Question: what value do self driving taxis add to regular taxis? I can't think of any. All that money poured into something that solves no problem at all and just creates more, killing human jobs in the process. It's so stupid.
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2026
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The claim that they can undercut human driven taxis I guess, but then as all enshittified services it won't stay true. They would only do that until people have become used to them then jack up the rates far beyond what cabbies ever were
You only say that because that is what they have done for every other sector they weaseled their way into!
You don't have a creepy driver transport you/know your address.
I can see the value of data networks. If every car on the road is self driving and interconnected, they know where every other car is and can cooperatively adjust their speed and routes to basically eliminate traffic. Even if it's just every car in a taxi fleet, they can still share their sensor data to build a better operating map from multiple angles. The privacy side of that is rough, but it could drastically reduce accidents compared to individual human drivers.
The theory is that you can own a fleet of robotaxis while you have a job without the hassle of maintaining vehicles or employing drivers.
The fact that all self drive taxis are company owned and no plate owners will touch them tells the real story.
Computers don't get drunk, high, distracted, or sleepy.
Humans are absolutely awful at safely operating 2000lb+ death machines.
Question: what value do self driving taxis add to regular taxis?
Additional profit for the owners.
Paying drivers cuts into the profits.
Regular taxis kill a lot more people
Robotaxis have three times the accident rate of human drivers.
Remove Teslas from that and now what are the stats?
As usual, anything Musk touches turns to shit, including self-driving cars.
That's just Tesla, and that's because musk is a moron and forced them to go optical sensors only.
Waymo, on the other hand, is significantly safer than humans. Although that is a pretty low bar to clear since humans are awful at driving.
For comparison, human drivers in the United States average approximately one police-reported crash every 500,000 miles, according to NHTSA data.
Police reported
In training data, way higher. Also, notice I said they kill fewer people. So far that's true
Waymos got 220 million miles and 0 deaths so far. They'd be close to 3 by now going by human averages. I dont know far they'll make it, but you know whenever it does happen, there will be a huge uproar.
I’d be curious to see this quantified, and whether “more” takes into consideration that regular taxis far outnumber Robotaxis
Its been done a couple dozen times, always compared on a per-mile basis.
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If it'll mow down bollards, it'll mow down toddlers. It can't distinguish between the two.
Can we train it to do this with ALPR cameras?
Tesla is giving robo-taxis a bad rep. Why is Musk so insistent on optical-only? Sunk cost fallacy? Even the increased processing power required alone could probably already offset the more expensive LIDAR, not to mention the research and loss in revenue.
because it's cheaper, and the ONLY thing important is making more money. People be damned, as long as he makes another billion.
I watched a clip recently of someone pointing out how many deaths by vehicles we normalized, we accept.
This reminds me of that. If this is the standard, seems like only a matter of time until people get hurt (ignoring past safety record of Tesla locking people in burning cars and auf anyway).
I used to be real hyped about self-driving cars. I thought it would be just the answer we needed to our profound lack of public transportation. But after they took off the LIDAR system, it just became a money grab. And what was I thinking anyway? Self-driving cars? the answer to no public transportation? As if you'd want one of these cheap systems in charge full of a BUS of people?
My ex-wife was right. Shoulda just went with fucking trains. But we can't, because an ego-maniacal billionaire wants to be a trillionaire. Reason #4,506 of why I hate living in the United States
Lol.YOLO! - this tesla
A full minute of processing power and the best it could come up with was crashing through a divider and ending up in the far lane
In fairness, I feel that sometimes.
Would be the ultimate irony if a robotaxi mows down Elon Muskuito.
*flex posts. Comments on reddit locate it here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/VZRjSc325Kg7Vpq17
Yeah it shouldn't have gone in there because of the white line. But shouldn't there also be at least one other flex post there blocking it?
Either way, at least it managed to get out appropriately.
I'm honestly surprised that a Tesla Model Y fit in this gap. Maybe it ran over the first bollard a bit?
Edit: And, IDK, "managed to get out appropriately" in this case would unfortunately mean throwing it in reverse and doubling back through the cross-walk, I think. It's never a good idea to run stuff over to get where you're going.
I was just looking into this a bit more, “managed to get out appropriately” is potentially actually going through the bollard after it fucked up.
It broke the law going in there, but reversing through the intersection (crosswalk) to get out is also against the law in Austin and many many places.
I know a lot of people do it (and I think I've seen a Tesla do it before too) but if you're stopped at an intersection and you fuck up and are slightly in the crosswalk, you're in most places, not allowed to back up. If you back up, you could actually be cited for 2 infractions, one blocking the intersection, and then another for the backing up. (edit: and in this case, it's just a matter of property damage if they go over it, and they're plastic because they know people will hit them, which is also sad)
I really doubt the car was smart of enough to realize I'm not allowed to reverse, and i could safely drive over this though. I think something else in its decision making process happened with failures all over the place.
I can't wait to see what the NHSTA report on this one says, hopefully there's some meaningful info in it.
Maybe we'll even hear it called home for help and a person drove it over? There was one report where a support person remotely drove it into a chain at slow speed.
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Getting out appropriately would have been reversing to the place where it entered the flex-posted area, not simply smashing through them.
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