Hmm google newark airport elevation.... 5.5m or 18'.

That makes it 1.5m higher than YVR (Vancouver Airport which is actually in Richmond BC) which is 4.0m.

18' - 3.5" would seem to have a reasonable margin of safety......

The best way to get yourself kicked out of a Car Sharing company (as a customer) is to leave the car in an unacceptably dirty condition.

Its not like they don't know who the last person to rent it was. Or that they don't have procedures for reporting when you had an accident (like your kid barfed in the back seat) so that car sharing company will get it cleaned.

It may currently be a 30 minute drive for you to pick up a Zip Car....

But at some point in the not too distant future it will be a 30 minute drive for the Zip Car to deliver itself to your door. And when you are finished with it, it will drive off and park itself in the closest Zip Car parking area.

Well if the number of self-driving taxis are limited to the number of "medallions" issued by your city... and those remain at the same level as now... then there will be no increase in service.

Presumably saner minds will prevail and where there is demand for the service there will be a supply sufficient for the demand.

Yes, you undoubtedly represent the vast majority of the population. So obviously self driving cars simply won't work for anyone else.

The rest of us have no problem with you owning your own self driving vehicle.

In the long run we may have a problem with you driving your own vehicle. That will be solved by simply making it much more expensive (user fees per mile) to self drive because you will be taking up more room on the road (all the self driving cars will leave much larger spaces around you.)

Self driving cars don't preclude private ownership by you. Or ownership of a 7 person SUV sized vehicle.

It does not preclude you being able to rent a 7 person vehicle when you need it.

Or if you own the 7 person vehicle to rent a 1 or 2 person vehicle to commute in.

Costs will be lower and likely most insurance and taxes will be mileage based. So you will have incentives to use the lowest cost vehicle from various sources.
 

Since I telecommute I don't need roads. Other than the Information Highway! :-)

Yes more roads.

In the final evolution of self driving cars (once human driven ones are eliminated) far denser traffic (less headway between cars) can be safely used. That with smaller (skinnier) cars can build scenarios that match anything else for numbers of passengers moved per hour.

More to the point is (for the most part) roads are less expensive than most other mass transit options. The biggest win with moving to mass transit robo-car style is that the public funds their own rolling stock. No more costly tax funded capital outlays for expensive buses, sub-way cars, light rail cars etc. No more costly maintenance. No more costly overhead for managing and running them. Bigger still no more boondoggles with adoption of too expensive systems or systems that don't work or don't suit the purpose etc.

Just fund roads. Let the public fund their own cars to use it. There will be a mix of private ownership and large companies (e.g. Uber) buying fleets and utilizing them as robo-taxis. But this gets government out of the business of providing mass-transit. That means lower taxes and more efficiency as people purchase the best option for their needs.

Just turned sixty. Still can't stomach whisky or pretty much any hard liquor thanks to Dad letting me get a little too much at 18.

The cost structure for Uber drivers is very similar to taxi services and over time will approach them.

Except for the cost to the taxi operators for their medallion. Since there is a a limited number of medallions and you need one to operate they tend to get transferred at great cost. For example a quick Google query for cost of taxi medallion nyc tells us that the current cost is down to $840,000 from a peak of $1.05 million in June 2013.

So the major cost of operation becomes the cost of financing the medallion. In fact (again according to Google) in most instances the medallions are owned by investment companies and leased to actual drivers.

Uber exists to disrupt the requirement for the medallions. They provide a lower friction billing system that makes it easier for both users and drivers to participate.

The ONLY people who are against Uber in the long term are the current owners of medallions. If Uber succeeds their investments will be valueless.

Part of the problem with the recent shooting of the kid with a toy gun was the cop's arriving in a car at full speed and stopping literally a few feet away from the kid. They then had no opportunity to assess the situation and instead pulled out the guns and shot him because they now where afraid they might get shot.

Since the park was empty it would have been far more appropriate to stop and assess from a distance.

So a (possibly) correct reaction to the circumstance they arrived at. But they arrived at that circumstance because of some very bad decisions made as they arrived.

The movie will be released when they can find the backup copy of the official version!

When they went to do a final review on the release copy of the movie they discovered that there had been a final edit courtesy of the "hackers" that apparently changed the ending. Lets just say that Seth Rogan was not amused at how his character ended up.

That is the point.

If the US court wants this data it needs to subpoena the document in an IRISH court and have the Irish division of Microsoft (which operates under Irish law) deliver it.

The current situation is that the US court wants to compel a company (owned by a US company) that is based and operated in Ireland to do something that may break Irish law.

How is/was Fukushima a deadly reminder?

Other than perhaps some deaths from the mishandled (over reaction?) evacuation?

And projected deaths from (drum roll....) computer models on increased cancer deaths.

Compare that to anything else (disasters involving or manufacturing or operating other types of power plants) and nuclear still smells pretty rosy.