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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

China on the other hand has horrible traffic problems and no where to build new roads in its most dense cities. They also have an autocratic government that can say “no more manual driven cars on or inside the 4th ring road” to optimize road usage.

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But would autonomous cars be that much more efficient? you may get some efficiencies but I doubt it can solve the problem itself.

In my city in Europe, my average speed is 23 km/h but I rarely go less than 40, more often 60-70 - meaning that I wait a lot, and I'm alone in the car. Yes, shared autonomous cars would help my city a lot.

I didn't realise autonomous vehicles make the roads wider.

Maybe TomMarius means that autonomous vehicles could negotiate intersections without stopping. No traffic lights required, only rules of precedence. It's going to be a slow procession but maybe the average speed would increase.

I'm not sure how that would mix with pedestrian crossings. In some dense areas there would be a non stop flow of people walking across the street and cars wouldn't be able to move.

Actually they do. There are streets full of parking empty cars, moving cars are at best a half.

Plus reduction of number of driving cars to roughly one third.

The cars can work together to reduce riding distances, move faster in tandem when going in a green light, and so on. They virtually make the road much wider by eliminating human inefficiency in driving.

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