The sharing economy wants control of your car...

[Johnny1A]

A group of NGOs and businesses, including Lyft and Uber, have come out in support of this:

https://www.sharedmobilityprinciples.org/

It's the usual high-sounding blather, disguising a blatant power and money grab by liberals and big business (who pretend to  hate each other, and are in fact increasingly the same people).

The mobility of people and not vehicles shall be in the center of transportation planning and decision-making. Cities shall prioritize walking, cycling, public transport and other efficient shared mobility, as well as their interconnectivity. Cities shall discourage the use of cars, single-passenger taxis, and other oversized vehicles transporting one person.

'Get out of that car, peasant!  Remember your station!'

The Left in America has hated private car ownership for a long time now.  Theoretically it's because of the environment or fairness or whatever, the real reason is that it leaves people with too much freedom to move about at their own will to suit what amount to control freaks and would-be aristocrats.  They've also been trying to stuff people into compact cars for decades as well.  When the economy goes south and/or gas prices get high, people buy them, but as soon as the economy and fuel price permit, people start buying big cars, SUVs, etc., again, to the profound frustration of the Lefties.

The above is what the Left/liberals get in the deal.  What does business want?

Due to the transformational potential of autonomous vehicle technology, it is critical that all AVs are part of shared fleets, well-regulated, and zero emission. Shared fleets can provide more affordable access to all, maximize public safety and emissions benefits, ensure that maintenance and software upgrades are managed by professionals, and actualize the promise of reductions in vehicles, parking, and congestion, in line with broader policy trends to reduce the use of personal cars in dense urban areas.

"Sorry, citizen, cars are OUR monopoly.  We'll let you use one of our cars as long as you pay up and we approve of your behavior and politics and you don't try to challenge our revenue stream.  If you want to use a car, you use ours.  The cars are ours.  Period."

Uber and Lyft and the rest want to make sure they control they own the transport system, with no annoying private car ownership to compete with them.

I've found some sour amusement in watching various libertarians and the like who thought Lyft and Uber were 'on their side' go into paroxysms of shock and horror that this power grab.  Part of me wants to remind them that Ayn Rand was writing fantasy fiction, and John Galt is _not_ what real-life successful entrepreneurs and businessmen are like.  Another part of me just shakes my head at the naiveté.  Libertarians and idealistic free marketeers can be just as dreamy as utopian socialists.

[Johan Larson]

Yeah, it's creepy as heck that the remote-assist feature allows modern cars to be shut down by the manufacturer remotely. Next time I buy myself a car, I'll think about getting something old enough that that's not an issue. Maybe something from the late nineties.

Here in Toronto modern condo towers get built with less than one parking spot per unit, so even if all the inhabitants wanted a car per household there wouldn't be anywhere to put them.

[Johnny1A]

On Monday, March 5, 2018 at 11:00:08 AM UTC-6, Johan Larson wrote:

Yeah, it's creepy as heck that the remote-assist feature allows modern cars to be shut down by the manufacturer remotely. Next time I buy myself a car, I'll think about getting something old enough that that's not an issue. Maybe something from the late nineties.

Unfortunately, in the United States a whole bunch of perfectly serviceable, decent-quality used cars were deliberately destroyed in the 'cash for clunkers' scam.  Not only did it take away a lot of options for people resistant to the modern over-computerized cars, it drove up prices on good used cars substantially.

Of course, the theoretical stated reason was a pretext, pollution control and so forth, but very few people believed that even at the time. 

[Warren Ellis]

Even one of the supporters of the program admits if he knew the economy was going to recover slower than expected, he wouldn't have supported the program: https://www.politico.com/story/2011/10/goolsbee-flunks-cash-for-clunkers-066447

[Warren Ellis]

The mobility of people and not vehicles shall be in the center of transportation planning and decision-making. Cities shall prioritize walking, cycling, public transport and other efficient shared mobility, as well as their interconnectivity. Cities shall discourage the use of cars, single-passenger taxis, and other oversized vehicles transporting one person.

Man I can see why Lyft & Uber would love this. Makes me wonder when they'll start forcing taxis/taxi types to always have to carry more than one passenger before going somewhere.

Annoying how they dress up money-making schemes & annoyances for ordinary people in high-sounding feelgood language like this.

Stuff like this is what has discredited them to people over the years. The phony/short-sighted "caring."

[Þorkell Sigvaldason]

I wonder how much of this is a US/Canada thing and Johnny1A's reaction is colored by that lens. As far as I can see, outside of big cities such as NYC, public transport as always been stronger in Europe than in the US. Mostly that seems to be a factor of Europe being more densely populated than the US/Canada. 

