[noelherrick]

Self-driving cars are a solution to a problem we already fixed a hundred years ago: we fixed transit with trains.

PS: I'm not claiming that every single transport need can be solved by trains, but they do dramatically reduce the cost in human life. Yes, they have to be part of a mix of other solutions, such as denser housing. Yes, you can have bad actors that don't maintain their rail and underpay/understaff their engineers which leads to derailments, etc. I say this because the utopia of not having to drive, not caring about sleepiness, ill health, or intoxication, not having to finance or repair a vehicle or buy insurance, not renting parking spots, all that is available today without having to invent new lidar sensors or machine vision. You can just live in London or Tokyo.

[pdonis]

> Self-driving cars are a solution to a problem we already fixed a hundred years ago: we fixed transit with trains.

Not for everyone, we didn't. Self-driving cars have the potential to serve people who don't want to restrict themselves to going places trains can take them.

> You can just live in London or Tokyo.

Not everyone either can or wants to live in such places. If I prefer to live in a less dense area and have a car, the risk is mine to take. And if at some point a self-driving car can drive me more reliably than I can drive myself, I will gladly let it do so.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

> Tokyo

I traveled there regularly, for over 20 years.

Their train system is the Eighth Wonder.

A lot of the reason, is cultural. Trains are a standard part of life. Most shows have significant scenes on commuter trains, as do ads. Probably wouldn’t apply to nations like the US.