This is an age-old battle, and it always seems like cyclists lose. Cars don't want bikes on the street, it's "their" space. Pedestrians don't want bikes on the sidewalk, it's "their" space. After many, many years of advocacy, cyclists get a patchwork network of bike lanes -- still dangerous, often filled with double-parked cars -- and now some startup wants that space for pizza delivery robots.
Personally, I think enough is enough. If your delivery robot can't "take the lane", then it's not viable and you should go back to the drawing board. Riding your bike in America is already treacherous enough, and this certainly isn't helping. We are already third-class citizens (and afterthought after streets and sidewalks are put in place), and we certainly don't need to go down another rank just because some startup wants the space for robots.
Bicycles don't belong on a sidewalk. They need to be in the flow of traffic where motor vehicle drivers are aware of their presence. The solution is an optional navigable shoulder that doesn't become an enforced ghetto.
They’re supposed to ride in the street unless it could be agreed that it’s safer on the sidewalk, which is both subjective and often true, so riding on the sidewalk is de facto allowed.
Edit: People are downvoting this; I guess because they don’t believe it? The law is here[0]. Also 73% of Japanese ride on the sidewalk more than the road[1]. So even without the wide open exceptions to the law, it’s still de facto allowed.
"Good reasons" like "not caring about cyclists" and "make cycling more dangerous to keep people who can't afford a vehicle away from our neighborhoods"
Please don't misunderstand me. Cycling on a sidewalk is dangerous to the cyclist, particularly around driveways and intersections, where they are less visible to motorists.
In the same city on the same bike ride I and a friend have been accosted by police for both riding on the sidewalk and in the street. Different cops, blocks apart.
The law is subjective and when you’re rolling around in spandex on a multi thousand dollar road bike and a paramilitary USA “peace officer” stops you, the law doesn’t really matter. You just “yes sir” and hope to be allowed to move on
No they don't. I've cycled in Japan, sometimes on the side walk even though that's technically not allowed. Either you go very slow on the sidewalk or you're a danger to pedestrians. It is also much more dangerous for you at any intersection because cars don't expect objects traveling at bicycle speeds on the sidewalk.
The safest place for a bike is a separate bike lane on the road. If no separate infrastructure exists, the next safest place is on the road.
I don’t know about the last part, but it’s correct that bicycles shouldn’t be on the sidewalk. It’s dangerous to both pedestrians and the cyclist (cars can’t see them, they appear too quickly, and will run into them when they have to drive across the sidewalk).
In Seoul I seem to recall many of the bike lanes being on the sidewalk, not on the street. The biggest problem I had then was that people seemed to naturally gravitate towards walking on them, so they would often have pedestrians on them, but I think a car hitting a cyclist is worse than a cyclist hitting a pedestrian, so it seems like a good trade off.
I only know of one proper bike lane in Seoul that is on a road, and that runs from Sinchon down to the Han. People ride bikes on the sidewalks in Seoul because they're terrified of the taxi's.
I think it's mainly a matter of speed. A little 15 mph robot just fits best in the bike lane. If the robot was a 30 mph moped, then they belong in the street.
Also, if e-bikes and bike-speed robots become really numerous in the bike lanes, that should motivate more creation and better maintenance of bike lanes.
I'd much rather bike in the street versus the sidewalk. The sidewalk is just far slower and more treacherous. No one rushes in a truck fix a hole or branch blocking a sidewalk. In a car-based country, you want to be included with the favored mode of travel, even if you're second-class there.
> Also, if e-bikes and bike-speed robots become really numerous in the bike lanes, that should motivate more creation and better maintenance of bike lanes.
Bike lanes aren't, like, a natural resource to be shared. Cyclists fought hard to get them, in order to cycle on, and now we need to get crowded out of them to subsidize a startup on the theory that, once we can't use the bike lanes, we'll complain some more and maybe get as much space as we have today?
I mean, I like pizza and startups and pizza startups and I don't blame them for trying, but my reaction is a very strong fuck no. If you want to use the bike lane, build a pizza delivery robot that can ride a bike.
Sorry, it just initially seemed to me that those would inherently be a problem due to the additional width and the narrowness of bike lanes. Maybe things are different in your area but it's like 2-3 ft. wide where I'm at.
The idea of a side mount robot that pedals your bike and controls it, if that's what you're thinking, sounds pretty cool tho and could work if narrow enough.
I think it's mainly a matter of speed. A little 15 mph robot just fits best in the bike lane. If the robot was a 30 mph moped, then they belong in the street.
-- I took your stuff 'cause it was the stuff that fit me the best.
Just because it's convenient to the robot be in the bike lane doesn't mean the robot has a right seize the bike lane.
The pizza delivery robot is a solution to an already solved problem and which creates problems for everybody else. The bike lane is for bicyclists and the like, no autonomous motorized things should be on them, bicyclists requested them for a long time and finally have them.
If the robo-delivery things prove so popular they may apply for their own type of lanes
Restaurant delivery is not a full time job and it is not a job that pays particularly well, particularly after factoring in expenses. Tips may make up for some of that, but it is an expense for the customer rather than the restaurant.
Autonomous delivery also has questionable benefits. Moving at 15 MPH, and likely being prohibited from using certain roads, means several vehicles would take the place of the more traditional delivery driver in a car. The restaurant would also be responsible for paying for upkeep of these vehicles. (If they have contracts with a company to operate these vehicles, they would be more aggressive at recovering their expenses than the typical owner-operator delivery driver.)
Pizzas as still getting delivered every day over at least an 8 hour window. A restaurant has to pay for that many man hours whether its the same human full time or not. In California that's $14/hr. In Austin I guess its still $7.25 an hour.
I'm not saying this robot is a great idea, just that humans are expensive.
> Tips may make up for some of that, but it is an expense for the customer rather than the restaurant.
Even ignoring how costs all add up eventually and affect consumer choice, if you can promise I don't have to pay a tip you can directly increase your delivery fee by $3 and I'll still be happier picking the robot.
