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Comment by AirMax98 | Hacker News Reader

The way we build cities around the car in the USA is kind of a blight, so I can't help but be somewhat relieved to see that other people look at these Waymo cars, with all that they stand for, as worthy of ridicule.

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When car tech gets good enough to avoid almost all incidents with people, something drastic is going to happen. Naturally everyone will just step out on the road causing the cars to stop. So either driving through a city will become a situation you avoid if at all possible, or governments install fences and barriers everywhere and make walking without right of way a serious crime.

Or cars are no longer a thing in high density zones in some cities (e.g. NY, London, Montreal). Only buses and vans. Some private cars w/ driver - but say $1000 tax / day.

You can step out on the road and a car with a driver will nearly always stop. They may sound the horn, or open the window and yell at you, as could a passenger in a driverless car.

The average person doesn’t want to rely on “nearly always”. Especially with how many drivers are on their phones.

Being able to freely walk across the road knowing that I have right of way and that the traffic is guaranteed to stop and let me pass sounds like like paradise compared to how things are currently.

I’m not sure I’d be all that sympathetic to those drivers (passengers ?) who wouldn’t take their car into the city because of those pesky pedestrians!

Cars without advanced automatic collision avoidance systems are going to be on the road for decades to come.

You’ll be able to see if it’s a new car before you step out. The old cars will all get cleared out when they slam in to the back of new cars.

I think for a time there will be a lot of anger taken out on these driverless cars if they ever actually come to fruition. People are going to see these corporate ghost cars riding around without passengers and take out their frustrations on them because it's no longer someone's personal car it's a souless robot.

What if cities were built around public transit? Like trains? Or what about small trains that seat 4 people, and can go along many aboveground tracks?

Sounds like a fantastic idea for a developing country that has a windfall of money. Hard to realize when the city is already built.

Keep in mind that Amsterdam was quite heavily car-centric and becoming more so until fairly recently. Actions like "stop de kindermoord"[0][1] turned the tide and the city into the cycling and public-transit friendly place it is now.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_the_Netherlands#His... [1] https://i.imgur.com/uUa6CDl.jpg

In a world where self-driving cars exist, far fewer people will need to own cars.

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