Go into a thread on autonomous cars and all you’ll hear is about how they’re useless and we don’t need them because we’ll just eliminate all cars before they’re ready.
Usually, what I see in those threads are a whole bunch of people arguing that autonomous cars would be some kind of silver-bullet panacea for traffic.
Frankly, what you wrote sounds like a strawman misinterpretation of an argument I myself make: I argue that autonomous cars are not a solution, but not “because we’ll just eliminate all cars before they’re ready.” They’re not a solution simply because they’re still cars, and therefore take up the same grossly excessive amount of space as non-autonomous cars do.
They’re not a solution simply because they’re still cars, and therefore take up the same grossly excessive amount of space as non-autonomous cars do.
Yeah, the only things autonomous cars might reduce are:
Parking, but only if we forego our current private ownership model and everyone starts doing self-driving robo-taxis everywhere (unlikely)
Road fatalities, but only if the self-driving tech proves statistically better than human drivers in a wide range of conditions (jury is still out)
It’s the same fundamental problem that electric cars have: geometry. Cars – even if electric and self-driving – are simply grossly inefficient at moving people for the amount of land they require:
Except that the jury is not “still out” on number two, it is simply a matter of time, engineering, and training before they are statistically safer than humans.
Waymo’s cars are already safer than humans in their limited conditions.
![[meme] There is no one-size-fits-all solution to transportation](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/0bfe1df9-1b6b-414f-88b3-4e7d57514682.webp){kind=link}
Go into a thread on autonomous cars and all you’ll hear is about how they’re useless and we don’t need them because we’ll just eliminate all cars before they’re ready.
I have literally never seen that argument made.
Usually, what I see in those threads are a whole bunch of people arguing that autonomous cars would be some kind of silver-bullet panacea for traffic.
Frankly, what you wrote sounds like a strawman misinterpretation of an argument I myself make: I argue that autonomous cars are not a solution, but not “because we’ll just eliminate all cars before they’re ready.” They’re not a solution simply because they’re still cars, and therefore take up the same grossly excessive amount of space as non-autonomous cars do.
Yeah, the only things autonomous cars might reduce are:
It’s the same fundamental problem that electric cars have: geometry. Cars – even if electric and self-driving – are simply grossly inefficient at moving people for the amount of land they require:
Except that the jury is not “still out” on number two, it is simply a matter of time, engineering, and training before they are statistically safer than humans.
Waymo’s cars are already safer than humans in their limited conditions.