Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee
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@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.
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@DustinB3403 said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
@Son-of-Jor-El said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
AMBULANCE!!!! I called an ambulance in July when my GF stopped breathing. Cost me $1500 for the 5 minute ride.
No thank you.
You/She don't have medical insurance? Seems like a personal issue there.
Actually it's a national issue. I'm not coverable under Obamacare. There isn't a plan that covers my family. That's not a personal issue, that's an national issue.
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@Dashrender said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
If anything - self driving cars might really hurt the poor badly, just like how higher fuel prices affect the poor more than it does the wealthy.
Possible, but I'm guessing it is unlikely. The poor pay huge maintenance costs today, take huge risks from less safe vehicles. While it might not make things cheaper for the poor, it will level a lot of the playing fields in other ways.
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@Son-of-Jor-El said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
@DustinB3403 said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
@Son-of-Jor-El said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
@DustinB3403 said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
@Son-of-Jor-El I'd disagree with you that you have a need for a car, you have a need for transportation / work-tool vehicle.
If you could avoid paying $300-600/month and have Toyota worry about the maintenance of the vehicle (and it cost you pennies in comparison) wouldn't you want to save that money?
No because my guess is it would work like a lease where you cannot do certain things to the car because technically, you don't own it. A simple matter of changing the radio would be a hassle.
Also, and your talking to a car guy, one of the BEST things about owning a car is customization. Even something small like replacing a diverter valve to a full blown blow-off valve just for the noise is fun as all hell!!
But that isn't the goal of driver-less cars. There will always be hobbyist. People who build or customize a car. And it will disappear eventually as people realize that buying a car, new or used is not the smart choice.
Sure you may purchase a used driver-less car to customize, but why? Make the "taxi" company deal with maintaining it. Imagine if you could hire a ferrari for $100/day?
I guess I see it different from you. Not only are there "hobbyists", but there are people who love the freedom of a car. There's really nothing like jumping in whenever you want. And it's YOUR car, not some company's car. I don't even want to get into how bad these cars would be abused because people don't own them (see rentals).
A Ferrari wouldn't work for me here...at least today. Plus at $100 a day needing to get to work would run me $500 a week and some days $600 a week. I'm in IT brother!! I can't afford that!! LOL
that wasn't his point. His point was that you COULD rent it for A Day. What I don't understand is - you can already do that.
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@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.
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@scottalanmiller said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
@Dashrender said in Trump appoints Kalanick and Musk to committee:
If anything - self driving cars might really hurt the poor badly, just like how higher fuel prices affect the poor more than it does the wealthy.
Possible, but I'm guessing it is unlikely. The poor pay huge maintenance costs today, take huge risks from less safe vehicles. While it might not make things cheaper for the poor, it will level a lot of the playing fields in other ways.
Do they? do they really pay huge maintenance costs + super cheap vehicle price > than newer car + hopefully lower maintenance costs?
Maybe they do - I just know when I used to drive $1000 or less cars, if the repair bill was more than a few hundred, you just ditch it and buy another cheap car. -
So let's move back to self driving cars...
So @Son-of-Jor-El and @Minion-Queen make some good points about ownership continuing. But I can see, and definitely hope for, the government not allowing person driven cars on the normal streets.
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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.
