I just read this article https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-23/when-their-shifts-end-uber-drivers-set-up-camp-in-parking-lots-across-the-u-s which I found to have some interesting, Hoovervillian quotes:
"Its parking lot was a safe spot to sleep in his car. Tugas drives over 70 hours a week in San Francisco, where the work is steadier and fares are higher than in his hometown, Sacramento. So every Monday morning, Tugas leaves at 4 a.m., says goodbye to his wife and four daughters, drives 90 miles to the city"
"That’s the sacrifice,” he said in May, smoking a cigarette beside his Toyota Prius parked at the Safeway at 1 a.m., the boats in the bay bobbing gently in the background. “My goal is to get a house somewhere closer, so that I don’t have to do this every day.”
"These drivers live near, but not in, expensive cities where they can tap higher fares, ferrying wealthier, white-collar workers to their jobs and out to dinner—but where they can’t make enough money to get by, even with longer hours. To maximize their time, drivers find supermarket parking lots, airports and hostels where they catch several hours of sleep after taking riders home from bars and before starting the morning commute."
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In a sense, drivers sleeping in their cars typifies, in an extreme way, what Uber said it does best: offer drivers flexibility. “With Uber, people make their own decisions about when, where and how long to drive,” the company said. “We’re focused on making sure that driving with Uber is a rewarding experience, however you choose to work.”
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In a sense, drivers sleeping in their cars typifies, in an extreme way, what Uber said it does best: offer drivers flexibil
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He’ll drive late into the night, usually until the bars close. Then he’ll find somewhere quiet to park and sleep. Some days it’s on a residential street. To avoid the police and keep warm, he puts up reflective sunshields in his Prius.
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"Lewandoske served in the Navy for 20 years as a hospital corpsman, and one perk of being a veteran is that he has access to Camp Pendleton, the Naval base. No one questions him there. Sometimes he’ll park his car for the night, and in the morning, he can shower in the base’s gym. “Base police have never done anything to me there,” he said. “They know if you’re on base, you hold an ID card; you’re not going to cause a problem.”
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Another interesting quote
Another interesting quote from another article.
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(3) In various suburban schools that my kids went to when they were young there was a pick up ritual, which I see being repeated today when I drive past a school at the right time. Mothers, mostly, would turn up in their cars just before dismissal time and line up in the order that they arrived with the line backing out beyond the school boundary often. When school was over the teachers would come outside with all the kids and the cars would pull up to the pick up point^{\big 4}, the parents and teachers would cooperate to get the kids into their car seats, and off would go the cars with the kids, one at a time. When the first few families have fully driverless cars, one can imagine them sending their cars to wait in line first, so that their kids get picked up first and brought home. Not only does that mean that other parents would have to invest more of their personal time waiting in order to get their kids earlier, while the self driving car owners do not, but it ends up putting more responsibility on the teachers. Expect to see push back on this practice from the schools. But people will still try it.
Early on in the transition to driverless cars the 1% will have a whole new way to alienate the rest of the society. If you don’t think so, take a drive south from San Francisco on 101 in the morning and see the Teslas speeding down the left most lane.
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http://rodneybrooks.com/unexpected-consequences-of-self-driving-cars/