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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

When driving your car inter-city do you never think ‘if only I could be working, relaxing or sleeping with this time’ like in a train?

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My commute is under 15 minutes each way and this is the only thing I think about during that time. I hate every minute of attention sucking driving.

Part of my day is a 20 minute train ride. I tend to enjoy it (except, of course, when it's late).

Not really because it takes me a fraction of the time. I can do those things far more comfortably when I get there.

Self driving will solve that; self driving is absolutely there already technically if we restricted it to special lanes/highways/etc, and probably could be 100% of interstates already too.

There are some city center to nearby city center where rail would be nice, I agree.

Most of the time when I'm going intercity it is by plane.

If you think you see general solution for "self driving" in next 20 years, i have a bridge to sell you

In a restricted lane (dedicated to only self driving vehicles), we have had this capability for at least 15 years.

I hope no one is working or sleeping in those lanes.

That might be fair but that's a chicken-egg problem.

We don't have any such lanes because only the self-driving car companies have dual mode vehicles.

Nobody's going to market vehicles designed to drive in lanes that don't exist. And building out the lanes and the infrastructure to enter and exit them, probably will boost congestion in the short term.

Come on, the train is already semi-self-driving.

Self driving car will never match the safety, speed, comfort, and social interactions of a train.

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