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#delivery#bikes#don#those#robots#hate#more#already#car#public
Discussion (32 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
Can I just put a vending machine on wheels, park it in front of people's homes, and raise a 100M to replace convenience stores?
What? The washing machine was so effective at saving labor that it's widely considered a major driver of gender equality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washing_machine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn1tSPP0VF8
http://www.tweenbots.com/
We're making it more and more normal to completely avoid interacting with each other and having service be something we cherish, I think this is hugely detrimental to society.
But those are posthoc rationalizations i just seem to hate them and i cant really explain why.
Our cities already deemphasize people being out and about in public spaces, so car-centric, and this is an entirely intolerable insult to injury.
They further alienate folks from jobs in their community, they exacerbate the already artificial friction of just walking to a restaurant and being present in your community.
It represents an impressive amount of awful in a tiny cube.
Isn't this a solution to that though as the delivery would otherwise be made by a human in a car. I don't have these robots in my area, but I do have the Walmart delivery drones. Those are interesting to watch. A neighbor recently had a delivery by two drones where one approached within seconds of the first recovering the cradle before moving into the same spot. To the point that I was left wondering if the drones have self co-ordination abilities to know a fellow drone is already in place, or if the timing of the system was just right to avoid collision. Either way, I find the constant drone sound of them zipping by annoying. I'm a 10 minute walk from their base, so they are pretty constant.
And now you have to share it with someone’s private burrito transport.
The point is, those big fat trucks aren’t just there to annoy you, they are doing something pretty useful.
CTRL + f : "suv"
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"truck" ?
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I stopped reading past that. That level of carbrain is intolerable. If you think light vehicles capped at 25km/h is an issue idk what to tell you. At least with delivery robots people don't have to take a one ton metal box everywhere with them just to get groceries because they live in a poorly designed car-centric city.
So calm your tits.
Your comment is irrelevant otherwise because last time I checked cars are the real problem, and concerns over e bikes / delivery bots is just another lame extension of “safetyism” and ignorance around public transport failures that just misses the mark.
“Riding in traffic” is half the issue here. Like trying to explain water to fish.
A friend of mine spent a week in the hospital recently after crashing his new e-bike almost immediately after buying it. One interpretation of his accident is that he didn't have some of the right instincts for riding a bicycle at that speed.
I don't actually have a clear sense of the breakdown of risk attributable to the different factors of lack of appropriate cycling infrastructure, lack of appropriate rider training or experience, lack of appropriate rider expectations, or inherent safety or stability problems of some designs. My friend whom I mentioned above said his doctors told him that they had been seeing a lot of patients who'd crashed e-bikes (as well as electric mopeds and electric skateboards) at speeds that produced fairly serious injuries.
Big trucks and SUVs are a much bigger problem. But that doesn't mean kids riding around on motorcycles isn't a problem either.
If that is truly what McNamara meant, it is very sloppy that they failed to say so.
EDIT: For anyone downvoting me, I am respecting the text of the article, because that is what most people will read. Most people will not see olyjohn's caveats and context (which again, I agree represent the real problem).
> At least with delivery robots people don't have to take a one ton metal box everywhere with them just to get groceries because they live in a poorly designed car-centric city.
Robots are not needed and do not enhance grocery delivery. The ones I've seen aren't large enough for a grocery order. I suppose it would be entertaining to see a line of them proceeding to a delivery.