You can travel all over the place in Europe in a fairly efficient manner using public transport, and in many places you don't have to use or rely on a car for your day to day travel/transport needs. 

[Johnny1A]

The distinction may not be as immediately obvious outside the USA, given our particular 'car culture', but it's an important one.

The problem is not that Uber/Lyft/etc. want to create a fleet of privately owned self-driving (or remote driving, depending on how you want to think about it) cars for rent.  If that were the only goal, the debate would be between them, their 'sharing economy' drivers, and the cabbies.  (Though that desire does undercut their agitprop about 'sharing economies' and so forth.)

The problem is this (quoting from the linked article upthread):

Transportation and land use planning and policies should minimize the street and parking space used per person and maximize the use of each vehicle. We discourage overbuilding and oversized vehicles and infrastructure, as well as the oversupply of parking.

10. We support that autonomous vehicles (AVs) in dense urban areas should be operated only in shared fleets. 

Due to the transformational potential of autonomous vehicle technology, it is critical that all AVs are part of shared fleets, well-regulated, and zero emission. Shared fleets can provide more affordable access to all, maximize public safety and emissions benefits, ensure that maintenance and software upgrades are managed by professionals, and actualize the promise of reductions in vehicles, parking, and congestion, in line with broader policy trends to reduce the use of personal cars in dense urban areas.

Admittedly, this sounds sort of innocuous.  But there is already talk of banning non-autonomous cars down the road, for 'safety' reasons, when the tech gets good enough.  If only Uber et al. are allowed to own/operate autonomous cars, and manual-control cars are banned, all of a sudden private car ownership is gone.  Which has been a sometimes spoken, sometimes hidden goal of the organized Left in America for years.  Add in deliberately reductions in parking space and other support systems, and suddenly car ownership becomes moot.

It also means that Uber and Co. now have monopoly control over pricing, mobility, access, and a huge eye looking on everyone's movements and activities.

One reason the car culture exists in America is the possibility of just going and getting in your car, and driving where you want to go, when you want to, on your won terms and timing.  If I want to go out at 3:00 am and get a hamburger, I can.  If I decide to drive cross-country on a whim, I can, assuming my job and income permit me the free time.  As long as I own my own car and maintain the minimum requirements to drive it, I don't need to ask permission, adopt anyone else's time table or schedule, I don't have to worry that my political opinions may reduce my access to transport because the company doesn't like them.

(Sound paranoid?  We're already seeing cases of political bias in who gets to post what on YouTube or Facebook or say what on Twitter, and in how search engines do what they do.  There's no reason to think it would be different with a transport monopoly on the part of Uber/Lyft/etc., they are part of the same Silicon Valley (and related) culture, after all.)

But it's that very freedom that the left-liberals hate, and that the emerging tech oligopoly and would-be transport oligopolies see as a threat to their revenue stream.  The former want me to have to restrict my movements and freedoms, the latter want me to have to pay them for being able to somewhere (and if I want to go at 3:00 a.m. on a whim, probably to pay a 'convenience fee' or something).

[Johnny1A]

The inevitable has happened:  a pedestrian fatality from a 'self-driving' car.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/self-driving-car-industry-faces-233000268.html

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/03/19/uber-self-driving-car-fatality-halts-testing-in-all-cities-report-says.html

Obviously, this doesn't mean that 'self-driving' cars are necessarily a bad idea forever.  No technology is perfect, and nothing in life is 100% safe.

That said, I personally suspect that this technology is a lot further from being road-ready than the hype would have us believe, and I suspect that the companies pushing it (like Uber and Google and to a lesser degree GM and so on) are trying to rush it.  I esp. suspect this of Uber and Lyft and so on, in part because I think they really, really long for the day when they can dispense with the 'sharing' part of the 'sharing economy' and cut their drivers out of the loop.

So while I certainly don't take pleasure in this death, I'm not sorry to see at least a momentary braking (no pun intended) on the headlong rush.

[Johan Larson]

I've seen some snark about how it's not surprising the first fatality is Uber's. An aggressive culture like Uber's is really terrible for dealing with life-critical engineering. 

[Johnny1A]

On Thursday, March 22, 2018 at 3:53:47 AM UTC-5, Johan Larson wrote:

I've seen some snark about how it's not surprising the first fatality is Uber's. An aggressive culture like Uber's is really terrible for dealing with life-critical engineering. 

Or most things, for that matter, over time.  Aggressive corporate cultures are like aggressive individual approaches.  If coupled to real ability, it can take you far, but it's an iron law of life that if you keep going back to the gambling tables, eventually you lose everything.  Sooner or later, a successful business has to get boring or blow up.