Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee
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@Dashrender said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
@scottalanmiller said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
@DustinB3403 said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
@Son-of-Jor-El I didn't mean to upset you.
It was about the concept of refusing insurance, and then being sticker-shocked at the price of medical services. It can't be had both ways.
Actually it can. I'm not even clear how one could preclude the other. No matter how much you pay in insurance in the US, you can still get huge medical bills. Most of us avoid the insurance because, no matter how bad that sticker shock is, it's still less than the insurance cost.
Assuming you're generally healthy, that's possible, even likely, but if you have conditions or have something bad happen, you could easily see bills for that single incident that could cost decades or more than you would pay for coverage.
Not the coverage I've seen, there tend to be (or have been when we looked) caps so dramatic that you'd still make out. It's only the "in between" issues where it pays off. And super long term issues you can get out of the country.
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@Dashrender said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
Do they? do they really pay huge maintenance costs + super cheap vehicle price > than newer car + hopefully lower maintenance costs?
Well take my roommate for example. In attempting to drive super cheap cars in six months she has racked up $10K in car bills and at the moment has two totally dead cars. $10K and nothing to drive. It's anecdotal, but real world that I was dealing with today. She keeps thinking that she'll get away without investing in a car and keeps spending way more than people who buy newer, warrantied cars. Most people I know that are very poor end up in this boat, unless they can do all the work themselves they tend to buy cars that need constant parts replacement and break often making it hard to maintain jobs, forcing them to take high cost (unscheduled) public transportation or whatever.
For $13K I could buy a brand new low end car and pay that over four years. Or I could be my roommate and rack up that much cost annually!
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Wow - 10K in repairs, didn't you say that last car she bought was $600... WTF? That's just people being... whatever you want to call it - financially crazy
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@Dashrender said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
Wow - 10K in repairs, didn't you say that last car she bought was $600... WTF? That's just people being... whatever you want to call it - financially crazy
She did, and it is dead. One week or less and it needs $418 to get it running. That's like 70% the purchase cost, just after four days of drive time. She's been carless for days, again, after being carless for weeks. If we didn't have space for her to store two dead cars, she'd have even more problems.
And problems go beyond that. Fuel efficiency, for example, goes up on older cars. That's not that huge, but it's part of the overall costs that the poor often pay.
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@Dashrender said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
whatever you want to call it - financially crazy
In her case, yes. She's poor, but not destitute and has the resources to not make these kinds of mistakes.
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So the question that was posed to me is why I think a fully automobile and driverless word would be feasible is that no matter where you are, you'd have working transportation, for what you need. At that exact moment.
Need a backhoe, Tap your phone.
Need a ride to the city, Tap your phone.
Need a ride cross country, Tap your phone.
Your ride breaks down in the middle of bum-f America, a new car pulls up with minutes.
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I'm with Dustin, I think the driverless world is close at hand. It has to be. Drivers are a danger and once driverless cars are viable, drivers are an unnecessary risk. Hit one person driving once there is no reason to drive and instead of being classified as an accident, it might be homicide and everything changes.
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The area between Lincoln Nebraska and Denver is pretty desolate. Sure there are a few 100K cities, but it's completely reasonable that a replacement car could be well over an hour away.
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@Dashrender said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
The area between Lincoln Nebraska and Denver is pretty desolate. Sure there are a few 100K cities, but it's completely reasonable that a replacement car could be well over an hour away.
Ok but how would you arrange replacement transportation if your car broke down there? You'd call a tow truck, get a tow (and maybe a ride in the truck cab) to the nearest town and then find out what it takes to fix and repair the car, and then pay out of pocket to fix the car.
In a fully driverless world, the car would be monitoring for problems, and order a replacement car to have you swap. Which would meet you where ever along the route, and then say "get out I need repairs and I don't want to strand you".
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At which point, you'd jump into the good running car, and continue on your journey.
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@Dashrender said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
The area between Lincoln Nebraska and Denver is pretty desolate. Sure there are a few 100K cities, but it's completely reasonable that a replacement car could be well over an hour away.
The great thing is, no matter how far away the car might be, chances are it is closer than service would be if you broke down there today.
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@DustinB3403 said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
@Dashrender said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
The area between Lincoln Nebraska and Denver is pretty desolate. Sure there are a few 100K cities, but it's completely reasonable that a replacement car could be well over an hour away.
Ok but how would you arrange replacement transportation if your car broke down there? You'd call a tow truck, get a tow (and maybe a ride in the truck cab) to the nearest town and then find out what it takes to fix and repair the car, and then pay out of pocket to fix the car.
In a fully driverless world, the car would be monitoring for problems, and order a replacement car to have you swap. Which would meet you where ever along the route, and then say "get out I need repairs and I don't want to strand you".
