Featured Self driving Prius in USA for prescription delivery

interesting, i can't wait for the outcome. i wonder how houston residents are receiving this info

 

It depends upon whether the Houstonites can get prescriptions for beer.

Bob Wilson

 

After the lock down is over, maybe the could do home deliveries from the pub rather than the risk of drunk driving :lol: There was an ad campaign by one of the local breweries where the pizza delivery bloke pulls up outside the pub, shouts out, home delivery for Jonno, another bloke jumps in the passenger seat and says, I'm Jonno, let's go" :lol:

T1 Terry

 

it's funny. with the lockdown, people are more interested in social drinking than drinking alone.

 

When self-driving gets good enough to leave the bar/restaurant and park the car in my driveway, I'll change the name from "Blue Bobs" to "Dobbin."

Bob Wilson

 

i hope we get there soon, i can see a boon for society in general

 

just add automation:



I wonder what kind of music it plays?

 

I'm still at a loss to figure out how this would be an improvement over the USPS delivery of prescriptions that I've been getting for years.

Prescription delivery fits very neatly into the existing USPS mail and package delivery model, and doesn't add any more vehicles or vehicle miles to existing road traffic. And it helps support an essential service that has been suffering declining volume and revenue.

 

What about same day delivery of a new medication you need to start today? You'd get your refills by mail, but I'd think there would definitely be a case for getting stuff to the patient an hour or two after they get home from the doc. Especially the folks who already had the day planned without a stop at the pharmacy, reliant on rideshare/accessible van etc.

 

I guess I've become accustomed to coming home with same-day meds already in hand, from the HMO campus itself. Or in the long ago days of a stand-alone doctor's office, being given an immediate manufacturer sample by the prescribing doctor's office.

 

it's probably just practice for bigger and better things. and cvs just started free delivery with the virus outbreak, so they may be looking for future economical options

 

definitely a need for delivery. It was a PITA picking up my gf's prescriptions when the local pharmacy didn't have them and she was really sick. I don't get a self driving though. I think a delivery person is better. Since covid all the pharmacies around here started delivering with touch less delivery to the door if you wanted it.

Of course my state now allows restaurants to deliver booze (yes even margaritas to your car) or home. I'm hoping this lasts past the pandemic but we shall see.

Good test of self driving, but houston is a tough city. I would think somewhere with less traffic would be better.

 

The need for delivery is easy to establish, and easy to grasp for pretty much anyone who has ever been ill.

The need for self-driving delivery is to reduce payroll costs and the chance of being sued by a driver who gets infected or injured on the job. It might not be obvious unless you've owned a business that involved your agents dealing with your customers while operating on public roads.

This is why wall street is cheerfully burning down billions of dollars to perfect autonomous vehicles.

 

Bad enough in Australia with these sorts of problems, it would be really hard in the USA where they sue first and think later. Many of the "road side assist" type organisations are rolling back the services they offer due to liability concerns from both the customer and the employee.

Then there is the push back from the likes of Uber Eats, Menu Log, the taxi industry and takeaway delivery drivers who would stand to loose if the delivery could be done without them. The have a rather strong lobby group that steers the govt into making the decisions that best suits them while painting images in the general publics eye such as that decision making thing between either hitting vehicle A and killing the older passenger and possibly the driver, vehicle B driven by a young mother who isn't paying attention because she is trying to settle the kids in the back seat,
or
hitting a number of innocent people on the foot path or in a café who have no idea what is about to happen ....
Can a self learning computer system make such a decision reliably? Would it be biased towards the outcome that would cost the least in litigation or the outcome that injured/killed those who it considered were of a less value to society, or ....... self preservation ...... Isaac Asimov wrote the 3 laws of robotics as a science fiction basic operating parameter for robots, nothing says the AI in the vehicle has read the same books ...

T1 Terry