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I work for a car company. I think automobiles have unlocked an almost unimaginable amount of economic activity. I also think that automobiles, if they were rele
by csours 6y ago
I work for a car company. I think automobiles have unlocked an almost unimaginable amount of economic activity. I also think that automobiles, if they were released now, would be considered unacceptably dangerous. It's not an easy set of thoughts to square up.
- np_tedious 6y agoPerhaps. But "now" doesn't mean the current state of the world unless there were 100 years of automobiles already behind us. So this is a pretty difficult counterfactual to imagine
- csours 6y agoI agree its hard to imagine. Thinking about places and times with fewer cars, it's not generally safer per mile traveled. Riding a horse is actually pretty dangerous. Riding a bike can be pretty dangerous too, but a lot of that danger is from cars.
- swader999 6y agoYet here we are releasing self driving cars, e-scooters, drones and so on.
- C1sc0cat 6y agoIts not as if Horses and horse riding are not dangerous as well as the poop problem.
- mcv 6y agoTrue, but bicycles are pretty great. For short distances, if you're in sufficient health. Cars are too useful to completely get rid off, but restricting them to those uses that don't have a suitable alternative would be a big improvement.
- bzbarsky 6y agoThe other important bicycle qualifier is "in good weather". Bicycles are not that great during a rainstorm, for example. At least from my point of view; I know some people who really enjoy being rained on and don't mind biking in the rain. Similarly, I suspect most people would treat June-August in Florida as not "good weather" for bicycling, but some would consider it ok.
- bzbarsky 6y agoAutomobiles were considered unacceptably dangerous in many places when they were actually released. Towns had ordinances banning them. There was a bunch of lobbying and counter-lobbying. They gained a foothold in some places first, then the benefits became more apparent to others. There was a _lot_ of advertising on the part of car companies. Slowly car ownership spread and became more accepted, and in parallel systems were put in place to make cars safer. The whole process took many decades. Of course I agree that overall societal risk tolerance was to a large extent higher 110 years ago and at least in the US the central government was a lot less powerful. The same process would not proceed in exactly the same way today, though I see some parallels in how self-driving cars are being slowly introduced.