Right, instead of the tow truck being the beginning of a long ordeal, that would be your replacement car pulling up to take you on. Remember my car issues at MangoCon? Drove while exhausted all night to get to the airport to drive @MarigabyFrias back to the conference. Ten hour drive instead of a five hour with driverless cars. And driving through the night, not idea anyway. Then the car broke down and in the NYC metro area it took 2-3 hours to get a tow, and two weeks to get the car repaired. Had to get hotels, tows, more cars to come get us, had to go back for the car, etc. With driverless cars, the breakdown would have been far less likely, and the time to get a car to take us on would likely have been far less than waiting for the tow truck driver to get out of bed (literally) and instead of spending eight hours looking for a hotel, in four hours we would have been home! And the broken down car would have been picked up whenever by the driverless tow truck and fixed and back on the road.
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@scottalanmiller said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
@Dashrender said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
The area between Lincoln Nebraska and Denver is pretty desolate. Sure there are a few 100K cities, but it's completely reasonable that a replacement car could be well over an hour away.
The great thing is, no matter how far away the car might be, chances are it is closer than service would be if you broke down there today.
That's my thought as well, and with driverless cars and system monitoring to wazoo the car you're in now, would say "critical repairs needed, order replacement car to destination"
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@scottalanmiller said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
@Dashrender said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
The area between Lincoln Nebraska and Denver is pretty desolate. Sure there are a few 100K cities, but it's completely reasonable that a replacement car could be well over an hour away.
The great thing is, no matter how far away the car might be, chances are it is closer than service would be if you broke down there today.
Really? closer than service?
Please don't take my conversation to mean that the taxi like service isn't something I want.
Self driving cars is something I absolutely can't wait for. So many advantages.
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@DustinB3403 said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
@scottalanmiller said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
@Dashrender said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
The area between Lincoln Nebraska and Denver is pretty desolate. Sure there are a few 100K cities, but it's completely reasonable that a replacement car could be well over an hour away.
The great thing is, no matter how far away the car might be, chances are it is closer than service would be if you broke down there today.
That's my thought as well, and with driverless cars and system monitoring to wazoo the car you're in now, would say "critical repairs needed, order replacement car to destination"
Right, the car would order the next car immediately with information like how many passengers, intended destination, exact break down point and such. Doing that today is hard. In New Jersey, just telling the tow truck driver how to find us on the biggest Interstate in the state was a problem. Took forever to locate us because no one understood English, no one knew the area, people couldn't read maps, etc.
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@Dashrender I think the issue being missed here is that the cars them selves would schedule the required service, and monitor every system in the car, and report those issues back to base.
Thinking of the automatic vaccums (super basic) they can self charge, self empty, and self vacuum your house.
Essentially the same thing, determine fuel needs, determine maintenance (vacuum bag full) and determine the best route and time to your destination.
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my comment about a replacement car being an hour + away was not about how good self driving cars are/can be... it was in response to your - a replacement car is only mins away.. yeah not likely mins, when traveling between major cities is more likely an hour+.
Of course compared to the current breakdown situation between major cities.. that hour is probably fine, etc, etc...
Self driving still wins.
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@Dashrender Why do you think it would still be an hour or more away though? Why wouldn't the car notice the issue, and report the issue that instant, and then that instant another vehicle that meets the existing needs of the one your in rushes out to pick you up?
You're in the mind set that the driver-less cars would break down without reporting the issue before hand. Which doesn't make sense. Especially if the car manufacturers want to turn into a ride-share type company as well. Like what Tesla is working on currently with their driver-less cars.
Those cars are constantly reporting back to Tesla on everything that occurs with the car, and around the car.
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@Dashrender said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
my comment about a replacement car being an hour + away was not about how good self driving cars are/can be... it was in response to your - a replacement car is only mins away.. yeah not likely mins, when traveling between major cities is more likely an hour+.
Of course compared to the current breakdown situation between major cities.. that hour is probably fine, etc, etc...
Self driving still wins.
Even there my guess is that it would rarely take anywhere near an hour. Think about all the idle cars all over the place today. Sure, in the driverless world we will have a lot fewer cars overall (making the whole thing that much cheaper) but even so, every few houses would be assigned one, no matter how remote. So if you were driving through the most desolate part of the country you'd only have a few places in the entire country with actual "hour plus" gaps between people and only places with roads would be an issue and if there were roads, idle cars could be staged in the middle to maintain generally fast repair times.
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@DustinB3403 said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
@Dashrender Why do you think it would still be an hour or more away though? Why wouldn't the car notice the issue, and report the issue that instant, and then that instant another vehicle that meets the existing needs of the one your in rushes out to pick you up?
You have to assume meteor accident (total destruction, zero warning.) So no way to "prep" another car other than knowing where people are driving. So it might take longer than you think, but not very long.