Ok. But when this bike takes up exactly as much space in the bike lane as the robot would have, what have we gained? Theoretically the robot could take up less space since it doesn't need to be powerful enough for street speeds.
Speaking of which, drivers of cars must similarly share their lanes with self-driving cars.
A general societal increase in the average level of cardiovascular health which flows onto reduced health costs and a normalisation of cycling in general are two things I can think of off the top of my head.
Fair enough. While it was a rhetorical question, I have a couple counters too: increased spread of communicable diseases like coronavirus, highly-skilled robotics jobs traded for low-skill delivery jobs.
Then why not make them 30 mph robots? If a 15 mph robot is safe sharing the bike lanes with cyclists, why can't they make a 30mph robot that can share the lanes with cars? Even if the robots are in the bike lanes, they still have to contend with cars and pedestrians.
Well there's cost. If you only allow cars (and of course there are lots of self-driving car startups and corporate initiatives too) then delivery robots will be limited to bigger richer companies with small businesses at a disadvantage.
The more slow, small vehicles there are on the roads, the more infrastructure will bend to accommodate them. Pizza delivery bot vehicles are my allies.
Exactly. There is currently a debate in the UK about whether to legalise lime-style electric scooters (yes, they’re still mostly illegal here!), and whether they should be allowed in cycle lanes.
I say provided they’re small and adhere to the same rules/speeds as bikes, then the more bike lane users we have the better! More traffic in bike lanes creates more demand for bike lanes, so more will get built. This in turn will encourage more cycling, so it’s a win for everyone!
Why? I agree there are more bike-on-bike collisions when cycle lanes get busy (I’ve certainly seen a few in London at rush hour), but unlike car-on-bike collisions, these rarely result in death or serious injury.
I live in Detroit, and when the "bikes win" they act like assholes. There is a weekly event called slowroll where herds of bikes go down a different route each week in the early evening. When they've rolled past the street I live on I find that for sometimes up to two hours you can't drive your car into or out of the place that I live.
Its no longer a bike lane if pizza delivery robots are allowed to use them. I’m too scared to share a roadway on a bike with cars, but why make biking harder with these things?
Bikes lanes will never gain any kind of mass popularity so long as they're directly adjacent to traffic lanes, so it's not like it matters that much anyway.
The City removed the camping ban in July 2019 allowing homeless people to camp everywhere - even at elementary schools - except in front of City Hall. Later that year, they started buying hotels to house people, paying 3x market rate (even during the pandemic), and as of last month had housed ~200 people in the year+ since purchasing the hotels.
When citizens finally voted to restore the ban in May, the City is choosing to not enforce it so they can "come up with a plan." Various budget sleuths estimate the City has spent ~$250M on the problem in the last five years but the City has fought audits to determine the actual number.
It’s not mismanaged if you are the right demographic. Austin experienced a radical change in culture when the city council discovered it was quite profitable to cater to non-residents. This started with building a large convention center and promoting Austin as a destination for corporate events. Followed by pumping money into large scale socials such as ACL and SXSW. This in effect turned Austin into a “tourist” destination which brought large volumes of well-capitalized people through the city on a regular basis. Businesses adapted to the new clientele and many liked the Austin culture enough to move here. Finally, the city has implemented many policies to attract businesses here with nearly every FANG having a significant presence. This has attracted even more people to move here as there are jobs available and no state income tax. Where this has all gone wrong is that the city has neglected the existing residents while focusing on attracting new ones. The result is that most long-term residents can no longer afford to live here and the racial and socioeconomic diversity has tragically declined as a result. If you are young with no kids or generally fit in the “yuppie” category then Austin will serve you well. Austin’s “starving musicians and artists” of yore are now gone since not many can afford to live in Austin anymore. Perhaps one could say the city has mismanaged its culture but otherwise the city is doing very well and is prosperous.
As a cyclist, I'd actually be more concerned about sharing the bike lane with a person on a scooter. Presumably an autonomous pizza delivery vehicle would act more predictably.
IMO food delivery services are pretty low on the totem pole of things to automate. Surely this money & engineering effort could be better spent on automating something else. I doubt this makes much of a difference at all, especially to end users.
If anything it's going to be worse, how is this thing going to reach the intercom to call me when it arrives outside my apartment building and pull open the door? I don't want to have to get dressed and go outside when my food arrives to collect it.
For non-food deliveries it could wait until you are ready (maybe even hours), or have some kind of robot accessible locker where the package is left, but food you really want brought to your door.
I simply don't see a problem here. The robot arrives, you receive a text or call, you walk outside and pick up your food. I'm sure that most users will prefer to take the short walk to their doorstep instead of paying a premium for hiring a human to deliver food.
> I'm sure that most users will prefer to take the short walk to their doorstep instead of paying a premium for hiring a human to deliver food.
I think there is an assumption here that the corporations will not simply pocket the profits from automation. It's not like you pay less when you use the self checkout at the grocery store.
I'm sure they will. I nonetheless consider it a win that I can go to the grocery store and never wait in line for a limited number of cashiers.
There's a huge open question of what we're gonna do when automation crowds out large numbers of jobs, and that's potentially a significant societal shift. But right now we've already got human beings doing jobs effectively as robots, and already not creating real human interaction.
Personally, I'd rather be giving a UBI to those people for going off to, I dunno, create art or go on hikes and write about them or whatever it is human beings do when they're off being human. That might let me have some real human interaction, not a forced moment of intersection while they're just trying to get me my groceries so I can be on my way.
If I’m already getting dressed in something presentable, taking the elevator downstairs, and exposing myself to the daystar I might as well just go pick up my own food. The value prop for delivery is it comes to my door.
>IMO food delivery services are pretty low on the totem pole of things to automate
Are they? Food delivery has become incredibly popular but both consumers feel they are paying far too much and delivery people are getting paid almost criminally low pay and given extreme time pressure causing them to run red lights to make minimum wage.
It seems like the prime target for automation to me.
