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Comment by potatochup | Hacker News Reader

A related thought: if autonomous cars always prioritize pedestrians, I wonder what will happen to downtown main streets? Will you still have to give way to cars crossing the road? Or will there be enough pedestrians that you could simply walk across the road at any point and the cars will be forced to wait?

The traffic lights around me are really annoying for pedestrians, you have to wait for ages. I'm happy just crossing on a red if there is no traffic. But maybe if every car is autonomous, I would just make cars wait for me?

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Why don't you already do this? Human drivers generally don't want to kill pedestrians and will stop, but they'll still get mad at you. Just because they're not controlling the accelerator and brake doesn't mean they'll be any less mad about you forcing them to stop.

I think they would be less directly mad. If it’s truly driverless and the passengers are doing leisure activities, they may not even notice the first time or two unless it becomes a huge issue.

Depends on where you are at - for example, in New York City pedestrians have the right of way and drivers are responsible for avoiding them. In Texas automobiles have the right of way and it is the pedestrian’s responsibility to avoid the automobiles (I didn’t believe that first time I heard it but it’s true, almost nobody walks in a Texas and I think they figure if you are walking you can more easily get out of the car’s way then they can avoid you). In India I think everyone involved just prays and goes for it, on my cab ride to the airport the driver jumped a curb and started doing 50 through people’s front yards. Boss level.

> In Texas automobiles have the right of way and it is the pedestrian’s responsibility to avoid the automobiles

Source?

Having been stuck for 15 minutes trying to make a right turn by the street mall in Santa Monica, yes there are places where defensive driving will totally stop you. There's a spot there that's only one lane each way when cars are parked and pedestrians will not stop and have a walk during the green. If you want to go right or left you have to nose in and cut people off at certain times of day.

You don't need autonomous cars for that to happen. Many cities turn some of their downtown streets into pedestrian streets in the summer and it forces cars to wait to cross at intersections.

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