this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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Self driving cars could actually be kind of a good stepping stone to better public transit while making more efficient use of existing roadways. You hit a button to request a car, it drives you to wherever, you need to go, and then gets tasked to pick up the next person. Where you used to need 10 cars for 10 people, you now need one.
Thats still only a few people.. compared to a bus?
Why not just have a bus??
I take the bus to work every day. It's a set route for my set work schedule and it's great.
But everything else I do in my life? Not on a bus route, schedules are slow on the weekend or stop completely after a certain time.
When you come up with a bus that goes wherever I want to go when I want, I'm in. Until then, a car that doesn't require a driver and is easily shared between many people to take them the last mile is an actual solution.
Buses suck because they're like cars only worse.
Cars suck because of the amount of infrastructure you have to build for them all to avoid proper design of anything.
In a well designed area, you'd be able to get wherever you needed without having to take either of these things.
Uber
You mean like a self driving Uber?
Why is that necessary?
Sure you might have a lower number of cars total, but you'll also have way more cars on the road, making the traffic problem even worse (because you can now have more cars than people). I'm guessing we'll be seeing legislation that disallows empty cars driving around in big cities.
I don't think it would necessarily mean more cars. It means that your car takes you to work but instead of sitting in the parking lot whole day it drives other people around making you money and then at the end of the day it takes you back home and perhaps then goes back to being a taxi for the night.
You won't own the cars. The cost alone would be prohibitive, but operation and maintenance is far better done by an organization rather than an individual.
And there's almost no way a modern (feudalistic) car company will allow you to use your car this way to earn money.
The corporate masters are already not so keen on paying you when you are actually driving the thing. Do you really think they'll let you in on the racket?