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Comment by llbeansandrice | Hacker News Reader

Trains. Buses. Bikeable areas.

How did we land in a spot where the “only serious contender” to solve this problem is VC funded companies using the roads and people’s lives as beta testing grounds?

Absolutely absurd.

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Driver training, road design, car design and safety regulations... The list is basically endless.

I get where you’re coming from but SF is full of busses, it has trams, light rail, (even some cable cars!) and a subway. A couple of years ago it was stuffed full of electric scooters. Bikeable areas are constrained by the hills or practically impossible due to the road layout (bus lanes, tram tracks, crazy Victorian street plan) pedestrians who go literally anywhere they want at any time, questionable grid system that inhibits walkability with endless crosswalks. Changing anything significant costs billions of dollars. We don’t have any credible solutions to these. It’s like a massive technical debt where you can’t rebuild and every fix breaks something else.

Some of these things are basically solved (e-bikes chew through hills, physically separated bike lanes solve the "no space for bikes" issue, etc) but SF is still super car friendly. It has to be because of road and zoning regulations, so roads have to be maintained at a certain level and must be a certain width, and there must be a certain amount of parking, etc. If we gave walkability and biking the same amount of deference and funding our cities would be cyclist/pedestrian paradises.

Coming from a major metro area in the Midwest, on my recent visit to San Fran you could get to MANY more useful things in a 15 min walk. Because of its density, I don’t think San Fran has a real transportation problem to speak of (for those who live in the city proper). For those who live outside of it, sure. But that’s just par for the course rush hour issues at any major metro.

We’ve had those technologies for decades. Why are fatalities not dropping to zero?

Because the personal automobile is so desirable.

A majority of fatalities do not happen in urban environments. But the solution has to cover the last mile, or else it will not be an attractive alternative to other modes.

Alabama, Mississippi et al have highest fatality rates. A car is far more convenient than a bus or a bike.

I’m referring to the technology generally here. I’m indifferent to how it comes about (“VC funded” etc). We need to innovate to solve hard problems.

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