The economics of this baffles me. The restaurants are underpaid. The drivers are underpaid. And the delivery companies are apparently not making a profit, either, but burning VC cash. The customers are paying too much.
Money is disappearing into a black hole somewhere.
Even if the argument that startups using the bike lane will help push the local government to improve bike infrastructure is true (which I doubt, it'd push the local government to improve startup-friendly road infrastructure), isn't it ridiculous that the local government would only start improving things once a startup could make a ton of money off of it?
Ultimately, the government picks winners and losers with spending/subsidy and taxation. It's not politically feasible or practical to exhaustively enumerate and tax/subsidize the external costs/benefits of various policies. For example, there are numerous positive externalities associated with installing bike lanes(reduced health care costs, reduced noise, reduced pollution, reduced road wear, etc), but it's all at the cost of possibly increasing road congestion.
Of course, local governments are extremely unlikely to improve bike lanes at the behest of a single startup. Bike lanes are already extremely unpopular as is, when the primary users are common neighbors and citizens.
> How are you supposed to pass this non human powered vehicle in a bike lane?
If I bike at 15mph (and other cyclists are faster), what is supposed to happen? Do I stay to the right, or if the bike lane is too small, get out of the bike lane and onto a ramp when safe? If the bot can do that (like a rear-facing LIDAR), then would the bot be more bearable?
> And if I am biking at 5mph, will it stay behind me?
Good point. I hope they have solved or will solve that.
>> It is really surprising if you go on the road and see something foreign, and it’s coming at you at 15 miles per hour.
> If it's going down the bike lane on the wrong way then I agree, that's bad and should be corrected.
15 mph is close to top speed on a bike on even ground (for me at least). If I'm causally biking to dinner, I'm not going that fast. The robot could be "coming at you" from behind.
----
Beside the risks of the robots malfunctioning, I think this would be bad for bicyclists if it goes well.
Right now the bots are pretty rare but let's say this is a huge success and a really cheap way to deliver food in a city.
I can imagine there being stretches of bike lanes where the right-lane is a bunch of delivery-bots. That does not leave much room for bikes in the bike lane. "Bike lanes" become "delivery lanes".
Whether or not this is a likely outcome is another discussion but making it a rule that robots can use the bike lane could have bigger consequences than this trial run.
For a cyclist sitting upright (CdA of .5) but with good tires and pavement (Crr of .0035), it takes about 120W to hold 15mph on flat terrain. I would agree that this is about the limit for most casual riders. Serious riders with more power typically don't have a problem riding around other bike lane users. What I'm saying is, I don't think the robots are burdensome for the average bike lane user, as far as speed is concerned.
This isn't a silly question, but I think it has a lot of answers.
It's bad for cyclists because the self-driving robots are probably buggy. Having a buggy vehicle hit you from behind and push you into a truck driving in traffic that pulls you under and kills you is a very bad outcome. That might sound extreme, but we're seeing Teslas kill their occupants (and potentially other road users). Do we really think "Tesla's AI will drive into a solid barrier, but I'm sure the pizza robot won't bump a bike into traffic"?
Another problems is that it's very hard for a machine to replicate what humans are expecting right now. One of the problems with self-driving cars is that they're often overly cautious in the presence of uncertainty (or certainty for a human, but uncertainty for the AI). If one of these pizza robots suddenly stops short with no reason to be doing that, it can cause accidents. We've seen self-driving cars cause accidents that "aren't their fault" by normal road-fault standards, but are kinda their fault. Stopping in weird ways, making odd judgements about what to do, etc. might lead to accidents.
> Would most of the safety objections go away if it just went faster and/or became easier to pass (i.e. smaller width, stay to the right side
Realistically, no. You can't really make them smaller in width. You need to be able to hold a 16" pizza and you're going to need at least another few inches on either side at a minimum. 22" is probably as small as they can go. Have you ever tried to ride side-by-side with another bike? It isn't realistic on a street with traffic.
The objections would probably go away if we were willing to dedicate a 10-12' lane in each direction to vehicles around 15MPH (with a curb that cars couldn't cross). Then there would be room to avoid problems. The issue right now is that most often bikes don't have any lane, the lane they have is often obstructed by double-parked cars, delivery vans, cones, etc., and even good lanes are narrow (think 3-4 feet). There isn't room for a self-driving vehicle that is likely buggy and likely to make odd decisions trying to get around a delivery van blocking its path - decisions that might endanger bikers.
One thing I'd ask drivers to remember is how angry they get when they're inconvenienced on the road. If a delivery truck stops in a car travel lane, drivers lean on their horns. If you live in a city, remember the last time someone was looking for a parallel parking space while you were trying to get somewhere. Imagine self-driving cars just kinda randomly stopping, sometimes too quickly when there's no reason to stop causing you to run into the back of them - and then you're at fault for it! Heck, just imagine them holding up traffic because they got confused. Heck, just remember the last time someone was in the wrong lane, but wanted to make a turn. Maybe you're an awesome and chill person, but you've definitely seen drivers who aren't.
Biking is wonderful, but it's not well-supported in a lot of places and our roads have become more hostile in many ways. Drivers are choosing larger, heavier vehicles with higher hoods which are many times more likely to kill cyclists and pedestrians in the event of a crash. More and more people are watching all sorts of entertainment in their vehicles and taking their eyes off the road to fiddle with touch screens. Pedestrian deaths are rising in the US...And now it's like, "hey, since we've been doing so much for you lately...um...I can't recall any of those things...maybe we could throw some lightly-tested AI-driven pizza bots at you...we certainly hope no one dies...but if anyone does, we won't hold anyone responsible for those deaths...have fun!"
As an aside, I think one of the big things is that no one will really be responsible for these pizza robots. If you kill someone with your car, at the very least your ...
starship, kinda. They go on the sidewalk and operate in limited areas like colleges. They have actually deployed them though, which is more than any other company in the space.
I saw those running around Redwood City, CA back in 2017. There was always a guy following them about a hundred feet back. Did they finally get rid of the minder?
