With the rise of Uber and self-driving cars, there is a lot of talk about a potential Uber’s fleet of self-driving taxis (SDTs from now on). But, it turns out that SDTs are a bad idea for two main reasons: hygiene & safety.
Dirty
- Uber started off with UberBlack — elegant cars and well-dressed drivers
- Then, they’ve lowered themselves to UberX — pop version with regular cars and drivers
- In the future with SDTs, they will become UberPublicToilet.
People are (not) watching
I think it’s fairly clear to anyone that people will behave differently (usually better) when they are being watched and judged. If other people are around, most of us will not go around naked, masturbate, have sex on the street, pee, shit or vomit in front of them in public. But, what if other people are not around? What if you’ll be out of there in 10 minutes? How will passengers act when they’re alone in an empty car?
Potential nasty actions:
Doing drugs
Masturbation / Sex
Peeing / Defecating (pets/kids/adults)
Spilling food/beverage or vomiting
Pranks — putting weird substances or dangerous animals inside
… and much more.
Remember, the promise of SDTs is a low price, which attracts certain types of customers — www.peopleofwalmart.com.
SDTs are even worse than public transport, because at least with public transportation there are many other people around, so you won’t see too much bad behaviour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNTXnodrK7c
Now, some of you might think “Rental cars work fine. They could have these problems, but they don’t. It will all work out in the end for SDTs”
Not so fast.
(1) Rental cars (or rooms for that matter) are usually rented for a couple of days. It means that you will have to deal with the consequences of your actions or actions of others you let into the car. If you want to vomit inside, you’ll be smelling that for days. Also, you want to get what you paid for. If you pay to drive it for 7 days, then it would be very bad if you make a mess on 2nd day and make the car unusable for the next few days. So, there is an incentive to keep the rental car clean.
(2) Once you’re done with a rental car (room), a company takes over and cleans the car (room) up for the next customer. With SDTs, once you’re out, the car is supposed to go and pick up the next customer. The promise of SDTs are low prices and since rides last 5-10 minutes, it would be very expensive and impractical to drive the car to a special location and have it checked and cleaned after each ride.
Prison on wheels
SDTs also restrict personal autonomy. They would be prisons on wheels. You are driven around in a vehicle you have no control over. It could be possible for governments to lockdown a car you’re in (in the name of fighting terrorism) and simply drive you to a local police station for any reason they come up with. Also, the system running SDTs would be centralized, which means that hacking it can have impact on a lot of people at once (remember high profile data breaches), but it also means that it’s easier for governments to request and get control over the entire system (just like they’re doing with Google, FB requests for users’ data).
SDTs will be cheaper
Who cares? Well, some people do. Some people use public transit as well. But, not majority. Many of those who use public transit would be happy to have a car if they could afford one. Remember that, when it comes to hygiene, SDTs are worse than public transit. Low price is not the only thing people care about.
