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Comment by Hydraulix989 | Hacker News Reader

I can't open the article. With the issue of environmental sustainability nearly fully addressed, what's the issue now?

People will soon be spending larger portions of time in their cars, and there will be novel ownership models once fully autonomous driving is achieved. We may even end up living and working there.

Anti-car sentiment will become a luddite view. Transportation (as well as the networking of physical spaces) has always been a major driver (no pun intended) of human progress. Perhaps it's fitting that a "newspaper" is expressing this sentiment.

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Or maybe we should hold off on paving over the Earth's surface, and recognize that cars are dangerous, noisy, state-subsidized machines that have created an ugly culture full of strip malls, big box stores, and drive thru fast food chains. We could also realize that they are literal weapons and one of the top choices for terrorists. A fleet of them if networked and self-driving could set off a major terrorist incident.

We can make them pollute less, we can eliminate the cost and burden of ownership, we can reduce the safety problems by eliminating human drivers.

But other issues involve basic values of what kind of world we want to live in, and a better car won't fix these problems.

I want to live in a world where I can drive wherever I want, whenever I want without having to schlep all my stuff to the bus stop.

lol wat, lived in nyc for years. you either rent a car, get a cab, or hire people. owning a car that sits and takes up space during the 90% of your life you aren't driving is inefficient and stupid

That sounds like a miserable way to live. There's a whole world outside of NYC.

Most people on this planet don't live in dense cities like NYC, and still need an affordable way to get around on their own in order to hold a job, get groceries, etc.

Most of humanity lives in urban settings.

The UN in 2018 estimated 55% of humanity lives in urban settings. The EU estimated 76%.

https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/news/how-our-planet-became-more-...

Said ugly culture is separately going away because of online delivery, which still requires an infrastructure of pavement on its own. The loud engine noise is also gone with EVs.

You mentioned safety. It's a matter of personal risk profile whether you consider cars to be dangerous, even at status quo (autonomous vehicles with coordinated motion planning have the chance to render accidents a thing of the past).

RE potential terrorism, should we consider banning airplanes and busses as well?

Transportation and logistics could've been handled differently. There was an article recently about pneumatic tube delivery of mail.

Trash collection, package delivery, etc could've been delivered more like water. Via pipes.

You wouldn't want to be in a situation where you empty bedpans by lugging excrement to the curb so that a sewage truck can pick it up. We thankfully have pipes for that.

We should expand the use of pipes. Imagine not needing to dispose of cardboard boxes all the time after receiving every package. It arrives in a canister, which returns itself.

The water and sewage pipes work due to gravity and pumps and aren’t addressable. You pump a bunch of water to a water tank above everything else and then let it flow down. The water just blindly flows down.

The water pipe leading to your house is very narrow (0.5 or 0.75 inches). The sewer pipe is bigger but you aren’t going to fit a big package through it. Tree roots growing through sewer pipes is a constant problem.

The roads are a form of a pipe. It just happens to be above ground and for people and general goods. A tunnel is just a pipe.

The automation of package delivery sounds nice but is orthogonal to pipes. You can probably accomplish that with automated delivery vehicles who can dock to a port on your house. No need for packaging.

With WFH and reduced in office time our car usage has dropped rather significantly - fill up the cars maybe once every 6 weeks since March 2020 where it used to be every 1.5 weeks.

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