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Cars are very UNSAFE, for the record. [1] Self-driving cars will be better... but autonomous cars are SUCH an intellectually lazy progression from the status qu

Cars are very UNSAFE, for the record. [1] Self-driving cars will be better... but autonomous cars are SUCH an intellectually lazy progression from the status quo that I hope they won't happen. Rather than autonomous cars, we should be focusing on Taleb's antifragile solutions like walking and biking. This means the design of dense housing and walkable streets, and the removal of two-ton bullets that massacre children every day. I grew up in Los Angeles, so I'm aware of how alien the concept is of a walkable city to Californians. It wasn't until I moved to the East Coast and Europe that I realized other people don't need to drive ten miles to see friends or pick up dinner. If HN types don't recognize and question these car-dependent assumptions, there's no chance the rest of the country will. Nor would most Americans want to address the question. To accurately price vehicle traffic for real infrastructure costs (much less negative externalities or pigovian taxes) would absolutely devastate the value of car-dependent real estate... which is most of the country. I guess we'll just continue letting children and geniuses be killed. At best, self-driving cars will continue this horrible urban planning and somewhat lower the body count. It's a goddamn shame. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...

rinon 12y ago
Completely agree on your suggestions for urban areas. However, not everyone wants dense housing... Suburbs exist because people do not want to be that close to each other. Some people want to own their own yards/property/houses, have open space, and are willing to trade driving significantly more (with its associated dangers) for these features. People are going to create the kind of environment they want to live in, and we should figure out ways to make that environment better/safer, rather than dictating that everyone must live in (well-planned) urban environments.
- Chevalier 12y ago
  Of course there's a place for suburbs, and I'm not opposed to the idea of less dense housing. Such housing can exist in the context of walkable neighborhoods with public transit, though. I think there's quite a bit of merit to firm city limits that prevent sprawl and car dependence. That said... if someone wants to live in exurbia, he should pay an appropriate amount to access amenities downtown. It's absurd that someone can pay $1500/month for a studio downtown, but only a few feet from his front door, anyone can drive a similarly-sized vehicle at hazardous speeds for free. Driving is essentially free in the US, despite enormous costs in terms of infrastructure and public space. That needs to change. If car-dependent exurbs must continue to exist, then we should at least make those exurbs responsible for their own costs rather than forcing urban residents to have their neighborhoods destroyed and then pay for the privilege.
  - Turing_Machine 12y ago
    "That said... if someone wants to live in exurbia, he should pay an appropriate amount to access amenities downtown." Wait: downtowns are dying all across the country, and you want to solve that problem by charging people more money to go there?
    - Chevalier 12y ago
      Downtowns are dying because parasitic exurbs have both removed tax revenue from the urban core while multiplying their infrastructure/services/health costs. It's unsurprising that residents flee cities that become dangerous, dirty highways. Some of these cities are now beyond repair, not least for the overarching national trend of capital concentration in Silicon Valley/Silicon Alley, but these reforms would still help enormously. For example, Bloomberg's plan to toll bridges into New York City that was vetoed by car-dependent Albany. It's absolutely ridiculous that exurban commuters are allowed to devastate NYC every day, for free, because they're too entitled either to live in the city or even to commute via less destructive trains. I would really love to hear your explanation why New York City should be required to spend billions on bridges and roads crushed by automobile traffic for commuters who don't even pay taxes into the repair fund. Much less why NYC residents should be forced to give up enormous swaths of precious road real estate at peril to their health and quality of life.
      - Turing_Machine 12y ago
        "I would really love to hear your explanation why New York City should be required to spend billions on bridges and roads crushed by automobile traffic for commuters who don't even pay taxes into the repair fund" They don't. They can stop doing it any time they want. I don't think the result is going to be what you expect, though, especially now that no one has to live (or even visit) the city to do most types of business.
      - seanflyon 12y ago
        Cities get much more revenue from sales tax than from property tax. That means that your notion of parasitic exurbs is backwards.
- ild 12y ago
  The dependence on cars creates very unhealthy political climate (wars, climate change denial) and creates obesity. Unwillingness to comprehend the issues, created by cars is actually a cultural defect of the nation. OTOH, preference for suburban lifestyle is also a purely cultural phenomenon, and is caused by the fact people prefer living arrangements the grew up in. I grew up, for example in a dense Soviet city, and find big house with a yard absolutely repulsive.
- ild 12y ago
  The dependence on cars creates very unhealthy political climate (wars, climate change denial) and creates obesity. Unwillingness to comprehend the issues, created by cars is actually a cultural defect of the nation. OTOH, preference for suburban lifestyle is also a purely cultural phenomenon, and is caused by the fact people prefer living arrangements the grew up in. I grew up, for example in a dense Soviet city, and find big house with a yard absolutely repulsive.
- vidarh 12y ago
