Self-driving Taxis

[Ice Tea]

Robotaxis granted licence to operate in London

Self-driving taxis are allowed by Transport for London - as long as a human is behind the wheel.

www.bbc.co.uk

About to go into the next phase of Self-driving taxis taking paying customers as long as human driver is present.

 

[throwaway4372]

Nice easy city to start with. What could go wrong.

 

[Diddums]

Waymo's had these driving around for a while now, covered in spinny cameras and stuff. They're always electric jags, with some poor chap sat in the driver's seat just twiddling his thumbs, must be the most boring job in existence, and he's literally babysitting the tools that will replace his entire workforce one day.

They drive better than most humans, their response time is in milliseconds, their road positioning is always bang on and they're always very predictable. As someone who drives, cycles and rides motorcycles in London, I prefer these all day long.

Be interesting to see how they're rolled out, I'd imagine their area of operation is quite small at the moment, and if you call a cab to somewhere outside of their area you'll still get Habibi and his wonderful "new car scent" air freshener.

 

[labbby]

I’ll still end up asking “have you been busy tonight”

 

[Maundie]

There was dozens of Jag iPaces in San Francisco when we there in 2024, first one I saw I thought it was Google earth or something due to the amount of cameras there were on it but then my Mrs noticed there wasn't a driver in them, didn't think it would be long before we got them tbh.

I was tempted to use one but you needed to download an app and create an account and seeing as we we're only on a 3 night stop over before heading out to Hawaii decided not to bother

 

[Meridian]

Obvious question: has the liability been sorted? If it does hit someone, who pays?

 

[bingham67]

Wasnt there a video of the trial of these going through a Police cordon

 

[Ice Tea]

"Emergency routing: If a drunk passenger becomes a danger to themselves or the vehicle, remote operations can pull the car over safely or redirect the vehicle directly to a police station or hospital."

long queues at the police station at the weekends could be comical!

 

[Meridian]

long queues at the police station at the weekends could be comical!

More importantly, did the police agree with this plan?

 

[Haggisman]

My worry would be that they haven't been correctly coded to tailgate, suddenly change lanes without warning/indication, and slam on the brakes and hazards simultaneously in free flowing traffic and block the road for 10 minutes.

 

[Jim99]

It's going to be hilarious / terrible when more of these pop up, and people realise that you can just cross the road in front of them with complete confidence that they'll perform an emergency stop.

 

[Nasher]

All going to end up stuck at some complicated/tight, or busy junction where just no one lets them out. Then gridlocking the entire area.

Give it a few months before they end up being cancelled. Because no one will accept legal responsibility when the robot mows someone down and the whole thing will be left in limbo.