I couldn't get more than a few paragraphs through the article before skimming for a point, because I came to the conclusion that it's much ado about the wrong problem. We need to migrate away from...
I couldn't get more than a few paragraphs through the article before skimming for a point, because I came to the conclusion that it's much ado about the wrong problem.
We need to migrate away from individual ownership of cars sooner than later, especially in urban areas. CO2 emissions are a big reason, but there are others. Parking is a massive waste of space in city centers. It's virtually impossible to build roads big enough to handle current traffic loads in large cities.
The real problem is a lack of proper funding for public mass transit. Even if we magically solve the parking, traffic, and CO2 problems; there's still the fundamental issue that 1 motor per 1.5 person (avg occupancy) is grossly energy inefficient.
Autonomous vs Human driven is a trivial matter, one that won't matter nearly as much once we dispel the religion of car ownership.
I honestly see these people as a lot like anti-vaxxers. I get it, you like make machine go big vroom vroom. Big vroom vroom. However the chance to eliminate most traffic and most accidents and to...
I honestly see these people as a lot like anti-vaxxers. I get it, you like make machine go big vroom vroom. Big vroom vroom. However the chance to eliminate most traffic and most accidents and to reduce the need to build car-centric infrastructure, outweighs that personal benefit.
Autonomous vehicles don't really solve most of the problems of car-centric infrastructure. That's more about having better bus/rail service and making it safer and easier to ride bikes, skates,...
However the chance to eliminate most traffic and most accidents and to reduce the need to build car-centric infrastructure, outweighs that personal benefit.
Autonomous vehicles don't really solve most of the problems of car-centric infrastructure. That's more about having better bus/rail service and making it safer and easier to ride bikes, skates, and scooters. So banning driving has little to do with it.
I don't know, I think if you can use autonomous vehicles to reduce inefficiency you might need a 4 lane highway instead of an 8 lane highway, so that is a significant savings.
I don't know, I think if you can use autonomous vehicles to reduce inefficiency you might need a 4 lane highway instead of an 8 lane highway, so that is a significant savings.
The very fact that we're talking about 4 lane highways implies car-centric infrastructure. If you want to talk not having a car dependent society enough people would need to have car alternatives...
I don't know, I think if you can use autonomous vehicles to reduce inefficiency you might need a 4 lane highway instead of an 8 lane highway, so that is a significant savings.
The very fact that we're talking about 4 lane highways implies car-centric infrastructure. If you want to talk not having a car dependent society enough people would need to have car alternatives instead. Autonomous vehicles are never going to reduce inefficiency by as much as you're talking about.
They might reduce traffic jams and rubber-necking/accidents, but that's a very small part of the inefficiency problem. The vast majority of traffic issues are simply space constraints. Cars are very big, and 1.5 people occupying a car's worth of space to get from place to place is never going to be all that efficient.
But if people need to take car trips, they can make car trips. As long as you build the infrastructure to make those trips easy enough without a car, the vast majority of people will be fine doing without, or at the very least getting down to one car per household instead of one car per driving age member of the family.
I couldn't get more than a few paragraphs through the article before skimming for a point, because I came to the conclusion that it's much ado about the wrong problem.
We need to migrate away from individual ownership of cars sooner than later, especially in urban areas. CO2 emissions are a big reason, but there are others. Parking is a massive waste of space in city centers. It's virtually impossible to build roads big enough to handle current traffic loads in large cities.
The real problem is a lack of proper funding for public mass transit. Even if we magically solve the parking, traffic, and CO2 problems; there's still the fundamental issue that 1 motor per 1.5 person (avg occupancy) is grossly energy inefficient.
Autonomous vs Human driven is a trivial matter, one that won't matter nearly as much once we dispel the religion of car ownership.
I honestly see these people as a lot like anti-vaxxers. I get it, you like make machine go big vroom vroom. Big vroom vroom. However the chance to eliminate most traffic and most accidents and to reduce the need to build car-centric infrastructure, outweighs that personal benefit.
Autonomous vehicles don't really solve most of the problems of car-centric infrastructure. That's more about having better bus/rail service and making it safer and easier to ride bikes, skates, and scooters. So banning driving has little to do with it.
I don't know, I think if you can use autonomous vehicles to reduce inefficiency you might need a 4 lane highway instead of an 8 lane highway, so that is a significant savings.
The very fact that we're talking about 4 lane highways implies car-centric infrastructure. If you want to talk not having a car dependent society enough people would need to have car alternatives instead. Autonomous vehicles are never going to reduce inefficiency by as much as you're talking about.
They might reduce traffic jams and rubber-necking/accidents, but that's a very small part of the inefficiency problem. The vast majority of traffic issues are simply space constraints. Cars are very big, and 1.5 people occupying a car's worth of space to get from place to place is never going to be all that efficient.
But if people need to take car trips, they can make car trips. As long as you build the infrastructure to make those trips easy enough without a car, the vast majority of people will be fine doing without, or at the very least getting down to one car per household instead of one car per driving age member of the family.