It's infuriating that bicyclists run red lights, illegally ride on sidewalks and hit pedestrians, and generally act like the rules only apply when it suits them. Ask anyone who walks or drives in American cities and cyclists are the absolute worst, most aggressive, most illegal entities on the roads.
Why do you think they're ever illegally on the sidewalks in the first place? Probably because the road is, to them, more dangerous than them being on the sidewalk.
While there are imperfect operators of every mode of transportation, don't forget that also applies to drivers and pedestrians.
Cyclists on sidewalks while pedestrians are present should walk their bikes. A pedestrian is not expecting a piece of metal moving at 20+ MPH to whiz past them as they are walking, and could step right into them. Cyclists who hurt a pedestrian on the sidewalk are culpable for any damage they cause, and I would argue they should be penalized very harshly.
I've seen papers that evaluate the behavior of cyclists and see that when they do break the law (e.g. not stopping at a stop sign) they actually do so to increase their safety. Less time in an intersection means less chance to get hit.
Eh. I agree in bicyclists are often obnoxious but as a pedestrian if I do get hit, I’d rather it be by a bicycle than a car or truck.
Also, they take up less room. The density of cars is ridiculous. You have narrow sidewalks with hundreds of people and then 5x the space for 10 people in one car each. Not to mention the cars with no people at all just sitting there taking up space.
It's infuriating that drivers run red lights, illegally park in bike lanes, text and drive, and hit pedestrians, cyclists and other cars, and generally act like the rules only apply when it suits them. Ask anyone who walks or bikes in American cities and drivers are the absolute worst, most aggressive, most deadly, most polluting and illegal entities on the roads.
Exaggerating to this extent really undermines your attempt at making an argument. It's impossible to see your words as anything but a bitter, irrational rant when you do this.
First of all yes any group can contain bad actors. But bad actors in the car category are a magnitude worse than a bad cyclist. A cyclist isn't controlling a 1000kg lump of metal that pollutes (noise and emissions), destroys communities and cities (encouraging car travel has ruined American cities, vast urban expanses given up to cars), and has a greater risk of serious injury when they crash.
Cyclists are majority law breakers. They do not respect sidewalks, red lights, pedestrians, and basically anything that gets in their way. I understand that a cyclist potentially removes a car from the road, but every time cyclist harms an innocent person I pray the judge throws the book at them given how dangerous they act.
I wonder if The Netherlands over-polices cycling behavior and so inflates their stats with minor nits in order to collect fines. OTOH, there's not many helmets nor stolen bicycles in NL.
In the US, for experienced/aware/agile cyclists who ride often and defensively, it's usually safer for them to not wear a helmet because:
i) Vehicles statistically give helmet-less cyclists more space.
ii) Unconscious personal safety anxiety and risk-aversion that comes along with a rational cyclist not wearing a helmet. Something they must never forget.
Actually, a study conducted in 2017 for the Florida Department of Transportation and conducted by scientists at the University of South Florida’s Center for Urban Transportation Research concluded that cyclists were slightly more compliant with traffic laws than drivers.
Most of this is subjective, unsubstantiated conjecture, or blatantly ignoring the fact that cars cause congestion, injury and death much more than bicycles.
Aside from that, riding on sidewalks is legal in Austin. You clearly aren't familiar with the situation.
Please don't take HN threads into flamewar. Cyclists vs. drivers is some of the most tedious and (relatedly) most vicious flamewar that appears here regularly. Maybe second only to flamewars about pets. We don't want predictable discussion on HN, because it's boring and turns nasty.
These delivery droids are just going to be targets to be shot at, tipped over, spray painted, and generally abused. I predict a short-lived trial period and then they will be abandonded.
Not quite true; mail delivered to your address is legally yours. A retailer who accidentally ships a crate rather than a unit of headphones has no legal right to mandate that you return received merchandise.
edit: I should've been clear in stating that it is _unsolicited_ mail addressed to your name and address that is legally yours.
Is this in anyway based on any facts whatsoever or is this something you weer once told and are now repeating?
A quick Google says it's up to 5 years jail for keeping misdelivered mail in the USA (depends on jurisdiction).
In the real world, those who act criminally in regards to mis-delivered and misaddressed mail: no one is going to jail for mis-delivered or misaddressed mail unless they offended the wrong important person or were dumb enough to get caught.
Incidentally, we've been having numerous postal issues at my complex because it doesn't have a full-time carrier assigned to the route. It's so bad, I had to get a PO Box.
My neighbors must be mostly thieves (keep) or too lazy (throw away) to bother correctly redelivering mis-delivered letters or packages most of the time. They are surprised like you're a fool for making an effort to redeliver them correctly. The complex is 98% white-collar, third-tier college graduates, single, between 24 and 35. I've had electronics, clothing, and random articles left in my box and at my door... these are mis-deliveries.
Misaddressed mail would be wrong name but correct address.
Hazzard Fraught sent, to my name AND my address, an entire case of Fein-type multi-tools without an invoice. They can suck it because law.
I however didn't go candy is the new toliet paper-hoarding Grinch over lazily mis-delivered snacks by doing the couriers' job for them. Maybe I shouldn't have because replacements, but neighbors and candy usually involves kids. Neighbors didn't even say "thanks," so I definitely should've kept them. No good deed ever gets you anywhere, kids; you must always appear to do something half benevolent and half selfish with an audience. Be Vito Corleone. Make them an offer they can't refuse. Since it was was couriered instead of postal mailed, postal laws don't apply and it reverts to property and commerce laws. Now if I conspired to give them half if they said they didn't receive it, that would've been conspiracy to commit fraud.
Then the control system analyzes the video from the Deliverator and recognizes them. Their Amazon account gets cancelled. Amazon retail stores won't let them in.
Their Google account is restricted. Doordash imposes a "vandalism surcharge". Convenience stores reject their EBT card. Job application sites filter out their resume.
