As it stands today, unmanned vehicles (entirely operated by AI with no human intervention) still has shortcomings from accidents or collisions. Also, how would society react to AI being the driver? If there’s no steering wheel on an entirely AI operated car: how can you override its protocols when it becomes rogue? There are “self driving” cars, but how many use that as their main mode of transportation than driving a car?
The technology for it exists, but remains rather niche since there’s still more cars driven by people than cars operated by AI. Do YOU want to replace your own car with an AI operated one or rather keep one meant to be used by humans? As of now, it’s rather rare unless you happened to spot one whilst on the road. Most car dealerships only sell “normal” cars intended for humans, even Teslas still require a human driver.
Less cars, less parking, less roads, less sprawling cities.
Trains, pls.
What do you think of e-scooters?
I don’t think I have a well-informed opinion on them, but from my current understanding, they seem to be poorly deployed as it is. There’s more to explore about them for me, such as whether or not we have a good understanding/ proposal of an optimal deployment, environmental impact, cost/benefit versus other methods, how much of this is a cash-grab by opportunist dickheads, is/will/can there be earnest good-faith deployment as a solution, is this just another solution looking for a problem, is this a viable stepping stone to something better, are the premises of advocation sound/valid, are there other factors that aren’t obvious that merit consideration, what does current world implementation(s) look like, is it working, what does the data look like, is it good data, is it adequate data, etc,etc,ect. I’m less so trying to make the point that I don’t know enough so much as making the point of what it takes to bring into consideration yet another variable in an already saturated conversation about transportation, especially considering the poor dissemination of information of what we already know/understand well.
I’m not trying to be dismissive, and I’m sure e-scooters have their place in an ideal world, but given the current social/political context, I don’t think they’re relevant as a public topic if the goal in mind is to improve the glaring transportation issues we have today. And I suspect that part of the point of pushing e-scooters is indeed to create another red herring in the fight against fossil fuels and car-centric everything, though I will admit that such a notion is speculative on my part since, again, I haven’t done an adequate amount of looking into it to form a worthy opinion.
I wasn’t asked but I have a very passionate opinion on them. So if you’ll allow:
spoiler
The way they’re utilized in Germany fucking sucks. It was advertised as a “last leg of the road” kinda vehicle. And where are they overproporionatly available? In cities.
Where do you have good infrastructure and public transport? In. Fucking. Cities.
Meanwhile people who really really need a way to get around in rural areas remain to be dependent largely on cars. There usually are busses driving to villages, but only few a day.
They use resources such as batteries that I’d rather have used for other e-vehicles. In the beginnig they caused new low pay/exploitative jobs: juicers, i.e. the people who collected the scooters and recharchged them at their home.
And lastly the users. Thet zip through pedestrian zones at ridiculous speeds, drive on busy streets, park them in the middle of the walkway or throw them into nature.
I hate them and they have shown very little upsides imo.
The only thing I can think of was my buddy getting home after we hung out faster at night.
I support all types of micromobility but personally I prefer eSkate