John Collison: uncertainty

Transcript context

…I'd say they're all hard. You picked freeways, and you picked drop-off for different reasons. For drop-offs, you're absolutely right. There are a few things that are maybe not obvious. You just think about this problem, but it's understanding where you want to go and making it as convenient as possible for you. Pickups from drop, it's not exactly symmetric. But then also understanding the context of the situation, where do you stop? You don't want to block a driveway. You don't want to double park, although in some cases where if it's a quick one, maybe it's okay. There's a lot of nuance that goes into doing that well so that it's smooth, frictionless experience for the rider as well as other folks. Freeways, for most of the time, not much happens. They're very well-structured because we designed them that way. But there is still that long tail of really complicated stuff that happens where the consequences of a bad event are much more severe. The speed is much higher. Everything is quadratic in speed. But we see a lot of stuff. Imagine grills falling off of freeways. Imagine people getting into accidents and spinning out of control. You see one of those flatbed trucks with just a bunch of stuff piled in it, and you're driving behind it? I don't know. I always find it very nerve-wracking. I know. We've seen them leave a trail.…

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