Why Self-Driving Taxis are a Terrible Idea 

The first 100 people to use code SOMETHING at the link below will get 60% off of Incogni: incogni.com/something

"what if you could have a bus, but didn't have to sit next to the poors?" -amazon

Nature: everything can evolve to become a crab Adam: Everything can evolve to become a train

If people own stuff, how are corporations going to charge them indefinitely for subscriptions?

My favorite part of these videos is when he says "I am going to modify these ideas to make them work" then describes a train and/or bicycle. I know it's coming every time and i love it

"This is not a car, this is a vehicle" gives off the same energy as "I'm not driving, I'm traveling."

Remember kids, public services should be publicly owned.

I hadn’t considered letting my dog shit in a self driving taxi until you said ALL of them. Challenge accepted

At the beginning of the pandemic, the city bus where i live became free, and they never went back. Amazon is gonna have a hard time beating "free"

"It is so dumb, in fact, that even Elon Musk came up with it some time a go" Brutal

It still amazes me that modern public transit ideas involve transiting as little of the public as possible.

Some company: 'We're reinventing the wheel.' *their wheel is square*

I live in San Francisco, home base for Uber, Lyft, and all of the test autonomous vehicle companies. For the first eight years of Uber's operations, their mapping system consistently told my drivers to drive off the cliff a block away from my house to get to the Embarcadero, the main roadway on the eastern shore of the city. This was despite numerous reports by both residents and drivers, for years on end. Now these sorts of companies want me to get into unmanned vehicles with no override, because they totally pinky swear AI will not drive me off a cliff / into the sea / into other vehicles / over pedistrians' bodies? Uh, no.

Imagine a transit idea being so unrelentingly awful that not even Elon Musk wants to touch it. I didn't even know that it was possible to stoop to levels that low.

Adam always turning an idea into a train will never get old, I love it

I'm not putting my personal safety in the hands of a faceless, multi-billion-dollar corporation with no incentive to actually keep me safe.

Amazon can't even find my house for deliveries, why would I trust them to get a robotaxi to it?

The core issue with this is that the idea isn't "we don't want you to be dependent on cars", its "we want you to be dependent on *our* cars instead". All the downsides of car centric transport with none of the upsides of owning a private vehicle.

The "scalable" thing immediately reminded me of the million other "we reinvented the train but its not actually a train and it has all the downsides of the car" cash grabs lmao

0:35 "It is so dumb, in fact Elon Musk came up with it some times ago" You had me rollin

It blows my mind how rich people would rather waste millions to billions of dollars pretending to fix issues instead of using the money to actually fix issues.

When Adam starts offering suggestions to make these craptastic transit ideas better, we all know that he's about to make a bus or a train... but it's always hilarious anyway. It's like his finishing move.

It will always be easier to underpay real humans than use robots. Uber makes money because they don’t assume liability for their cars, robot taxis are as expensive as a regular taxi company to operate

11:33 - I love how every time you make a video about a bullshit futuristic transport there’s always a moment when you transform it into a train or a bus

100% agree with the statement that we will never have full self driving. Computers thrive on predictability, humans thrive on adaptability.

Any time anyone says they will REVOLUTIONIZE transportation or logistics, their concept eventually lead to TRAINS if they try to make it efficient and scalable.

Nothing puts a smile on my face faster than Adam saying "Let me make some suggestions..." knowing exactly where he's going

Victor from Russell Island here - the bright sparks from our local city council trialled a driverless bus on Karragarra Island - a small island with a population of about 200 here in Moreton Bay. It was a ludicrous failure! The vehicles started so violently that passengers were knocked off their feet, it broke down constantly . . . Hopefully not too much of our council rates were wasted on it. No further publicity has been heard about this bright idea.

I am glad Budapest was mentioned. I live there and the public transport is SO GOOD. It is easy to get anywhere by tram or metro.

my favorite part of an adam something video is the part where he fixes stupid ideas by turning them into trains. the popeye eating spinach moment. it's the same every time and i never get sick of it

let's not forget that bus drivers (one of the backbones of our modern lifestyle) can act as a form of authority but not only in the case of a robbery. Many times in my city have people being denied access to a bus that still had some standing space but the drivers were like "yea but then nobody gets in or out and the line accumulates delays, take the next one and let's all keep traffic flowing" basically. There's also this one time a teenager lit a cigarette in the back of the bus like an edgelord and this lady went up to the driver, talking about her medical condition. The driver stopped the bus and personally threw out the kid after he refused to behave. Can't expect civility from a LeVeL fIvE autonomous vehicle.