Y.T. notices a black Town Car that has been sitting there for a while. She doesn't have to see the plates to know it is Mafia. Only the Mafia drives cars like that. The windows are blackened, but she knows someone's in there keeping an eye on het. How do they do it? You see these Town Cars everywhere, but you never see them move, never see them get anyplace. She's not even sure they have engines in them.
In my opinion, these robots should just drive in the street with cars. If they get run over, nobody gets hurt. It might actually make things safer by forcing drivers to pay more attention!
They can follow the road rules perfectly and every time one gets destroyed the driver gets sent the bill for reckless driving and potentially has their license status reviewed. Seems like a pretty good system.
I think you are right that drivers will pay more attention to them, but I came to the opposite conclusion.
They look big enough to cause serious damage to your car if you hit one, so I think you are right that drivers will pay attention to them. But I think drivers will also want to pass them, increasing the chances that drivers will use the bike lanes as passing lanes.
Furthermore, I think drivers will not trust the delivery robots, so when they are passing they will be paying attention to the robot, increasing the chances the drivers will not notice a cyclist in the bike lane.
Put the robots in the bike lanes and then that increases driver attention will be going toward keeping the car out of the bike lane.
The picture in the article is of a protected two way bike path. If the robot was in the car lane here, a driver could not pass in the bike path.
I could envision problems with unprotected bike lanes, but those are dangerous by design [1]. However, a robot clinging to the rightmost side of a car lane next to an unprotected bike lane could easily make passing in the unprotected bike lane infeasible.
I ride my personal scooter at 0~40 mph in the road and in the bike lanes.
When I see for-rent scooters dumped blocking public commons, I stop and throw them in the nearest gutter, dumpster, sewer, or river to hold the companies responsible for their users monetarily.
If I see a pizza-delivery robot going 5 mph in a bike lane, I'm going to kick it to the curb or run-over it. And, I'll make sure everyone else does the same. They can pay bike messengers who need the work rather than being job-stealing, pointless automation assholes.
implies omniscient, inevitable certainty in an indefinite timeframe beyond the scope of reasonable
>leak
implies absolutely certainty of failure... from what failure mode and in what timeframe?
> and pollute the river
Pathos appeal. "You're a meanie to the fishies and dolphins who use a filthy drainage ditch masquerading as a river to spawn their entire species."
You're clearly not an engineer, don't understand how these are manufactured, nor how these are life-cycled... with bloody GPS on them 24x7.
Go away until you have something meaningful to add that doesn't sound like you actually create a 60k-page environmental impact report before putting on your shoes made from fossil fuels, animals, and/or (gasp!) "chemicals."
> I am curious about your rationale of throwing scooters in the river.
>You're clearly not an engineer, don't understand how these are manufactured, nor how these are life-cycled... with bloody GPS on them 24x7.
The grunts collecting these machines don't get paid enough to fish them out of the river. They're gonna get marked as missing and the company will replace them with a new one.
Edit: For all I know they could end up building rescue robots that also get thrown into the river.
what would it take for you to not destroy rental scooters? Would a docking system be preferable? I'm just curious, I personally ride a bike to get around, so I don't have a dog in the fight, so to speak.
I don't have any problems with properly-stowed transportation implements.
Docks take-up too much room and would suck-up real-estate from the public commonwealth for private, exclusive use... too much of that is already happening. Underutilized "bikeshare" pod programs stole large areas of curbside real-estate while offering nothing in return for all residents (unless they paid money).
It's a Tragedy of the Commons-situation knowingly-created by these irresponsible, asshole rental companies for $$$ by not demanding proper parking from the asshole segment of their customer-base.
I've seen piles of these goddamn things on street corners, rendering entire sidewalks unusable in orthogonal directions.
Elimination of all asshats who throw scooters in the middle of public commons and thoroughfares. These incidents are why they are banned from large areas of town and on certain campuses.
They should just be banned period. Full stop. Bring your own, or rent one you can carry and must return. Ephemeral transactionality leads to this sort of Idiocracy-backdrop bullshit:
“A statement from Austin’s Transportation Department says it had provided a list of groups Refraction AI should reach out to ahead of launching service here. The list of groups included the Bicycle Advisory Council. The company provided no briefing to the BAC ahead of the launch, although it was planning to speak to some members Wednesday.”
great. let’s dump a bunch of experimental AI tech on already scare bike lanes without consultation, which, if successful, will decimate both the only easy to enter low skill job pool AND clog up bike lanes. just look at the massive PITA rent scooters have caused in city centers around the world, this has the potential to cause even more disruption.
The argument against sharing bike lanes with robots is absurd to me. Of course, if bikes lanes become thoroughly congested with such robots, then it's a problem. But until then, all bike lane users-- cyclists, scooter riders and skaters-- benefit from motorists gaining familiarity with driving next to an occupied bike lane.
Austin prioritizes cars over bikes even though the benefits of doing it in reverse are obvious. Robots as cars would have been better for the people of Austin.
There’s economies of scale in food preparation. There’s no economies of scale to be had in dressing. It’s true that there are also diseconomies of scale in food distribution, the balance can point in either direction depending on the details, but the moralism around preparing one’s own food is completely unwarranted.
How do things change if you take the exact same vehicle and replace the pizza with a human passenger? From the point of view of everyone else on the road, it’s the exact same scenario, yet I’m not sure it’d be received the same way.
We now have a continuum of narrow vehicles from Razr scooters up to Harleys. Push scooters, electric scooters, pedaled bicycles, partially powered bicycles, fully powered bicycles, motor scooters, and motorcycles are all contending for the low speed lane. Plus pedestrians. Plus wheelchairs and other vehicles for the disabled. Plus the exotics - Segways, "hoverboards", uniwheels, robots, etc.
The last big battle over who gets to use the bike lane was over allowing powered bicycles in bike lanes. The trouble is that E-bikes have reached scooter and moped performance levels. (In speed, anyway. Braking, not so much.)
So far, the robots are pretty slow. They're more likely to be an obstruction than run over people.