  Frankly I think you'd find a lot of people would happily move into denser areas if they were more pedestrian friendly. And so much of the sprawl in the US is not about residential housing taking up lots of space, but about separating shops and other essential parts of infrastructure from housing in a way that is only tolerable because of the car culture. E.g. I used to travel to Palo Alto and Menlo Park a lot for business a few years back. I don't have a drivers license, so I experimented with how possible it was to stay at various hotels while walking as much as possible (didn't want to depend on co-workers or cabs to get everywhere, and I like walking). At one point I stayed in Atherton and walked to/from offices in Menlo Park. People probably thought I was pretty crazy, but to me the distance was no more than what I'm used to, and the "commute" length was shorter. But what got me was the structure of these - by US standards - quite reasonably pedestrian friendly small towns. If you lived right next to Menlo Park or Redwood City or Palo Alto town centres, a lot of things would be within walking distance. But basics were missing. Such as grocery stores. I soon learned to pick hotels in suitable locations to be within walking distance of somewhere where it'd be possible to actually find a decent selection of food nearby (eating out every day gets boring surprisingly quickly). On top of the distance, the pedestrian friendly areas were "islands" not linked in any reasonable way. E.g. from Menlo Park to Atherton or Redwood City it seemed to me I had the choice between walking down El Camino Real, including a long stretch with pretty much no roadside lighting (fun walk back late evenings) and no sidewalk (for those unfamiliar, El Camino Real is one of the main roads in the area and heavily trafficked), or taking a huge - 3 times the walking distance or so - (but scenic) detour through back roads past Atherton estates. (Amusingly, as I tried the backroads through Atherton, everyone I met greeted me as I walked past. It seemed like people assumed I must belong there, because why else would I be walking there? (I'm used to people being more friendly in California than I'm used to from London, but this was a huge step up).) This is not about density, though density helps, but about a culture where everything is centralised because everyone drives, and where everyone drives because everything is centralised.
Turing_Machine 12y ago
"Rather than autonomous cars, we should be focusing on Taleb's antifragile solutions like walking and biking." Let me guess: you're in your 20s-30s and in perfect health, that you live in an urban environment, and that you don't have a family to shop for.
- bullfightonmars 12y ago
  Walking and biking infrastructure and livable/walkable cities/neighborhoods are key pieces to health from youth into old age. Just because it doesn't now exist in the United States doesn't it mean it can't or should not.
  - Turing_Machine 12y ago
    The population density in the United States is far too low to support this. Increase the population of the U.S. to a billion or so, then maybe it will work.
    - bri3d 12y ago
      The population density in thousands of places in the US is more than high enough to support more sustainable transportation solutions, but yet even those places don't. Do you believe that the existence of exurbs and rural areas is what's preventing cities from pursuing less fragile means of transit? Why?
      - anon012012 12y ago
        Because the land is cheap, it is generally easier to expand and drive, and also because the US auto industry is 3 million jobs directly, 13 million indirectly, 2nd biggest auto industry on the planet, and so politically I guess it would cause problems to push for biking cities.
      - Turing_Machine 12y ago
        "The population density in thousands of places in the US is more than high enough to support more sustainable transportation solutions, but yet even those places don't." Places where the population density is high enough to have it (New York, other parts of BosWash, Chicagoland) by and large do have it. The OP was complaining about Los Angeles. Five minutes with Wikipedia and a calculator will demonstrate why mass transit sucks there, and always will. And LA is dense compared to most of the country.
seanmcdirmid 12y ago
Dense housing won't necessarily fix this problem. At Beijing-levels of density, we still have lots of problems with cars and plenty of people who bike and walk (including those damn electric bikes). It works well in the Netherlands because the density is high but "not that high," and bikes are given good infrastructure. Even then, self-driving cars will be a big win for those times when you really do need to drive somewhere (e.g. to go shopping, fill in gaps of good transit, and so on).
bullfightonmars 12y ago
Those "antifragile" solutions have been used to great effect in Netherlands where they have built a massive cycling, walking, and transit infrastructure. They were able to build this infrastructure due to a popular protest movement, 'Stop de Kindermoord' (Stop the Child Murder) which was in reaction to exactly the problem we face in the US of deaths and injury caused by motorists. There is a great video about the protest movement and the transformation of dutch infrastructure here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuBdf9jYj7o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuBdf9jYj7o
dragonwriter 12y ago
> Rather than autonomous cars, we should be focusing on Taleb's antifragile solutions like walking and biking. Self-driving cars are an enabling technology for lower-cost, more-readily-available, on-demand transport, which is a wedge to dismantling the car-ownership-necessary society, which itself is a route to get to public support for community planning that better supports walking and biking as primary modes of transport for able citizens for tasks for which they are suitable, with automotive transport as a secondary form for situations and individuals for whom walking/biking are not suitable. The two approaches are complementary, not opposed.
CalRobert 12y ago
"If HN types don't recognize and question these car-dependent assumptions, there's no chance the rest of the country will. " Some of us do. If you hang out on HN when Europe is awake it helps. I used to live in California, now am in Dublin, and indeed it's remarkable how much life fits in a 2 mile radius. More than I had within 40 miles in LA. Unfortunately the US has a culture which is positively allergic to change, and a generally ignorant populace, so it's hard to imagine it changing substantially. It is, though, slightly. City centers are becoming more popular and the suburbanite boomers are starting to die off.

