this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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Humans cannot, in fact, drive cars well. Humans kill tens of thousands of other humans with cars every year in the US alone.
Yup, cameras and humans share various exploits. Self-driving is going to work better than humans once every car has it and communicates with each other, allowing for minimal gaps even at high speeds, once roads are all very standardized and in a database, and-
Wait, that's trains
Fucking build more electrified high-speed rail and forget tech bros' shitty promises
I was getting mildly outraged and ready to comment how you were re-deriving the train at first. Well played.
They really had me in the first half, not gonna lie
Trains don't go from my driveway to my destination exactly when I feel like going there, while carrying all my luggage.
I get that it's fun to be smug on the Internet, but private vehicles aren't going away any time soon.
It's not a binary decision between all cars and no cars. If trains and public transit have enough capacity and convenience to make most trips feasible by them, car infrastructure will no longer have to be added (in fact can be converted into bus and bike lanes) while shortening trip duration (less cars = less jams) and improving safety.
Also, you barely have luggage for most trips. 99% of my trips are made with luggage I can carry to the nearest stop and board the bus with.
I have a van load of tools to transport most of the trips I make.
So you'll keep using it. And enjoy narrow but way less jammed streets. Maybe you'll be incentivized/required to join the self-driving network, but in decades, not years, after positioning markers have been added to every road in the last repaving, while infrastructure funds have been directed towards making the city traversible for non-drivers.
See, the problem is, where I live already has great public transport, including electric commuter trains and buses, lots of cycle lanes etc.
And, despite that, traffic is still shit, because there's a massive chunk of the population who need to be on the road for whatever reason.
Road tax
ROAD TAX
ROAD TAX!!!
Many people expect public transport companies to be profitable while allowing an incredible portion of tax money for road maintainance. If you want people to take personal responsibility for the consequences of something that destroys cities when in large amounts, you add an appropriate tax.
I strongly suggest you look at how roads are taxed here in NZ. Motorists already subsidise public transport, as well as being subsidised through rates, and it's still at cost parity with driving in most cases. Our biggest city is also bringing in a congestion charge.
Public transport is incredibly expensive to run.
I 100% support road taxes
Yeah it's not a binary decision, but trains are almost never the answer for a lot of people. If I'm going less than a couple hours, then I'm driving that distance. If I'm going much further than that, I'm flying. If I need to move a ton of stuff, I'm either taking my car or renting a uhaul. If I'm taking a lot of people, I'm taking my car. Trains never enter the picture unless I'm looking for variety in my mode of transport.
And trains do not shorten the trip duratiion, not without absolutely kneecapping the roads. And over long distances, they're absolutely slow compared to planes. In the short distance, they're slow compared to cars.
Depends on where you live. In most of Europe, trains are frequent and direct between city centers.
My parents tend to prefer the car for the 3-hour trip (also 3 hours by train and bus) to Grandma's when at least 3 people go because it's cheaper. A higher toll on the highway could change the threshold, and we'd go more comfortably. Politicians can smoothly adjust the number of people for which public transport wins out with taxes and investments. You're more likely to cling to the car and they've accounted for that in their models, maybe making you switch for a specific kind of trip is not worth the investment. There are lots of factors, such as political alignment, culture, wealth distribution, existing infrastructure etc. that make some jurisdictions able to move the threshold faster than others. Still, the majority of people using cars is unsustainable for lots of reasons:
so there is an obligation to eventually push the threshold in favor of public transit for most trips.
It definitely makes sense in Europe. It really doesn’t in the sparse US west, but it might in the US east where it already exists due to population density.
In the west, my neighborhood is larger than many European cities. That isn’t hyperbole either, it’s 30,000 acres/121km^2^. Not completely developed yet, but that is the full size of the area.
I would love light rail or high speed between cities but it would take a century and Trillions to do and then I’d still have to drive to a station. There’s just no way I’d be able to walk like I did in Germany. I do wish, it was amazing.
Take a second to think about that though, why is your neighborhood bigger than entire cities? Spoiler, the answer is that it was built that way, with absolutely no thought given to how people might function if they don't want to have to drive to the grocery store or their job.
Because we have the land. Simple as that. Oh and greed. That ruins everything.
Very well stated. Thank you.
And the really dumb thing is that lots of modern non-selfdriving cars now have lidar sensors to help the humans not crash into things. Musk apparently wants the AI to be working at a disadvantage.
He just wants people to buy his junk, and doesn't care how many people would have to die as collateral damage.
That should tell you just how vastly complicated driving is.
There are plenty of uncomplicated things that humans do poorly, too.
Walking up and down stairs, not that I'd know.