163 comments
[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 199 ms ] threadIt doesn’t feel very different from just allowing scooters in the bike lane - I don’t think that would be a good idea.
Personally, I think enough is enough. If your delivery robot can't "take the lane", then it's not viable and you should go back to the drawing board. Riding your bike in America is already treacherous enough, and this certainly isn't helping. We are already third-class citizens (and afterthought after streets and sidewalks are put in place), and we certainly don't need to go down another rank just because some startup wants the space for robots.
Edit: People are downvoting this; I guess because they don’t believe it? The law is here[0]. Also 73% of Japanese ride on the sidewalk more than the road[1]. So even without the wide open exceptions to the law, it’s still de facto allowed.
[0] https://elaws.e-gov.go.jp/document?lawid=335AC0000000105#5
第六十三条の四 … 三 前二号に掲げるもののほか、車道又は交通の状況に照らして当該普通自転車の通行の安全を確保するため当該普通自転車が歩道を通行することがやむを得ないと認められるとき。
[1] https://www8.cao.go.jp/koutu/chou-ken/h22/pdf/ref/2-1.pdf
The law is subjective and when you’re rolling around in spandex on a multi thousand dollar road bike and a paramilitary USA “peace officer” stops you, the law doesn’t really matter. You just “yes sir” and hope to be allowed to move on
The safest place for a bike is a separate bike lane on the road. If no separate infrastructure exists, the next safest place is on the road.
Also, if e-bikes and bike-speed robots become really numerous in the bike lanes, that should motivate more creation and better maintenance of bike lanes.
I'd much rather bike in the street versus the sidewalk. The sidewalk is just far slower and more treacherous. No one rushes in a truck fix a hole or branch blocking a sidewalk. In a car-based country, you want to be included with the favored mode of travel, even if you're second-class there.
Bike lanes aren't, like, a natural resource to be shared. Cyclists fought hard to get them, in order to cycle on, and now we need to get crowded out of them to subsidize a startup on the theory that, once we can't use the bike lanes, we'll complain some more and maybe get as much space as we have today?
I mean, I like pizza and startups and pizza startups and I don't blame them for trying, but my reaction is a very strong fuck no. If you want to use the bike lane, build a pizza delivery robot that can ride a bike.
How do you feel about bikes with sidecars?
If you mean the current robot, it could surely be redesigned.
The idea of a side mount robot that pedals your bike and controls it, if that's what you're thinking, sounds pretty cool tho and could work if narrow enough.
-- I took your stuff 'cause it was the stuff that fit me the best.
Just because it's convenient to the robot be in the bike lane doesn't mean the robot has a right seize the bike lane.
The pizza delivery robot is a solution to an already solved problem and which creates problems for everybody else. The bike lane is for bicyclists and the like, no autonomous motorized things should be on them, bicyclists requested them for a long time and finally have them.
If the robo-delivery things prove so popular they may apply for their own type of lanes
Because the business plan that they sold VCs on involves autonomous delivery, of course.
...are you asking why autonomous robots exist? Like, at all?
Humans cost $30k+ a year, no?
Restaurant delivery is not a full time job and it is not a job that pays particularly well, particularly after factoring in expenses. Tips may make up for some of that, but it is an expense for the customer rather than the restaurant.
Autonomous delivery also has questionable benefits. Moving at 15 MPH, and likely being prohibited from using certain roads, means several vehicles would take the place of the more traditional delivery driver in a car. The restaurant would also be responsible for paying for upkeep of these vehicles. (If they have contracts with a company to operate these vehicles, they would be more aggressive at recovering their expenses than the typical owner-operator delivery driver.)
I'm not saying this robot is a great idea, just that humans are expensive.
Even ignoring how costs all add up eventually and affect consumer choice, if you can promise I don't have to pay a tip you can directly increase your delivery fee by $3 and I'll still be happier picking the robot.
Ok. But when this bike takes up exactly as much space in the bike lane as the robot would have, what have we gained? Theoretically the robot could take up less space since it doesn't need to be powerful enough for street speeds.
Speaking of which, drivers of cars must similarly share their lanes with self-driving cars.
I say provided they’re small and adhere to the same rules/speeds as bikes, then the more bike lane users we have the better! More traffic in bike lanes creates more demand for bike lanes, so more will get built. This in turn will encourage more cycling, so it’s a win for everyone!
* 10+ year Austinite until I left a few months ago. The City is exceptionally mismanaged.
> For now, an attendant on an electric scooter follows the REV-1 while the machine’s artificial intelligence learns Austin streets.
The City removed the camping ban in July 2019 allowing homeless people to camp everywhere - even at elementary schools - except in front of City Hall. Later that year, they started buying hotels to house people, paying 3x market rate (even during the pandemic), and as of last month had housed ~200 people in the year+ since purchasing the hotels.
When citizens finally voted to restore the ban in May, the City is choosing to not enforce it so they can "come up with a plan." Various budget sleuths estimate the City has spent ~$250M on the problem in the last five years but the City has fought audits to determine the actual number.
For non-food deliveries it could wait until you are ready (maybe even hours), or have some kind of robot accessible locker where the package is left, but food you really want brought to your door.
I think there is an assumption here that the corporations will not simply pocket the profits from automation. It's not like you pay less when you use the self checkout at the grocery store.
There's a huge open question of what we're gonna do when automation crowds out large numbers of jobs, and that's potentially a significant societal shift. But right now we've already got human beings doing jobs effectively as robots, and already not creating real human interaction.
Personally, I'd rather be giving a UBI to those people for going off to, I dunno, create art or go on hikes and write about them or whatever it is human beings do when they're off being human. That might let me have some real human interaction, not a forced moment of intersection while they're just trying to get me my groceries so I can be on my way.
Are they? Food delivery has become incredibly popular but both consumers feel they are paying far too much and delivery people are getting paid almost criminally low pay and given extreme time pressure causing them to run red lights to make minimum wage.
It seems like the prime target for automation to me.
Money is disappearing into a black hole somewhere.
