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Comment by joshmarlow | Hacker News Reader

Well.... public transportation requires infrastructure which is not always around. In the south-east USA, for instance, there are public buses here and there but they rarely go for more than a few miles, and there are no trains or subways to travel mid-distance or between cities.

So grey-hound or car rentals are your best bet unless you already own a car.

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I'm in one of the most crowded and traffic-ridden of the world, non-US. We have a growing rail complex and a good and frequent bus system. I perceive car ownership as masochism, as public transport is always faster, and you don't have to care about parking, gas, taxes and all the other burdens associated with cars. Electric cars won't solve these, e.g. many cars can self park, but you can't save the time spent searching for a parking space, self drive or manual. It also won't save you from traffic.

There are also legal questions about self driving. For example if my theoretical fully self driving hits a passenger on the zebras that hasn't dresses up for the liking of radars, who is guilty? Certainly there needs to be put in place a big infrastructure for interautomobile communication to effectively avoid crashes. Infrastrutture is unavoidable.

This is like saying: if the electric infrastructure is not good and widely available, then give everyone a generator.

Self driving cars and public transportation are not mutually exclusive though. Think of how convenient it would be when buses and taxi operate just as easily at night as during the day. One of the reason why cabs are more expensive at night in some cities is because you have to pay the driver more to provide the service at night. Same with buses.

Certainly I agree you. I was getting at private car ownership. Self driving buses and cabs may indeed be fine.

"if the electric infrastructure is not good and widely available, then give everyone a generator"

I like this analogy!

My comment wasn't about how I think things should be, just an observation about how they currently are. Currently in parts of the US (and I'm sure other parts of the globe too), the public transport infrastructure isn't there.

That being said, I long for the day when cities or companies maintain fleets of self-driving cars/buses I can summon as needed.

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