8 ms·

Im fortunate to live in an area dense with traditional taxis and Ubers, no Waymo yet. I rarely take taxis, the exception is when I have to haul my gear to the

• dmd 8mo ago
  God, yes, and someone think of the gong farmers and pole men.
  • nananana9 8mo ago
    That's a pretty dismissive attitude for ~100 million professional drivers worldwide, making a living doing actual useful work on a forum where the vast majority of users do not do any useful work.
    • strulovich 8mo ago
      I personally find that fighting dismissive attitudes is better done by not being dismissive towards other things (or people in this case) It’s healthier for the discussion culture here as well.
    • seanmcdirmid 8mo ago
      There is also a demographic cliff most of the world is currently going off, declining birth rates and labor shortages. Would you rather have a human nurse in your very old age retirement, or a human driver. Because we don’t have enough young people now for both.
      • malfist 8mo ago
        Maybe the better option is to not be so anti immigration
        • xnx 8mo ago
          Birth rate is declining almost everywhere
        • seanmcdirmid 8mo ago
          So let's poach these people from the third world and...what about the third world? People can't just be made in factories like robots and self driving cars can. It seems inevitable that either we will have really sucky retirements (please die early grandpa, we can't take care of you!) OR (hopefully) automation will come to the rescue despite luddite protests.
          • Alive-in-2025 8mo ago
            Plenty of people from the third world are interested in moving, trying something new. We should all be free to try new things, but of course you he world isn't set up that way. Seems like we could match up dual needs. The western developed world is in the midst of a racist and fascist period, so not the best time to try this. We have competing changes, shortage of workers in many job areas in the West like the trades in the US, also shortage of jobs for young people in the west.
            • seanmcdirmid 8mo ago
              I'm all for immigration, but the world isn't producing enough people to make that a very viable long term solution. Eventually we have to reduce our demand for labor, especially when our civilization is lopsided for awhile with older people and not enough young people (a problem that will fix itself eventually as the old people die off, I guess). I'm OK with robots driving cars like I'm ok with not needing an elevator operator anymore to use an elevator.
      • bluecheese452 8mo ago
    • stackghost 8mo ago
      I think the word "professional" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your comment. My experience with taxis has been almost universally negative.
    • greyw 8mo ago
      I wont really miss taxi drivers. I guess that says a lot about them.
    • znkynz 8mo ago
      I've taken taxis in the US, and i can understand why people wouldn't want to. Taxis in other countries are a different experience.
      • signatoremo 8mo ago
        Huh? how can one possibly generalize whatever experience they have not only to one country but to “other countries”, i.e. to the world. I’ve taken taxi in many countries, in all continents, and my experience have been that the drivers are generally helpful. There are scams and bad experience, but that’s minority. That applies to any country, the US included
    • dyauspitr 8mo ago
      Artificially protecting jobs by holding back technology is terrible form. At best it’s short term before the economics become an order of magnitude cheap and at worst it’s hamstringing your economy so you’re left behind.
      • anonymars 8mo ago
        Be that as it may, I would argue there's a straight line from "it's okay to destroy this fairly-low-skill-career for the good of the economy" to the overall situation the US finds itself in today
        • dyauspitr 8mo ago
          I figure that’s the way of the world. We’ve gone from a majority low skill economy to a much more complex one over the decades. It will probably continue.
    • Al-Khwarizmi 8mo ago
      Well, the point is that if we reach a point in which a robot can do it better and cheaper, it's no longer useful work.
• josu 8mo ago
  >I wonder what will happen to the drivers if a large representation of the 1 million+ daily trips are displaced by automation? If it happens gradually enough, they will just find other jobs. After the transition, society will be producing more with the same labor force, and thus the aggregate utility will increase.
  • buellerbueller 8mo ago
    And the median wage will continue to decline, as the productivity gains are scooped up by fewer and fewer.
    • Ajedi32 8mo ago
      US median household income is at an all time high.[1] The pandemic caused a decline for a few years but it's recovered now. [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/200838/median-household-income-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/200838/median-household-...
  • bluecheese452 8mo ago
    And homo economist lived happy ever after with his field of spherical cows.
