> by definition 51% of people in a democracy can decide they will not be stopped from driving. This is an oversimplification. First of all, some percentage of

> by definition 51% of people in a democracy can decide they will not be stopped from driving. This is an oversimplification. First of all, some percentage of legal drivers are not allowed to vote (non-citizens, 15-18 year olds, felons). Second, this assumes a "pure democracy," which the USA is not for several reasons, first of which is the fact that it's representative, second of which is that its representative rations haven't been updated in like a hundred years (if they were, there'd be thousands of members of congress, and California would have over a tenth of them), and finally, because of disenfranchisement through voter roll purges, gerrymandering, and political arrests (such as when ex-con felons in Florida were directly lied to and told they were allowed to vote so as to entrap them into committing the felony of voting as a felon). Anyway we shouldn't assume people wouldn't vote against taking away the right to drive, if it came with the building out of good public transit infrastructure in return, which is what the USA desperately needs anyway. Not that I'm naive enough to think there's political will to make this happen, but the whole self driving car thing would be pretty moot if it was easy to get around San Francisco as it is to get around Paris, NYC, Tokyo, Taipei, etc.