For people who drive in the SF Bay area, it will come as no surprise that traffic has gotten worse over recent years. Between 2010 and 2018, the amount of time cars spend in traffic without moving has increased 69 %. By modeling traffic patterns in San Francisco, researchers have determined that more than half of those delays are caused by Uber and Lyft.
In order to test their hypothesis, they had to know how many of these ride-share entrepreneurs were on the road at any given time, as well as where they were. Uber and Lyft had no intention of sharing that kind of data, so the researchers devised a way to measure these data for themselves. They ran a computer program that created thousands of “ghost” users that pinged Uber and Lyft drivers every 5 seconds for a full 6 weeks. Thus they managed to determine numbers of cars and distributions at various times of day an night.
They placed these vehicles into a program designed to simulate San Francisco traffic, and were able to compare the level of traffic with and without the ride-sharers. If those cars had been absent from the roads, the model predicted that the increase in traffic delays since 2010 would only be about 22 % rather than the empirically measured 69 %.
It seems that, once again, human nature is defeating the purpose of technology by overusing it. Uber and Lyft were supposed to make it easier to get around, and instead, they’re making movement damned near impossible.
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From joniworx:
From Brainwrap’s recommended post on outrageous anti-choice laws in Ohio and Georgia, Holgar posted this funny and on-point comment.
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This comment by equern in ZenTrainer’s own recommended post on How to lose an election.
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