  • tbossanova 8mo ago
    In the past when automation displaced many jobs, we did things like raise the age kids could stay in school. There used to be huge numbers of e.g. 14 year olds who previously would be expected to go to work that would now have the opportunity to stay in school. Kind of like a mini UBI as in the transition period they would usually get given food, healthcare etc at least minimally. What’s the equivalent now?
• spookie 8mo ago
  Honestly same thing, taxis seem to be polite and up to have a chat about anything here. So, not that hyped about these things really.
• mschuster91 8mo ago
  > I really enjoy these interactions, but I feel for the drivers, it’s a very tough job where most taxi drivers have to scramble to find places to urinate or do so in an empty bottle between their legs. Public toilets, their condition and their non-existence are an often-overlooked issue! It's not just highly problematic for taxi drivers, but also for parcel and postal delivery people... and it's not just relevant for workers either, it's also (IMHO) a violation of anti-discrimination laws. Imagine you're old and don't have much bladder control or volume, or you're a woman who recently has given birth, or you got one of the variety of bowel related diseases, or you've got a child who is still dependent on diapers. Your range of free unimpeded movement is basically limited to where you have easy and fast access to a toilet or at the very least a place to take care of yourself/a child.
• amccollum 8mo ago
  I used to feel this way. In the early days of "ride sharing," I preferred Lyft and would sit up front so I could have a conversation with the driver, which they encouraged. It was really fun for a while, and I enjoyed meeting people from different walks of life. Over time, though, transportation became much more functional for me, and now when I take non-autonomous rides, it's more irksome than enjoyable when drivers strike up conversations. Why the change? I think a big part of your experience is the fact that you "rarely take taxis." Once you're doing it daily or near-daily, the amount of smalltalk becomes more tiresome. Also, with kids and a busy life, I'm usually either looking to get things done or enjoy a rare moment to myself as I'm moving from place-to-place. I agree with OP that Waymo is a huge step up on those dimensions. There's no other human in the same space to feel awkward around. The fact that they drive more safely and smoothly is a huge improvement, as well. Ironically, I thought this was going to be something I would hate about Waymo. "You mean it drives the speed limit and follows all the traffic laws? It will take forever to get anywhere." It took approximately one ride for my perspective to completely flip. It's so much nicer to not feel the stress of a driver who is driving aggressively or jerking to a stop/start at every intersection. It's not like you can tell them to just ease up a bit, either. When we ride with our kids, we feel massively safer in Waymos. Yes, it will be disruptive, and I don't particularly love the dominance that big tech has in all of our lives, but I do think Waymo is a marvel, and I hugely appreciate it as an option. As soon as they can take kids alone to all their various activities, it will be yet another massive unlock for parents.
  • direwolf20 8mo ago
    Taxis daily! In a country without trains, is that normal?
    • tfehring 8mo ago
      Driving to work is the most common way of commuting everywhere in the US except NYC. So in that sense, no, taking a taxi to work daily is not normal, just as walking, biking, and taking public transit aren’t normal. When I worked in San Francisco I took Caltrain to the city, but I took Waymo from the train station to the office. San Francisco, like almost all US cities, has poor local transit coverage. In my case there was a bus that took a similar route, but it only ran every 20 minutes even during commute hours and wasn’t coordinated with the train, so if everything was running on time it would have been a 17 minute wait (plus an extra 5 minutes walking). I was busy and well paid enough that spending the extra $10 to save ~20 minutes of travel (and the uncertainty of when the bus would arrive, and how strongly it would smell like piss) was well worth it.
• biztos 8mo ago
  I’m surprised they don’t have opt-in LLM-based “chatty mode” where you can talk to the AI personality of your choice while riding. Obviously shouldn’t be the same AI that’s deciding whether to run over the child or crash into the oncoming train. [edit: riding not driving]
  • LargeWu 8mo ago
    > LLM-based “chatty mode” where you can talk to the AI personality of your choice I'm genuinely baffled that people would want to do this.
    • biztos 8mo ago
      I've been mercilessly downvoted for the suggestion, so at least on HN we can assume it's not what people want. :-)
    • 0x457 8mo ago
      Some people, not me, just can't go a second without conversation.
  • christkv 8mo ago
    Jhonny Cab from Total Recall
  • socalgal2 8mo ago
    why would anyone need this when then can pull out their phone and use their LLM of choice, if they wanted. I expect some large percentage of social users will just facetime chat with their friends during the ride
  • rsynnott 8mo ago
    This sounds like something from The Good Place, tbh.