I was waiting for the part where Adam would invent the Bus/Tram/Train and he didn't disappoint. Actually he went above and beyond by inventing the bike too.

" This is not a car, its a vehicle" Is some hard core sovereign citizen bullshit

There will be so many wild outcomes of these become real. For example, imagine a parent who has to drop off a kid at elementary school, a kid at highschool, and then drive to work. With Robotaxis that will become three trips - one for each kid and one for the parent - and this will be considered normal behaviour. The number of trips that people take will explode and traffic will become insane. Personally, I look forward to ordering a single tube of toothpaste for instant delivery, brought to me by my local robotaxi delivery company. The future will be great!

My favorite part about Adam's videos are the inevitable "motherfucker you just thought of a train" rants

Amazon vehicles with actual drivers are already quite scary given that they "incentivize" them to speed and go way too fast. Imagine autonomous vehichles where a bug in the software turns the trolley problem into why not both.

Once again, an Adam Something video sheds its coat and reveals BUILD A TRAIN once again and frankly, that's what I'm here for.

Any company that advertises themselves as a "public service provider" should by all rights be nationalized, and its product become a taxpayer-funded operation.

It maddens me to no end how these rich people can just blow all these resources on completely unfeasible, or borderline dystopian ideas.

Actual suggestion: this could be fine for people with accessibility needs. That would probably account for 3% of all ride needs and the scaling there wouldn't be awful.

I love that every conversation about how to use modern technology to improve transit inevitably leads back to regular ass trains and bikes

God capitalism is so dedicated to not having mass public transit.

Ah yes, fixing congestion caused by too many cars by using more cars.

The only (proposed) version of self driving cars that I have seen is in fiction. The movie IRobot had a good version of this idea where cars were self driving while on major highways but driver controlled while in urban environments

The rentable bikes I really like. There are so many stations now and it's very inexpensive (~$15 for a year pass allowing you ride the first 30mins free as many times you want, so you can reset the timer at every station). Because you have to leave the bike at the station (except you have to pay ~$15 penalty), I don't think it is suitable for the suburban area (it's not affordable to maintain stations for some streets), but it's absolutely perfect for more dense areas. Like in Budapest. People in suburban area using own bikes, cars or walk to get to the local railway station and go with train into the city, skipping all trafic (because we don't have much highways). From the central railway station, you can get anywhere with those public bikes.

Adam, your suggestions on improving the robotaxis are interesting, but they are missing a crucial ingredient: you need to call all those things "pods". No pods - no investments - no big bucks.

Challenging the "attitude towards car ownership" would have sounded like something commendable if I didn't immidiately understand that what they mean by challenging is "removing ownership" more so than anything.

There is nothing wrong on personal ownership of a car. Although, driving it in a city isn't effective nor fun. So I prefer public transportation inside of a city, and individual transportation(conventional car) outside of cities.

Every futuristic game: autonomous trains to anywhere Every fake future guru: Self-driving cars At this point it's just denial that cars just don't make sense as a ubiquitous solution.

I love how this channel is just “the solution to everything is public transport”

Adam turning buzzword pods into trains and buses is my favorite part of these videos

So Amazon is challenging car ownership so that they can own all the cars instead. Heck they want to own you! Not a chance.

This reminded me of a case here in Brazil, in the city of Recife, the bus was offered by companies with a contract with the city council, independent kombi drivers did this service for 25 or 50 cents per ticket and went to places where the buses didn't go, the competition There was so much that the company offered buses with air conditioning, but Karens' complaint, saying that the kombis made the traffic bad, combined with the press lobby, bureaucratized the kombis, it was a kombi license, kombis union, in a short time the kombis disappeared, traffic is still bad and the ticket price is more than three bucks

You know how Tesla’s self driving operation sometimes starts steering the car into oncoming traffic and the driver has to grab the wheel and take over? Now imagine that happening in a vehicle with no steering wheel.

I love how he eventually turns every single idea of transport that rich come up into a train or a bus, tram, bike.

My grandfather has stories of this same thing happening but with restaurants, in the 60's and 70's fast food chains flooded my city and offered insanely low prices, once a good 50% of mom and pop restaurants were driven out the fast food prices went up.

