3 ms·
False dichotomy, my friend. Look at Europe (or heck, NYC) for alternatives to a car-dominated society: * walkable, mixed-use, dense neighborhoods * public tr
by romwell 7y ago
False dichotomy, my friend.
Look at Europe (or heck, NYC) for alternatives to a car-dominated society:
* walkable, mixed-use, dense neighborhoods
* public transportation (rail-based, in particular)
* car-free streets (and cities)
The solution to traffic deaths is not self-driving cars. It's moving away from the Levittown-style suburbs that have proliferated the US since WW II.
- tim333 7y ago>The solution to traffic deaths is not self-driving cars. Moving the world to a traffic free societies is not happening in a hurry, if ever. I'm writing this from a pedestrianised area in London but we still have plenty of cars. Self driving type tech however has the potential to transform things in the next decade or so. Even if we don't have actual self driving the collision avoidance tech is getting quite good eg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21388790 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21388790
- shadowgovt 7y agoCool, so tear down American civic architecture to its bedrock and rebuild it from scratch. Not impossible, but less than likely in the short horizon. We'll probably get working SDCs sooner.
- romwell 7y agoTrue that, but not mutually exclusive. We used to have streetcars. We tore then down. We can put them back.
- shadowgovt 7y agoAnd a self-driving streetcar is a more constrained problem to solve than a self-driving car.
- romwell 7y agoYup! Still nontrivial, but actively worked on[1]. [1]https://www.wired.com/story/siemens-potsdam-self-driving-street-car-tram/ https://www.wired.com/story/siemens-potsdam-self-driving-str...