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Comment by FL33TW00D | Hacker News Reader

Those infrastructure requirements are already satisfied - and ~3000 people died on US roads last year.

30,000+ fatal vehicle accidents annually, not 3000

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has released its early estimate of traffic fatalities for 2021. NHTSA projects that an estimated 42,915 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes last year, a 10.5% increase from the 38,824 fatalities in 2020. The projection is the highest number of fatalities since 2005 and the largest annual percentage increase in the Fatality Analysis Reporting System’s history. Behind each of these numbers is a life tragically lost, and a family left behind.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/early-estimate-2021-tra...

Shouldn’t these numbers _always_ get reported in relation to how many people are driving (and for how long)? This increase in deaths would actually be step forward in death rates if for example people drove twice as much this year compared to last year.

Cars and trucks continuously degrade the roads beneath them. The infrastructure requirement is never satisfied -- it requires constant, very expensive upkeep.

What if cars were mini maglev trains (or pods), hovering above buried tracks on the road and can 'convert' into a car for last-mile delivery, and parking.

Then you'd still have the asphalt etc, but hovering over it - you degrade it less than actually driving on it. In this situation you could order up any size vehicle you need from 2 seater to 20 seater.

This sounded off to me, and according to Google it is. You are too low by an order of magnitude.

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