• dyauspitr 8mo ago
  I think there will still be delivery services where you need someone to go into the restaurant and then up to the customers door. That’s going to stick around unless we get to a point where the restaurant is responsible to load up the Waymo and the customer is responsible for getting it out which probably won’t happen anytime soon. The whole delivery market was also mostly created overnight from something that didn’t exist before.
  • 6keZbCECT2uB 8mo ago
    In Miami, there are several competing companies like Coco Robotics which employ human "pilots" to monitor a small fleet of robot delivery boxes where the restaurant deposits the food in the box and the box unlocks with integration into the app. Just figured you'd want to know anytime soon was at least a year ago.
    • GuinansEyebrows 8mo ago
      these things are all over the city i live in, too. absolute menace and an abuse of the commons. i've had them literally run into me more than once and i've started physically moving them out of my way when they stop in the middle of the sidewalk.
    • dyauspitr 8mo ago
      I’m aware of those but those only go 2-3 miles so they don’t work for the majority of suburban and rural Americans. Also they don’t have the convenience of delivery to your door unless they can start using elevators.
• scyzoryk_xyz 8mo ago
  As a former Lyft driver in SF I felt kinda weird when saw the bit about urination. Like, that's just not a problem. As a driver you just plan ahead as in any other job out there where you're not allowed to disengage at a whim. Pilots and surgeons don't pee in bottles, why would drivers? It's kinda funny when people try to empathize but come up with these creative scenarios of what's challenging. The parts that are bad are same as any other thing done for a living: money and dealing with other people. The job was shit when people were shit and/or when the money was shit. I enjoyed it as a job, not a career. But that was in 2015.
  • elijaht 8mo ago
    Pilots and surgeons surely have easily accessible bathrooms as a part of their workplace, no? They’re also compensated significantly more and (IMHO) given a lot more dignity In my city public bathrooms are extremely rare and it’s not trivial to find one. I’m sure taxi drivers are a bit more in tune with where they are out of necessity but even then it’s no guarantee they can find convenient parking/be in the right place/etc.
    • nradov 8mo ago
      No. Not for some surgeons at least. Once you start cutting you may have to stay until the job is done so get good at holding it. In the The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe podcast episode Dr. Rahul Seth talks about doing 12 hour surgeries. No breaks, no bathroom, constantly on his feet working. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/867-the-way-i-heard-it-with-mi-27463840/episode/340-dr-rahul-sethmy-happy-place-121557796/ https://www.iheart.com/podcast/867-the-way-i-heard-it-with-m... Commercial pilots flying airliners generally have it a bit easier. As for military pilots flying tactical aircraft, well this song might give you an idea of what they face. https://genius.com/Dos-gringos-12-inch-penis-lyrics https://genius.com/Dos-gringos-12-inch-penis-lyrics
      • scyzoryk_xyz 8mo ago
        Yep. This is a really weird thread. The no bathroom piss in bottle thing is not a thing I encountered in my IRL XP. Never felt this imaginary problem, never affected my dignity. Funny enough, I did later work on surgical training tech and went into O.R.'s. And yeah, everyone in the room stays until the work is done, no easy pee pee breaks. Back to back procedures. But then also nobody ever complained about that there either. It's a fun job. Idk. I'd reiterate a point I was getting at: what makes any job less dignified is dealing with shit people and/or shit pay. Fwiw Bathrooms you can plan for same as you plan for getting hungry by packing a lunch.
• 93po 8mo ago
  try talking to young attractive women on their experiences and you'll maybe appreciate this somewhat forced interaction less. my partner has been literally kidnapped multiple times (refused to take her to her destination and refused to let her out for over an hour), had drivers refuse to unlock doors until she gave them her number at least once every two months, and constantly has drivers take detours and longer routes to force conversation for longer. the sooner we can stop subjecting people to having to interact with strangers in a semi-private setting just for basic needs like getting around, the better off vulnerable people will be
• metalcrow 8mo ago
  > I always take a taxi, because it’s cheaper and faster than using an app to call an uber. I'm really surprised to hear that. Are you in a large city where taxies are common? Or do you have a local taxi service and app that is very good?