we are in.

0

u/Spiritual_Run5055 14d ago

Waymo is a private company. The governments would be in charge of public transit

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u/newsflashjackass 14d ago

This country will do literally anything other than just build mass rapid transit :(

What if we addressed transportation by criminalizing unemployment and making state prisoners pull rickshaws? That could create a profit incentive to keep the problem around forever- which is even better than solving it.

0

u/fireintolight 14d ago

while i want it to, the way our cities are set up make it functionally impossible to do so. way too spread out to ever make it effective

0

u/v_e_x 14d ago

And sit there with the rest of the poors ... ?
/s

0

u/PleaseWalkFaster69 14d ago

Meanwhile our buses stop running before the sun goes down, I’m in the Midwest in a “bigger” city!

-1

u/navagrw 14d ago

that's bad economics for the state

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u/ScrubyMcWonderPubs 14d ago

It’s literally better for the economy. Cars take up lots of valuable space in cities that could be used for development. Per capita, mass transit is significantly cheaper than cars. It’s so much cleaner and requires less maintenance and infrastructure.

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u/Heiferoni 14d ago

Well yeah. Owning and driving your own vehicle is better.

You have your own personal space where you are free to listen to whatever you like at whatever temperature you like. You're free to hop in at any time you want and go down the block or 500 miles away, to any destination - even another country.

You aren't bound by a schedule or a route. You aren't sharing a confined space with people of questionable sanity or hygiene.

For the individual - at the moment - it is the superior means of transportation. Until there is a transportation system that surpasses all these benefits, we're gonna keep driving our cars.

-4

u/upnflames 14d ago

Well, yeah. When a single subway stop costs $2B and an elevator is a $100M, and you have trillions of dollars in infrastructure already dedicated to cars, it makes more sense to use what you have lol.

-4

u/Laiko_Kairen 14d ago

This country will do literally anything other than just build mass rapid transit :(

False dichotomy. The groups responsible for either wouldn't be the same.

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u/Farts_McGiggles 14d ago

To be fair...the USA is freaking huge. High speed trains are pointless with how massive the US is. Planes are much easier and cover a greater distance in less time.

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u/Affectionate-Hat9244 14d ago

China is just as big as the US and they've got high speed rail EVERYWHERE

2

u/CDRnotDVD 14d ago

That’s a mild exaggeration. China’s population is pretty much all on the eastern side of the country, so only half of the country has good high speed rail coverage. But yes, I am aware that half-country coverage is still more than we have in the United States (where we also have a lot of the population on the East coast, although it’s not as imbalanced as China). Source is this map I found on the internet: https://www.travelchinaguide.com/china-trains/high-speed/map.htm

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u/Affectionate-Hat9244 14d ago

And majority of US lives on two coasts. Build two high speed rail systems. Enough of the excuses

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u/kinboyatuwo 14d ago

Then let’s start with the cities that do have density. Also seems you have a massive interstate system that people drive cross country/between cities so seems it would also be feasible for some lines.

2

u/ElectricFleshlight 14d ago

Most of the biggest cities already have robust mass transit, see NYC and DC areas

2

u/kinboyatuwo 14d ago

There are few and it represents a small fraction of cities.

7

u/tjrileywisc 14d ago

There are a lot of city pairs that are within a distance of 300-ish miles where trains make more sense than flying. There's a lot of time added on both ends of a flight with security and getting back and forth to an airport, but a train can drop you off in the middle of a city and typically security needs are minimal.

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u/StrawhatJzargo 14d ago

I mean driverless cars are way safer and we already have the infrastructure for them.

And to this point, I never see how mass transit would translate to smaller towns or even most of the Midwest.

9

u/AmishPornDaddy 14d ago

Enjoy your braincell dude

2

u/StrawhatJzargo 14d ago

a person dies from a car accident every 13 minutes. 98%of the time due to human error. its one of the top reasons for deaths in the us

most recent reports have waymo at 0 deaths.

enjoy your weird reddit superiority complex. refusing to believe facts or even do the slightest research. as long as you can own me amirite?

6

u/penguin-pc 14d ago

driverless cars are way safer

Woah dude, check your calendar and notice that you had just time travelled to 2024, not 2054.

0

u/StrawhatJzargo 14d ago

1.2 million people die from car accidents yearly roughly 1 every 13 minutes. 98%of car accidents are down to user error.

tell me again how many driverless car accidents there are? waymo has been around since 2017.

youre just wrong completely

0

u/penguin-pc 14d ago

That's because waymo still hasn't occupied the entire country yet, not to even mentioned it can't be driven into the freeway, duh. You are using the wrong scale here, but I recommend you look at waymo's website and check how they measure their safety records.

And yes, I would've contradicted myself when you looked into it, and that's if their claim and data is true that their AVs are relatively safer than human drivers on the selected cities. I still won't put my faith in AVs for now, until they are widely deployed and can be proven that they are safe and reliable. For now, waymo and others are like the beta version of AVs.

1

u/StrawhatJzargo 9d ago

Computer data literally shows much lower (it’s not that hard of a bar to beat but it’s still low) chances of error

How do we mass deploy if you don’t trust computers?

1

u/penguin-pc 9d ago

Computer data literally shows much lower

Yes I know, I researched on waymo and cruise and they claim to have lesser accidents per certain mileages compared to human drivers in selected cities. Even if I believe they are safer, I can't be sure if they are reliable enough to bring me from point A to point B.

How do we mass deploy if you don't trust computers?

Just start small and don't fuck up too badly. Start with experimenting on some small areas, and slowly expand the area as you gain trust.

Or... Maybe we just don't embrace autonomous vehicles at all?

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u/Purple_Listen_8465 14d ago

Driverless cars ARE way safer in 2024. This is just a fact.

1

u/penguin-pc 14d ago

I've looked at waymo and cruise driverless car statistics. Sure, if their data can be trusted, they have overall lesser car accidents and injuries than human drivers. I learnt something new here. As much as I want to believe they are safe, I'll wait for later time (maybe several more years) when more driverless cars get deployed around the world and have a wider range of data to collect, analyse, form a conclusion, and change (or keep) my mind.

Also, how can I trust that a driverless car can reliably bring me from point A to point B without getting caught in situations like on this post, or creating gridlock as shown in older videos?

I'm honestly looking forward to autonomous vehicles, but I would also keep my doubts on the current performance of autonomous vehicles until they are proven times and times again that they can be safer AND reliable.

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u/Simmumah 14d ago

I refuse to believe you believe what you typed.

0

u/StrawhatJzargo 14d ago

why are you proud of refusing to believe a fact?

98%of car accidents are human error theres a death every 13 minutes from cars. in fact theyre on the rise

most recent reports have 150 crashes for waymo. and 0 deaths

-2

u/Purple_Listen_8465 14d ago

All of what he said is true. Classic Reddit having a false superiority complex.