I and people started noticing this like 7 years ago, glad that people start complaining it now. It's a combination of more aggressive lighting, bright LED, and taller vehicles.
Looking directly in my mirror now feels like a hazard rather than helpful.
I now come to realize that if you don't want to drive it's better to have public transport. For the real fun part of owning a personal vehicle: sport car, road-trip... I doubt you would want a robot to take over.
You can already experience self driving cars by taking an Uber or a taxi, or being chauffeured if you are richer. None of that is new, the self driving aspect just promises to make those experiences perhaps more accessible (or at the very least, not less accessible than they are now). For example, I took a taxi to and from work every day when I lived in Beijing, which came to about 100 kuai/day for a 20-30 minute drive each way, which is affordable to a lot of people (although only possible due to cheap labor). I wouldn’t mind being driven to work here in the states, although it isn’t really economically feasible (and perhaps should be replaced with direct public transit if that was time competitive, which it isn’t, but could be).
Yeah which I think the only remaining good application of self-driving car ( taxi ) doesn't bring that much convenient, since taxi here is already somewhat reasonably priced. I can't speak for the the US experience.
Also the article touches briefly on drivers going into jobless. A lot of drivers where i'm from seems to be retiring middle-old age working in taxi. I think it's a good job fit for them and I don't know how the new self-driving industry can provide the same thing (?)
A significant portion of taxi fares go to the driver, as opposed to the maintenance of cars. There are other marginal benefits such as making the driver's seat available, eliminating the driver's commute and as well as the risk of criminal driver behaviour, that probably offsets some of the drawbacks of having one fewer human being dealing with rare, complex non-driving situations such as a pregnant woman having to give birth in the car.
The economic benefit is significant to companies building self-driving cars, good enough to pursue if the tech is within reach. But to your point it's indeed much less of an improvement compared to various historical automation technologies that create >10x incremental efficiency gains.
Labor is becoming more expensive, even in the developed world. Eventually, people will want to do more productive things that drive a taxi for a little bit of money.
There is an argument for traffic optimization that will be possible when self driving taxis are common, but this is more of an argument also for the developing world where traffic is a much larger problem than the developed world (e.g. LA traffic is nothing compared to Beijing traffic).
I just look forward to a lifestyle in the states compared to the one I had back when I was living in China.
I don't really like driving per se, but public transport, regardless of its sophistication (for example, as seen in Tokyo), has its challenges, particularly when it comes to grocery shopping. Transporting a large quantity of goods can be impractical, if not impossible, without a car. Even carrying a moderate amount can be exhausting due to the 'last 100 meter' issue, which persists even if one lives close to a metro station, say within a five-minute walk.
Moreover, public transport often isn't as comfortable as your own vehicle (which I understand is a luxury).
Conversely, when it comes to driving in a large city, finding a parking spot can often be a major hassle.
I see, but then you don't need large quantity shopping at all when the supermarket is just a 5 minute walk away. I live in Tokyo, usually buy at most 3-4 days of food with a 30 minutes detour when I get off the station from work.
From what I've seen, the main reason why people want a car here seems to be wanting to travel with small children. Moving within Tokyo with car is not very convenient.
> particularly when it comes to grocery shopping. Transporting a large quantity of goods can be impractical, if not impossible, without a car. Even carrying a moderate amount can be exhausting due to the 'last 100 meter' issue, which persists even if one lives close to a metro station, say within a five-minute walk.
For a five-minute walk (or even a longer ten-minute or fifteen-minute walk), pulling a small cart is not exhausting at all. I do it every week when buying food: I choose one of the several supermarkets in one of the nearby blocks, walk to it pulling my empty cart, after paying for the goods I put everything into the cart, and walk back home pulling the full cart. No public transport needed, though I've seen people carrying these carts into public transport too (this is easier when it's a low-floor bus, instead of the high-floor ones).
You can also get things delivered when it's a larger amount than can fit on your cart: while paying at the supermarket you ask for delivery, and they'll use a cargo tricycle to bring it to your building.
I just don't see that realisticly possible. People move a cross the city for a new job, that enough to break the family visit. Remote work is nowhere near guaranteed.
>people didn't move because they wanted to gain independence.
They do, when they don't fit into the community they grew up with.
Like a lot of stuff like this, it’s not that simple one way or the other.