rinon 12y ago

Completely agree on your suggestions for urban areas. However, not everyone wants dense housing... Suburbs exist because people do not want to be that close to each other. Some people want to own their own yards/property/houses, have open space, and are willing to trade driving significantly more (with its associated dangers) for these features. People are going to create the kind of environment they want to live in, and we should figure out ways to make that environment better/safer, rather than dictating that everyone must live in (well-planned) urban environments.

Chevalier 12y ago
Of course there's a place for suburbs, and I'm not opposed to the idea of less dense housing. Such housing can exist in the context of walkable neighborhoods with public transit, though. I think there's quite a bit of merit to firm city limits that prevent sprawl and car dependence. That said... if someone wants to live in exurbia, he should pay an appropriate amount to access amenities downtown. It's absurd that someone can pay $1500/month for a studio downtown, but only a few feet from his front door, anyone can drive a similarly-sized vehicle at hazardous speeds for free. Driving is essentially free in the US, despite enormous costs in terms of infrastructure and public space. That needs to change. If car-dependent exurbs must continue to exist, then we should at least make those exurbs responsible for their own costs rather than forcing urban residents to have their neighborhoods destroyed and then pay for the privilege.
- Turing_Machine 12y ago
  "That said... if someone wants to live in exurbia, he should pay an appropriate amount to access amenities downtown." Wait: downtowns are dying all across the country, and you want to solve that problem by charging people more money to go there?
  - Chevalier 12y ago
    Downtowns are dying because parasitic exurbs have both removed tax revenue from the urban core while multiplying their infrastructure/services/health costs. It's unsurprising that residents flee cities that become dangerous, dirty highways. Some of these cities are now beyond repair, not least for the overarching national trend of capital concentration in Silicon Valley/Silicon Alley, but these reforms would still help enormously. For example, Bloomberg's plan to toll bridges into New York City that was vetoed by car-dependent Albany. It's absolutely ridiculous that exurban commuters are allowed to devastate NYC every day, for free, because they're too entitled either to live in the city or even to commute via less destructive trains. I would really love to hear your explanation why New York City should be required to spend billions on bridges and roads crushed by automobile traffic for commuters who don't even pay taxes into the repair fund. Much less why NYC residents should be forced to give up enormous swaths of precious road real estate at peril to their health and quality of life.
    - Turing_Machine 12y ago
      "I would really love to hear your explanation why New York City should be required to spend billions on bridges and roads crushed by automobile traffic for commuters who don't even pay taxes into the repair fund" They don't. They can stop doing it any time they want. I don't think the result is going to be what you expect, though, especially now that no one has to live (or even visit) the city to do most types of business.
    - seanflyon 12y ago
      Cities get much more revenue from sales tax than from property tax. That means that your notion of parasitic exurbs is backwards.
ild 12y ago
The dependence on cars creates very unhealthy political climate (wars, climate change denial) and creates obesity. Unwillingness to comprehend the issues, created by cars is actually a cultural defect of the nation. OTOH, preference for suburban lifestyle is also a purely cultural phenomenon, and is caused by the fact people prefer living arrangements the grew up in. I grew up, for example in a dense Soviet city, and find big house with a yard absolutely repulsive.
ild 12y ago
The dependence on cars creates very unhealthy political climate (wars, climate change denial) and creates obesity. Unwillingness to comprehend the issues, created by cars is actually a cultural defect of the nation. OTOH, preference for suburban lifestyle is also a purely cultural phenomenon, and is caused by the fact people prefer living arrangements the grew up in. I grew up, for example in a dense Soviet city, and find big house with a yard absolutely repulsive.
vidarh 12y ago
Frankly I think you'd find a lot of people would happily move into denser areas if they were more pedestrian friendly. And so much of the sprawl in the US is not about residential housing taking up lots of space, but about separating shops and other essential parts of infrastructure from housing in a way that is only tolerable because of the car culture. E.g. I used to travel to Palo Alto and Menlo Park a lot for business a few years back. I don't have a drivers license, so I experimented with how possible it was to stay at various hotels while walking as much as possible (didn't want to depend on co-workers or cabs to get everywhere, and I like walking). At one point I stayed in Atherton and walked to/from offices in Menlo Park. People probably thought I was pretty crazy, but to me the distance was no more than what I'm used to, and the "commute" length was shorter. But what got me was the structure of these - by US standards - quite reasonably pedestrian friendly small towns. If you lived right next to Menlo Park or Redwood City or Palo Alto town centres, a lot of things would be within walking distance. But basics were missing. Such as grocery stores. I soon learned to pick hotels in suitable locations to be within walking distance of somewhere where it'd be possible to actually find a decent selection of food nearby (eating out every day gets boring surprisingly quickly). On top of the distance, the pedestrian friendly areas were "islands" not linked in any reasonable way. E.g. from Menlo Park to Atherton or Redwood City it seemed to me I had the choice between walking down El Camino Real, including a long stretch with pretty much no roadside lighting (fun walk back late evenings) and no sidewalk (for those unfamiliar, El Camino Real is one of the main roads in the area and heavily trafficked), or taking a huge - 3 times the walking distance or so - (but scenic) detour through back roads past Atherton estates. (Amusingly, as I tried the backroads through Atherton, everyone I met greeted me as I walked past. It seemed like people assumed I must belong there, because why else would I be walking there? (I'm used to people being more friendly in California than I'm used to from London, but this was a huge step up).) This is not about density, though density helps, but about a culture where everything is centralised because everyone drives, and where everyone drives because everything is centralised.

