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US desperately needs self-driving cars. Desperately. I don't think most people realize how much. Because they've never seen a city with good public transport wh

US desperately needs self-driving cars. Desperately. I don't think most people realize how much. Because they've never seen a city with good public transport where most people don't own or care about cars. But achieving good public transport in US is impossible for cultural reasons. So there's no public transport so most expensive areas will fight to the death to keep population density low. Because more people means more cars means more traffic means whole place becomes terrible. End result: cost of living is too high, commutes too long. Not exactly the way I'd like to live.

eeZah7Ux 8y ago
> achieving good public transport in US is impossible for cultural reasons Self-driving cars are not going to solve congestion - quite the opposite. Personal transport will remain extremely inefficient in space and fuel compared to public transport.
- GreaterFool 8y ago
  (Good) Public transport is better than (shared) personal transport which is better than individual car ownership. But from what I've observed about US culture, public transport is never going to happen :) So if you take that off the list, what's the alternative?
WorldMaker 8y ago
If self-driving cars were an adequate solution to public transportation we'd have solved this with taxi dispatch algorithms or smart bus route planning a century ago (and let's face that this is exactly what the auto industry encouraged most American cities to do, when most of America dismantled trolleys/passenger train travel/elevated trains). Self-driving cars are just the current distraction from solving real public transportation.
MiddleEndian 8y ago
This is why I'm only willing to live in US cities with functional subways, but of course that's a luxury I get as a software engineer.
- sethhochberg 8y ago
  Right? I feel like we'd do a lot of service to the arguments here if we could just get people to stop saying "the US" like it is some monolithic entity

eeZah7Ux 8y ago

> achieving good public transport in US is impossible for cultural reasons Self-driving cars are not going to solve congestion - quite the opposite. Personal transport will remain extremely inefficient in space and fuel compared to public transport.

GreaterFool 8y ago
(Good) Public transport is better than (shared) personal transport which is better than individual car ownership. But from what I've observed about US culture, public transport is never going to happen :) So if you take that off the list, what's the alternative?

WorldMaker 8y ago

If self-driving cars were an adequate solution to public transportation we'd have solved this with taxi dispatch algorithms or smart bus route planning a century ago (and let's face that this is exactly what the auto industry encouraged most American cities to do, when most of America dismantled trolleys/passenger train travel/elevated trains). Self-driving cars are just the current distraction from solving real public transportation.

MiddleEndian 8y ago

This is why I'm only willing to live in US cities with functional subways, but of course that's a luxury I get as a software engineer.

sethhochberg 8y ago
Right? I feel like we'd do a lot of service to the arguments here if we could just get people to stop saying "the US" like it is some monolithic entity