Eggs are the usual example. US regulations require eggs to washed, removing a protective coating, which is why Americans refrigerate eggs. Many other developed nations forbid washing eggs with solutions that would remove the same protective coating, so eggs are frequently not refrigerated there because they don’t really need to be. The motivation in the US was avoiding salmonella, but other places have avoided that by improving cleanliness practices of the farms rather than washing their eggs.
Kind of different, but recent requirements to label foods containing sesame as an allergen led to more foods having sesame intentionally added, since it’s cheaper to add it intentionally and then label it than to prove the production facility and ingredients are 100% sesame free. It’s not removing some natural defense from a food, but that’s a regulation intended to help people with allergens stay safer which inadvertently decreased their options (and maybe made it more likely they’d buy something containing sesame by mistake if it was a product they’d been safe with before but had recently added sesame).
So I very much agree with you that the food regulations of the FDA and similar institutions in other countries are largely a blessing and huge boon to human welfare. It’s great to be confident my bread isn’t 50% sawdust and there probably isn’t melamine in my milk and stuff. But like any big regulatory environment mistakes have been made, and also sometimes regulations that made sense at one time outlive their usefulness.
> removing a protective coating, which is why Americans refrigerate eggs.
The egg thing is oft repeated, but not actually true. The coating is not magic, it's just oil, and America does wash the eggs, and then applies some oil. I have not refrigerated my eggs in the US in decades with no problems at all.
> The motivation in the US was avoiding salmonella, but other places have avoided that by improving cleanliness practices of the farms rather than washing their eggs.
This isn't true either. Other places avoid salmonella by immunizing their chickens. It's not required in the US (mainly because since the US refrigerates its eggs, immunization doesn't help much), but more and more farms are immunizing chickens, eventually the reason for refrigerating eggs will vanish - but I'm sure they'll still require it. (The circular relationship between these two things is not lost on me.)
Farmers in the UK value cleanliness not because of Salmonella but because dirty farms make for dirty eggs as seen by the consumer, since they aren't allowed to clean them.
To say it is "just oil" is to say that breast milk is "just formula."
Yes, the cuticle has oil in it and is an oily substance, but it's a complex mixture of proteins, lipids,some of which are oily. The starkest difference of course being that mineral oil, the usual post-wash coating, would not allow the egg to remain viable, irrespective of whether it had been sanitized. It is less permable to gases than the natural cuticle, and less effective at preventing bacterial growth. As you have discovered, less effective does not mean not at all effective, and I store both my unwashed and store-bought eggs on the counter as well, but even discounting supply chain timings, the natural eggs keep longer.
> but that’s a regulation intended to help people with allergens stay safer which inadvertently decreased their options
Having eating restrictions / allergies, or even being handicapped, is a nightmare in the global south. I don't think it's a problem to restrict options out of an abundance of caution.
It wasn't an abundance of caution, it was things (that you might previously have eaten and enjoyed as a sesame allergee) newly having non-trace amounts of sesame added deliberately, to save having to qualify the previous possible trace amount as low enough once it was recategorised.
Well-intentioned change, unintentional bad outcome for those affected.
..I suppose you can read it that way if you want, but the result of something going from 'may contain trace amounts of sesame seeds' to 'definitely contains non-trivial amounts of sesame seed' is hardly a win if you're allergic to them. You at least had a choice to risk it before, or might have known it wasn't a risk because your allergy would only be triggered on a larger amount even if some did make its way in.
(And the regulators/legislators intention had been to benefit those allergic, so it's not just an unfortunate side-effect, it totally backfired.)
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this rule change happened because people were getting hurt from sesame in unlabeled foods. So yeah, it is a bad side-effect, but it probably actually does solve the problem it was intended to: to prevent harm, not to expand food choices or even to hold the number of food options steady. It was obviously going to reduce options, it just did so much more than expected and in an unexpected manner.
> recent requirements to label foods containing sesame as an allergen led to more foods having sesame intentionally added, since it’s cheaper to add it intentionally and then label it than to prove the production facility and ingredients are 100% sesame free
Why do they need to add the sesame? can't they just say "might contain sesame" without having to explicitly add it?
Wait why is the expense of adding unnecessary sesame oil less than simply adding “produced in a facility that processes sesame oil” or “may contain trace amounts of sesame” or similar on the label?
Looking directly in my mirror now feels like a hazard rather than helpful.