Turing_Machine 12y ago

"Rather than autonomous cars, we should be focusing on Taleb's antifragile solutions like walking and biking." Let me guess: you're in your 20s-30s and in perfect health, that you live in an urban environment, and that you don't have a family to shop for.

bullfightonmars 12y ago
Walking and biking infrastructure and livable/walkable cities/neighborhoods are key pieces to health from youth into old age. Just because it doesn't now exist in the United States doesn't it mean it can't or should not.
- Turing_Machine 12y ago
  The population density in the United States is far too low to support this. Increase the population of the U.S. to a billion or so, then maybe it will work.
  - bri3d 12y ago
    The population density in thousands of places in the US is more than high enough to support more sustainable transportation solutions, but yet even those places don't. Do you believe that the existence of exurbs and rural areas is what's preventing cities from pursuing less fragile means of transit? Why?
    - anon012012 12y ago
      Because the land is cheap, it is generally easier to expand and drive, and also because the US auto industry is 3 million jobs directly, 13 million indirectly, 2nd biggest auto industry on the planet, and so politically I guess it would cause problems to push for biking cities.
    - Turing_Machine 12y ago
      "The population density in thousands of places in the US is more than high enough to support more sustainable transportation solutions, but yet even those places don't." Places where the population density is high enough to have it (New York, other parts of BosWash, Chicagoland) by and large do have it. The OP was complaining about Los Angeles. Five minutes with Wikipedia and a calculator will demonstrate why mass transit sucks there, and always will. And LA is dense compared to most of the country.

seanmcdirmid 12y ago

Dense housing won't necessarily fix this problem. At Beijing-levels of density, we still have lots of problems with cars and plenty of people who bike and walk (including those damn electric bikes). It works well in the Netherlands because the density is high but "not that high," and bikes are given good infrastructure. Even then, self-driving cars will be a big win for those times when you really do need to drive somewhere (e.g. to go shopping, fill in gaps of good transit, and so on).

bullfightonmars 12y ago

Those "antifragile" solutions have been used to great effect in Netherlands where they have built a massive cycling, walking, and transit infrastructure. They were able to build this infrastructure due to a popular protest movement, 'Stop de Kindermoord' (Stop the Child Murder) which was in reaction to exactly the problem we face in the US of deaths and injury caused by motorists. There is a great video about the protest movement and the transformation of dutch infrastructure here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuBdf9jYj7o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuBdf9jYj7o

dragonwriter 12y ago

> Rather than autonomous cars, we should be focusing on Taleb's antifragile solutions like walking and biking. Self-driving cars are an enabling technology for lower-cost, more-readily-available, on-demand transport, which is a wedge to dismantling the car-ownership-necessary society, which itself is a route to get to public support for community planning that better supports walking and biking as primary modes of transport for able citizens for tasks for which they are suitable, with automotive transport as a secondary form for situations and individuals for whom walking/biking are not suitable. The two approaches are complementary, not opposed.

CalRobert 12y ago

"If HN types don't recognize and question these car-dependent assumptions, there's no chance the rest of the country will. " Some of us do. If you hang out on HN when Europe is awake it helps. I used to live in California, now am in Dublin, and indeed it's remarkable how much life fits in a 2 mile radius. More than I had within 40 miles in LA. Unfortunately the US has a culture which is positively allergic to change, and a generally ignorant populace, so it's hard to imagine it changing substantially. It is, though, slightly. City centers are becoming more popular and the suburbanite boomers are starting to die off.