this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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Public transport has been around for many decades. The US infrastructure and now lifestyle / culture is not built for it and there's not a great reason to think it's suddenly going to catch on. Self driving cars have real potential in the US to have an environmental impact as well save many thousands of lives each year. I wish you were more excited about this.
Well, we're not. There's a reason you don't see New York City jumping to adopt this tech, and it's because they bothered to invest in a public transit system that makes cars obsolete for a lot of people. If we got decent public transit in more cities combined with an actually functional high speed rail system in this country, you'd see cars become obsolete for a whole lot more people.
This "lifestyle/culture" developed out of sheer necessity given the geographic size of this country and the complete failure to invest in mass transit. It can and must be changed, if we want our future to be viable at all.
Your argument has been around for decades. This already could have been and "should" have been done. There's no cultural or tech change Now that's going to spur it all the sudden. This is like complaining about gun control. Of course it makes sense and would be better for US - that's blatantly obvious, but to kid yourself into thinking that therenis momentum for such a change is foolish. Self driving cars offer a real chance for change. Embrace.
While it is exciting, I can see both sides of the argument here. The infrastructure here in the US is built around cars so it would be much less effort to automate the existing infrastructure. On the other hand, things could be so much more efficient if we focused on trains and other public transport that excels at transporting a large amount of people. But that would take so much more effort and money to update the infrastructure.
Why not do both? They aren't mutually exclusive. I feel strongly for reasons I've outlined that one has much more potential than another, but I'm not anti public transport. I think we need to invest heavily though where the most potential lies.