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Comment by nvy | Hacker News Reader

If Americans were serious about reducing car deaths they'd ban gigantic pickups and SUVs with blind spots big enough to fit a Volkswagen. They'd ban cars from city centers and build bicycle highways. They'd invest in convenient rail infrastructure.

Instead we've got "it's a car but you can doomscroll while on your 45 minute commute and we harvest your data to sell ads".

This has nothing to do with public safety.

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This is the same mistake gun control advocates who want to take away guns make. Yes, Americans want to reduce death. But they want freedom more.

It's just so stereotypically American to say "here's a problem society faces" and then in the same breath pretend the solution is to enrich the CEOs of a handful of tech companies peddling solutions that may or may not even ever succeed.

>But they want freedom more.

Sure, it's a very individualistic society where one's personal convenience is more important than societal good. But let's call a spade a spade and not pretend that self driving car companies are selfless benefactors out to solve pedestrian deaths.

When transit is good you can ride it wherever you want to, and you can do it drunk. That's my freedom

I do not own a car. Love living in a transit forward city. But I understand the reality, that is not a real solution for most Americans who live in suburbs where good transit is just not possible due to the original layout. Instead of trying to shoehorn a solution that isn't practical we should focus on ones that potentially are.

Everybody says that transit isn't practical because suburbs exist. But nobody said that cars were impractical before suburbs existed (well probably some people did and it turns out they were right)

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