Of course, local governments are extremely unlikely to improve bike lanes at the behest of a single startup. Bike lanes are already extremely unpopular as is, when the primary users are common neighbors and citizens.
> It is really surprising if you go on the road and see something foreign, and it’s coming at you at 15 miles per hour.
If it's going down the bike lane on the wrong way then I agree, that's bad and should be corrected.
There's also this:
> Some cyclists remain uncertain about exactly how a REV-1 would move out of a cyclist’s way
Would most of the safety objections go away if it just went faster and/or became easier to pass (i.e. smaller width, stay to the right side)?
If I bike at 15mph (and other cyclists are faster), what is supposed to happen? Do I stay to the right, or if the bike lane is too small, get out of the bike lane and onto a ramp when safe? If the bot can do that (like a rear-facing LIDAR), then would the bot be more bearable?
> And if I am biking at 5mph, will it stay behind me?
Good point. I hope they have solved or will solve that.
> If it's going down the bike lane on the wrong way then I agree, that's bad and should be corrected.
15 mph is close to top speed on a bike on even ground (for me at least). If I'm causally biking to dinner, I'm not going that fast. The robot could be "coming at you" from behind.
----
Beside the risks of the robots malfunctioning, I think this would be bad for bicyclists if it goes well.
Right now the bots are pretty rare but let's say this is a huge success and a really cheap way to deliver food in a city.
I can imagine there being stretches of bike lanes where the right-lane is a bunch of delivery-bots. That does not leave much room for bikes in the bike lane. "Bike lanes" become "delivery lanes".
Whether or not this is a likely outcome is another discussion but making it a rule that robots can use the bike lane could have bigger consequences than this trial run.
edit: bikes go faster than 15mph
For me, on my $300 Trek hybrid, traveling on flat land, that's about as fast as it can go.
I'm sure someone in good shape on a nice road bike can go faster.
It's bad for cyclists because the self-driving robots are probably buggy. Having a buggy vehicle hit you from behind and push you into a truck driving in traffic that pulls you under and kills you is a very bad outcome. That might sound extreme, but we're seeing Teslas kill their occupants (and potentially other road users). Do we really think "Tesla's AI will drive into a solid barrier, but I'm sure the pizza robot won't bump a bike into traffic"?
Another problems is that it's very hard for a machine to replicate what humans are expecting right now. One of the problems with self-driving cars is that they're often overly cautious in the presence of uncertainty (or certainty for a human, but uncertainty for the AI). If one of these pizza robots suddenly stops short with no reason to be doing that, it can cause accidents. We've seen self-driving cars cause accidents that "aren't their fault" by normal road-fault standards, but are kinda their fault. Stopping in weird ways, making odd judgements about what to do, etc. might lead to accidents.
> Would most of the safety objections go away if it just went faster and/or became easier to pass (i.e. smaller width, stay to the right side
Realistically, no. You can't really make them smaller in width. You need to be able to hold a 16" pizza and you're going to need at least another few inches on either side at a minimum. 22" is probably as small as they can go. Have you ever tried to ride side-by-side with another bike? It isn't realistic on a street with traffic.
The objections would probably go away if we were willing to dedicate a 10-12' lane in each direction to vehicles around 15MPH (with a curb that cars couldn't cross). Then there would be room to avoid problems. The issue right now is that most often bikes don't have any lane, the lane they have is often obstructed by double-parked cars, delivery vans, cones, etc., and even good lanes are narrow (think 3-4 feet). There isn't room for a self-driving vehicle that is likely buggy and likely to make odd decisions trying to get around a delivery van blocking its path - decisions that might endanger bikers.
One thing I'd ask drivers to remember is how angry they get when they're inconvenienced on the road. If a delivery truck stops in a car travel lane, drivers lean on their horns. If you live in a city, remember the last time someone was looking for a parallel parking space while you were trying to get somewhere. Imagine self-driving cars just kinda randomly stopping, sometimes too quickly when there's no reason to stop causing you to run into the back of them - and then you're at fault for it! Heck, just imagine them holding up traffic because they got confused. Heck, just remember the last time someone was in the wrong lane, but wanted to make a turn. Maybe you're an awesome and chill person, but you've definitely seen drivers who aren't.
Biking is wonderful, but it's not well-supported in a lot of places and our roads have become more hostile in many ways. Drivers are choosing larger, heavier vehicles with higher hoods which are many times more likely to kill cyclists and pedestrians in the event of a crash. More and more people are watching all sorts of entertainment in their vehicles and taking their eyes off the road to fiddle with touch screens. Pedestrian deaths are rising in the US...And now it's like, "hey, since we've been doing so much for you lately...um...I can't recall any of those things...maybe we could throw some lightly-tested AI-driven pizza bots at you...we certainly hope no one dies...but if anyone does, we won't hold anyone responsible for those deaths...have fun!"
As an aside, I think one of the big things is that no one will really be responsible for these pizza robots. If you kill someone with your car, at the very least your ...
Does anybody yet have delivery robots that actually work?
While there are imperfect operators of every mode of transportation, don't forget that also applies to drivers and pedestrians.
Also, they take up less room. The density of cars is ridiculous. You have narrow sidewalks with hundreds of people and then 5x the space for 10 people in one car each. Not to mention the cars with no people at all just sitting there taking up space.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2019/05/10/cyclists...
[1] https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/01/03/study-cyclists-dont-b...
In the US, for experienced/aware/agile cyclists who ride often and defensively, it's usually safer for them to not wear a helmet because:
i) Vehicles statistically give helmet-less cyclists more space.
ii) Unconscious personal safety anxiety and risk-aversion that comes along with a rational cyclist not wearing a helmet. Something they must never forget.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180623224226/http://www.fdot.g...
It's legal to ride bikes on sidewalks here.
Aside from that, riding on sidewalks is legal in Austin. You clearly aren't familiar with the situation.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Hint: if your comment leads with "It's infuriating", you should probably pause.
