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Uber and Lyft Want You Banned From Using Your Own Self-Driving Car in Urban Areas (siliconbeat.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Mercury News:
The rabble can't be trusted with self-driving cars, and only companies operating fleets of them should be able to use them in dense urban areas. So say Uber and Lyft, as signatories to a new list of transportation goals developed by a group of international non-governmental organizations and titled "Shared Mobility Principles for Livable Cities"... According to Principle No. 10, "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..."
It's stated reason is to "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." But others remain suspicious.
Gizmodo complains that the proposal "doesn't exactly sound like the freedom-filled future sci-fi writers have been promising, now does it?" and concludes that Uber and Lyft "have a hot new idea for screwing over city-dwellers."
It's stated reason is to "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." But others remain suspicious.
Gizmodo complains that the proposal "doesn't exactly sound like the freedom-filled future sci-fi writers have been promising, now does it?" and concludes that Uber and Lyft "have a hot new idea for screwing over city-dwellers."
There will be no need to legislate against provately-owned cars, autonomous or otherwise.
As self-driving fleets proliferate, there will be irresistible temptation on the part of urban developers to cut back on parking spaces at businesses, which will be needed only for individually owned cars; instead of a sea of parking spaces for all customers at a movie theater, the business will expand into its parking area, leaving only one row of "VIP spaces" that the diminishing number of car owners will have to pay for. As mass car culture fades, owning your own autonomous car will be like owning your own plane, a niche market for the well off. As hoi polloi buzz around in autonomous fleet cars that park only in industrial-zone warehouses when out of service, the remaining individual owners will pay for parking spaces as though they were airport tiedowns or marina slips.
this is going to really cut the legs out from under a lot of their supporters
Right, because lots of people "support" Uber because of their reputation for ethical behavior. Sure. Whatever.
Seriously, get some perspective. If you made a list of all the unethical and illegal crap that Uber has done, this wouldn't even make the top one hundred.
It reminds me of Airliners. Commercial Airliners always want to push out General Aviation, as if they aren't paying their "fair share". Really they just want to own more of the sky. The airspace is for all Americans to use and so is the road as long as you can use it responsibly. We need to prevent profit-seeking corporations from co-opting the public welfare. It almost never works out the way they claim.
Now they are the taxi cartels. Brilliant.
Do you have ESP?
My uncle has a country place, no one knows about.