Half of a truck driver's job is accepting liability. They often also know basic maintenance/bureaucratic processes as well. Actually driving is the difficult part but the point of a commercial license at least where I live is that if something goes wrong everyone knows who to blame. Anyone can drive a truck, not everyone can accept they screwed up when they failed (and therefore be good enough not to screw up.) It ends up that while driving is the main skill truck drivers are known for, for 90% of the time it's staying awake, some truck drivers even avoid the difficult parking with trailers. Which, means that if you automate a truck perfectly. You will still need a driver to accept liability and be there for basic maintenance and signing paperwork. Until a computer can do those things the truck driver is a necessity. It's easy to sign paperwork and theoretically computers can do maintenance. But... You will never make a computer or robot accept liability, that would mean the owner/producer/programmer is liable. Hiring a lawyer or sponsoring 3rd parties (be they licensed professionals or minimum wage kids who don't know any better) Is cheaper for all parties involved than accepting that they might cause damage. See also insurance industries. For this reason, "DRIVER OUT AUTONOMY" will never happen unless some entity forces it to happen for prestige or something. Trains stay on rails and travel the same routes over and over again, If they hit something? 99.99% chance it's not their problem, it's the fault of whoever was stupid enough to be on railroad property. Yet trains still have conductors. airplanes often take off and land using automated computer scripts (no matter what flight attendants say) yet aircraft still have pilots. Buying into cutting out the fat of a risk accepting human sitting in a chair is throwing money away and in the long run will get ZERO returns, any returns they get, are from something other value or grift. TLDR: The value of pointing your finger at someone when something goes wrong > salaries of every person operating any kind of machine and you can take that to the bank.

Adam evolving the tech bro "revolutionary" new transport concepts into trains never fails to make me laugh .

Amazon: Are you ready for the future of public transport? Me: Is it a worse version of trains? Amazon: No! Me: Is it a worse version of buses? Amazon: ... maaaaybe...

I love when you come up with these "genius" ideas on how to improve these terrible products and just describe existing things that already work, you've turned me into a train enthusiast

So trains, busses and bicycles Awesome ideas. Why didn't we think of that?.😉👍💯

Adam Something improving every new transit idea into a train is probably the best running part of these videos

I also like how in every sci fi novel mass transit isn’t a thing. Massive space highways, space traffic, flying cars in traffic, flying cars that somehow never crash, etc

"self-driving taxis" just fucking bring trolleys back at this point

I work as an old-fashioned machinist in a pump repair shop, and let's say one of the tech geniuses was put in charge. Likely they'd look at the process: "It takes one machinist on one lathe to produce one coupling in one hour. It takes two machinists on two lathes to produce two couplings in one hour. Therefore, we can get rid one of the lathes and instead have two machinists make one coupling on one lathe in half an hour." This is what happens when Silicon Valley people try to take on a real-world engineering issue. Spending your whole time with computers, you do not appreciate physical constraints. Run out of memory? Add a few sticks of RAM and save files in the Cloud. It's all easily solved with a few keystrokes. Infrastructure doesn't work like that. All these cars will take up space. Space to drive, to park, to charge, to be serviced. A self-driving car takes up just as much space as a human-driven car. The geometry doesn't change, no matter how much technology you throw at it.

"Chain-pedal manual propulsion" Please never change, Adam.

The problem I see with all these "revolutionary" ways of transport is with the people make them. They want to find a solution to the horrible car but also never wanting to set a foot on a vehicle with ordinary people. They see themselves as better and more important. Ending in a cycle of re-inventing the car.

Imagine a certain group of people being so ungovernable that they would literally ruin any social program or public transit program out into their neighborhoods

In Spokane, WA it is hard to ride the bus and ride a bike because the bike racks are usually full. If you are taking a bike, you usually have to take it all the way here.

Uber's been trying desperately to make this happen for over a decade at this point without much success. They are so, so horny to sack their workforce and replace them with robots. The fact that they thought mass-adoption of self-driving cars was inevitable was a key reason they were lent an absolute ton of money by venture capital funds, enabling them to expand as quickly as they did.

As an electronics engineer who worked in automotive I have a lot of doubts about self driving cars too. True level 5 car is still many years away. In the end it may require very expensive sensors and advanced, very well trained and tested AI. I think getting there with just cheap cameras and regular programming is close to impossible (too many variables, too poor sensors). Meanwhile level 3 and 4 cars still require you to drive in the more challenging situations, but also, they rob you from the chance to gain experience in regular situations, which overall makes you a worse driver. So basically, the system goes: "I can't deal with that, let me surprise this relatively inexperienced human and put him in charge to deal with this hard situation" - is it actually safer than lesser level of automation?

Everyone who loves bikes forgets that weather is a thing. I’m not cycling to work if I arrive soaking wet and cold to my bones.

Here in Estonia, a citizen can get a special card which allows you to freely use public transit (buses, trams) in the county where this citizen lives. This Zoox crap wouldn't work here specifically for this reason.

When life hits Adam with lemonade, he turns lemonade into trains.