Also, Whole Foods' freeganning is a must for everyone tired of Amazon's insane "convenience" (vulture capitalism) pricing.
I'm thinking about lots of "whoopsie-doodles" for interested parties who might want to hack on these for other purposes.
edit: I should've been clear in stating that it is _unsolicited_ mail addressed to your name and address that is legally yours.
Is this in anyway based on any facts whatsoever or is this something you weer once told and are now repeating? A quick Google says it's up to 5 years jail for keeping misdelivered mail in the USA (depends on jurisdiction).
https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/theft-or-receipt-of-stolen...
Yes. https://about.usps.com/publications/pub300a/pub300a_v04_revi...
Incidentally, we've been having numerous postal issues at my complex because it doesn't have a full-time carrier assigned to the route. It's so bad, I had to get a PO Box.
My neighbors must be mostly thieves (keep) or too lazy (throw away) to bother correctly redelivering mis-delivered letters or packages most of the time. They are surprised like you're a fool for making an effort to redeliver them correctly. The complex is 98% white-collar, third-tier college graduates, single, between 24 and 35. I've had electronics, clothing, and random articles left in my box and at my door... these are mis-deliveries.
Misaddressed mail would be wrong name but correct address.
I however didn't go candy is the new toliet paper-hoarding Grinch over lazily mis-delivered snacks by doing the couriers' job for them. Maybe I shouldn't have because replacements, but neighbors and candy usually involves kids. Neighbors didn't even say "thanks," so I definitely should've kept them. No good deed ever gets you anywhere, kids; you must always appear to do something half benevolent and half selfish with an audience. Be Vito Corleone. Make them an offer they can't refuse. Since it was was couriered instead of postal mailed, postal laws don't apply and it reverts to property and commerce laws. Now if I conspired to give them half if they said they didn't receive it, that would've been conspiracy to commit fraud.
Y.T. notices a black Town Car that has been sitting there for a while. She doesn't have to see the plates to know it is Mafia. Only the Mafia drives cars like that. The windows are blackened, but she knows someone's in there keeping an eye on het. How do they do it? You see these Town Cars everywhere, but you never see them move, never see them get anyplace. She's not even sure they have engines in them.
They look big enough to cause serious damage to your car if you hit one, so I think you are right that drivers will pay attention to them. But I think drivers will also want to pass them, increasing the chances that drivers will use the bike lanes as passing lanes.
Furthermore, I think drivers will not trust the delivery robots, so when they are passing they will be paying attention to the robot, increasing the chances the drivers will not notice a cyclist in the bike lane.
Put the robots in the bike lanes and then that increases driver attention will be going toward keeping the car out of the bike lane.
I could envision problems with unprotected bike lanes, but those are dangerous by design [1]. However, a robot clinging to the rightmost side of a car lane next to an unprotected bike lane could easily make passing in the unprotected bike lane infeasible.
But, this is all just speculation.
[1] https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/05/29/protect-yourself-sepa...
When I see for-rent scooters dumped blocking public commons, I stop and throw them in the nearest gutter, dumpster, sewer, or river to hold the companies responsible for their users monetarily.
If I see a pizza-delivery robot going 5 mph in a bike lane, I'm going to kick it to the curb or run-over it. And, I'll make sure everyone else does the same. They can pay bike messengers who need the work rather than being job-stealing, pointless automation assholes.
implies omniscient, inevitable certainty in an indefinite timeframe beyond the scope of reasonable
>leak
implies absolutely certainty of failure... from what failure mode and in what timeframe?
> and pollute the river
Pathos appeal. "You're a meanie to the fishies and dolphins who use a filthy drainage ditch masquerading as a river to spawn their entire species."
You're clearly not an engineer, don't understand how these are manufactured, nor how these are life-cycled... with bloody GPS on them 24x7.
Go away until you have something meaningful to add that doesn't sound like you actually create a 60k-page environmental impact report before putting on your shoes made from fossil fuels, animals, and/or (gasp!) "chemicals."
> I am curious about your rationale of throwing scooters in the river.
No, you're not, you're a do-nothing troll.
The grunts collecting these machines don't get paid enough to fish them out of the river. They're gonna get marked as missing and the company will replace them with a new one.
Edit: For all I know they could end up building rescue robots that also get thrown into the river.
Yet a solid quarter of their HN comments are attacks and personal name-calling insults.
Docks take-up too much room and would suck-up real-estate from the public commonwealth for private, exclusive use... too much of that is already happening. Underutilized "bikeshare" pod programs stole large areas of curbside real-estate while offering nothing in return for all residents (unless they paid money).
It's a Tragedy of the Commons-situation knowingly-created by these irresponsible, asshole rental companies for $$$ by not demanding proper parking from the asshole segment of their customer-base.
I've seen piles of these goddamn things on street corners, rendering entire sidewalks unusable in orthogonal directions.
Elimination of all asshats who throw scooters in the middle of public commons and thoroughfares. These incidents are why they are banned from large areas of town and on certain campuses.
They should just be banned period. Full stop. Bring your own, or rent one you can carry and must return. Ephemeral transactionality leads to this sort of Idiocracy-backdrop bullshit:
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversup...
great. let’s dump a bunch of experimental AI tech on already scare bike lanes without consultation, which, if successful, will decimate both the only easy to enter low skill job pool AND clog up bike lanes. just look at the massive PITA rent scooters have caused in city centers around the world, this has the potential to cause even more disruption.
Doesn't this phrase also refer to every human bicyclist's brain? Human bicyclists generally are not required to be licensed.
I'd say being able to bike somewhere is an edge case for most people.
1. I am short on time, energy, or groceries
2. I want to treat myself, but to not have to leave the home to get it
Better comparison: Yes, I dress myself at home instead of having a person or not come it for me each time.
The last big battle over who gets to use the bike lane was over allowing powered bicycles in bike lanes. The trouble is that E-bikes have reached scooter and moped performance levels. (In speed, anyway. Braking, not so much.)
So far, the robots are pretty slow. They're more likely to be an obstruction than run over people.