Paradoxically, the large scale deployment of self driving cars will improve the walkability of neighborhoods by reducing the demand for parking.
One can also envision building on self driving tech to electronically couple closely spaced cars so that more passengers can fit in a given area, such that throughout of passenger miles per hour can increase several times over. Cars could tailgate like virtual train cars following each other at highway speeds with very little separation, lanes could be narrowed to fit more cars side by side in traffic, etc.
How will it reduce demand for parking? Do you envision the car will drop someone off and then drive away until it finds a parking spot that’s farther than the person would want to walk?
That sounds like a very hard problem , and people wouldn’t be happy waiting 5-10 minutes for their car to navigate back to them. Or it would just cruise around looking for parking, causing more traffic.
Cars could tailgate like virtual train cars following each other at highway speeds with very little separation, lanes could be narrowed to fit more cars side by side in traffic, etc.
It’s still early. We still need more data. They should be closely watched. But self driving cars do appear to be safer. That’s why they are a great idea. They are making driving and roads better.
I don’t have the means or motivation to do research now from the couch, so I’ll concede you may be correct. However, I think it might be even safer to take those same billions of dollars and invest them in mass transit and other infrastructure changes. That would mean fewer car accidents, less pollution, nicer spaces, healthier people, healthier economies, etc. private car ownership cannot be the long term solution. If it’s not an outright dead end, it’s certainly a side street instead of high speed rail (if you’ll pardon a strained metaphor).
The challenge is one approach only needs to modify the transit infrastructure. The other means having to tear down and build new commercial and residential properties and force people and businesses to relocate in order to have a vaguely sane transit system. My area desperately wanted to do transit but even with rather significant hypothetical funding, they could only service about 10-15% of typical trips. They’ve settled on a plan that is much less money, but only serves like 5% of trips. To go with that plan, they are making restrictions around zoning to force mid density mixed use construction only, favoring one of the two chosen transit corridors.
They are trying but just people are distributed very awkwardly for mass transit.
I’d actually be genuinely curious to see how it compares to taxi drivers, bus drivers, or ubers. Since they drive professionally, you’d hope they’d drive a bit safer than the average human.
I’m sure nothing will be able to compete with the safety numbers of trains or just being close enough to walk though.
That’s a good point, also if you can compare like to like conditions and what the data does if you exclude teen drivers. Also if you can identify incidents related to bald tires and brake failures that wouldn’t apply.
Also would be interesting to compare human augmented driving miles to full autonomous miles. With the automated emergency braking/collision alert/lane centering assist. Anecdotally was teaching my teen to drive. Suddenly a car pulls out right in front of us, zero warning. If that happened to me, with experience on a formerly normal car, I’m pretty sure I would’ve wrecked. However my kids reflex to swerve triggered the cars “evasive steering assist” and did an action movie worthy maneuver, avoiding going off into the ditch and returning just right into the lane after getting around the other car.
Thing about autonomous driving is that it seems to get the stupid easy stuff wrong in dangerous ways, but if you have a demanding precise maneuver to make, it has a better chance once that maneuver is needed.
While I’d absolutely love better and more public transit, it just doesn’t make sense in a lot of areas that are too spread out or don’t have enough people per square mile.
To be fair I don’t have 100% confidence that self driving is safer than human driving. I just believe that based on the current data, it seems to be. If new data comes out tomorrow, then I’ll look at and evaluate that data.
I also don’t believe that investment is a zero sum game. We should absolutely be investing in both. Both are valuable. You don’t have to only invest in one.
Why are they a great idea? What are they making better? How is it worth the real and opportunity costs?
Paradoxically, the large scale deployment of self driving cars will improve the walkability of neighborhoods by reducing the demand for parking.
One can also envision building on self driving tech to electronically couple closely spaced cars so that more passengers can fit in a given area, such that throughout of passenger miles per hour can increase several times over. Cars could tailgate like virtual train cars following each other at highway speeds with very little separation, lanes could be narrowed to fit more cars side by side in traffic, etc.
How will it reduce demand for parking? Do you envision the car will drop someone off and then drive away until it finds a parking spot that’s farther than the person would want to walk?
That sounds like a very hard problem , and people wouldn’t be happy waiting 5-10 minutes for their car to navigate back to them. Or it would just cruise around looking for parking, causing more traffic.
Once again reinventing buses and trains
They’re safer than human drivers. Tesla cars absolutely are not. But Waymo cars? They do seem to be.
https://www.npr.org/2025/12/12/nx-s1-5634879/why-one-trauma-doctor-sees-self-driving-cars-as-a-public-health-breakthrough
It’s still early. We still need more data. They should be closely watched. But self driving cars do appear to be safer. That’s why they are a great idea. They are making driving and roads better.
I don’t have the means or motivation to do research now from the couch, so I’ll concede you may be correct. However, I think it might be even safer to take those same billions of dollars and invest them in mass transit and other infrastructure changes. That would mean fewer car accidents, less pollution, nicer spaces, healthier people, healthier economies, etc. private car ownership cannot be the long term solution. If it’s not an outright dead end, it’s certainly a side street instead of high speed rail (if you’ll pardon a strained metaphor).
The challenge is one approach only needs to modify the transit infrastructure. The other means having to tear down and build new commercial and residential properties and force people and businesses to relocate in order to have a vaguely sane transit system. My area desperately wanted to do transit but even with rather significant hypothetical funding, they could only service about 10-15% of typical trips. They’ve settled on a plan that is much less money, but only serves like 5% of trips. To go with that plan, they are making restrictions around zoning to force mid density mixed use construction only, favoring one of the two chosen transit corridors.
They are trying but just people are distributed very awkwardly for mass transit.
It took like 100 years to build the car-hell we have now. It’s going to take a lot of time and effort to fix it.
And people are, famously, stupid. They’ll fight like hell to avoid change, but once it’s in they’ll fight like hell to keep that change.
Plus there’s a lot of selfish idiots that need to be overridden.
I’d actually be genuinely curious to see how it compares to taxi drivers, bus drivers, or ubers. Since they drive professionally, you’d hope they’d drive a bit safer than the average human.
I’m sure nothing will be able to compete with the safety numbers of trains or just being close enough to walk though.
That’s a good point, also if you can compare like to like conditions and what the data does if you exclude teen drivers. Also if you can identify incidents related to bald tires and brake failures that wouldn’t apply.
Also would be interesting to compare human augmented driving miles to full autonomous miles. With the automated emergency braking/collision alert/lane centering assist. Anecdotally was teaching my teen to drive. Suddenly a car pulls out right in front of us, zero warning. If that happened to me, with experience on a formerly normal car, I’m pretty sure I would’ve wrecked. However my kids reflex to swerve triggered the cars “evasive steering assist” and did an action movie worthy maneuver, avoiding going off into the ditch and returning just right into the lane after getting around the other car.
Thing about autonomous driving is that it seems to get the stupid easy stuff wrong in dangerous ways, but if you have a demanding precise maneuver to make, it has a better chance once that maneuver is needed.
I believe china has self driving trains.
What does this have to do with self driving cars in America?
While I’d absolutely love better and more public transit, it just doesn’t make sense in a lot of areas that are too spread out or don’t have enough people per square mile.
So leave that problem for later. Let them keep driving themselves, and focus on improvements where people actually live.
Most people live in or close to cities.
To be fair I don’t have 100% confidence that self driving is safer than human driving. I just believe that based on the current data, it seems to be. If new data comes out tomorrow, then I’ll look at and evaluate that data.
I also don’t believe that investment is a zero sum game. We should absolutely be investing in both. Both are valuable. You don’t have to only invest in one.