It’s funny how an actual cost effective, sustainable and practical solution is almost always a well run rail system but they’ll pour outrageous amounts into anything but.

The big problem with the suburban solution is that in very bad weather, or in most of the winter, bicycles are not an ideal solution.

I knew it would evolve into busses and trains, but the bicycle threw me for a loop

I love how they speak all positive things about how transportation helps to develop society and how they want to help disadvantaged areas and their solution is basically to have taxis but not paying the driver a salary... Yes, very helpful of them.

I love that Adam always ends these videos turning this shit into trains. 10/10 every time

Every attempt at solving traffic forgets that eliminating car ownership basically imprisons people in a city

You have a funny, self-aware way of looking at things. I haven't laughed so much at a RU-vid in a while. Great job, keep it up 😊

_"This is not a car, this is a vehicle"_ Same energy as _I'm not driving, I'm travelling_

Also, imagine the horrible subscription services these would inevitably be marketed with. The cheapest option is slower because it stops in front of businesses where you will get 15% off of selected items based on your shopping habits. Chip in more and you might get music and less ads. The premium service gives you priority over lower-tier customers and all green light trips through the city centre.

One reason I am still far more pro car is personally control. I rather be in control of the vehicle I am in if possible because I am in control of the situation and can respond any issue that comes up. HOWEVER, the idea of mass transit that works, I'm fine with, some days I can handle my anxiety and be a passenger. But self driving cars just never seem like a good idea to me from the start, not just because a machine is driving, it allowed people to stop paying attention and won't react in time if they have to take control for some reason. That and a mega corporation doing it, yeah, that isn't going to end well.

As an autistic I am heavily in favor of adding more trains! Lets break out the art deco, wild west aestics man. We're in the roaring 20s again, so why not?

I'd say the biggest advantage of trains in this context isn't the lower friction of rails, it's that on the pre-determined grade-separated route you can achieve full self driving.

I fully support corporations putting robots on the street that I can freely vandalize without worrying about an owner calling the cops on me.

What really annoying about these kinds of ideas, Is they think they can get this to work in All of the USA. These people never visited other places before. They have no idea how much distance and low density central US is. It is not economical, or environmentally friendly. You would have to have routs that only function once or twice a day, to be profitable, and that don't work for anyone's schedule.

The other problem with this idea, besides all of the other problems, is people with unusual use cases. For example most of my friends live 90 miles away in a city in the next state over. If I had to pay for a 180 mile round trip in a taxi every single time I would be bankrupt in a year or less. Even taking a bus costs around 70 dollars for the round trip. Meanwhile in my 1979 Subaru that gets 45 mpg it costs me maybe $15, maybe $20 if there is a ton of traffic. It takes me maybe 3 hours total, to get there and back. And if I want to drive there in the middle of the night I can do it.

What pisses me off is these are the same companies forcing people to go back to the office, creating a whole bunch of to-and-from work related traffic that had been reduced by work from home policies 🤦‍♂️

Also, don't forget: We've had fully automated metro lines since the 90's! The U2 in Nürnberg has been running on "full-auto" since 2010! There! Tera-Taxis and Full-auto!

The Idea of the train is undefeatable, by any means and I get reminded of it everytime this guy uploads.

Here's a super basic question. How many different ways would a woman NOT feel safe using one of these? There is a large chance no-one behind this project asked that.

It's really altruistic of amazon that they want to send free boxes of rare earth minerals... I mean robot taxis, to disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

Not sure if I'm amused or depressed by the fact that, when looked at a bit more closely than in a corporation's glossy CGI-video, all of these "futuristic" traffic solutions turn out to be nothing more than Lyle Lanley selling Springfield a monorail.

How can all other transportation go bankrupt, if the robo taxi just operate in save areas?

Who is segregating themselves when you cant go to a neighborhood without risking being mobbed , raped, stolen or vandalised ? This happened a countless time in projects areas in France to emergency services, taxis, delivery trucks and even pizza delivery. Guess what, now even emergency services are reluctant to get there, and people that need care often dont get it on time because of that. Some people are actors of their own exclusion

This is definitely a (perceived) alternative to public transit for middle-upper class tech hipsters (offered by middle-upper class tech hipsters) that don't want to risk their $20 starbucks being spilled by someone accidentally bumping into them on the way to/from work The rest is just corporate talk.

I was falling asleep but hearing "level 5 autonomy" and the explanation of *no manual wheel or pedals* gave me such a jolt of horror I dont think I can sleep for at least another day. Holy shit these things are death traps

i love how rich people just keep inventing public transport , but worse than 50 years ago