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Comment by stfp | Hacker News Reader

Except...

They won't reduce congestion and traffic, because people won't have to drive they'll be OK with being on the road longer. You just hang out in your living room on wheels.

Parking... Where are the cars going to park exactly? How far from the restaurants and homes etc? Won't the extra trips from/to parking lots create more traffic?

Reduced income requirements, that's a new one to me. These cars will have more tech that's more expensive to build and maintain. How does that make them cheaper?

50%+ of car trips are less than three miles... as a society what we need is a way to make those trips without cars.

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Traffic is a function of how many cars go through a road/intersection per unit time, which is reduced if cars keep shorter following distances, which self-driving cars can do because of faster reaction times.

In the extreme, imagine if a light turns green and all cars in line accelerate at the same time. Intersections would let through a lot more cars.

Or think of freeway speeds where the length of a car is near-negligible. A one-second following distance means almost 60 cars pass a given point in a minute, versus almost 30 cars per minute for a two-second following distance.

> They won't reduce congestion and traffic, because people won't have to drive they'll be OK with being on the road longer. You just hang out in your living room on wheels.

Traffic flows would become well coordinated and way more efficient, no more accordion effect and accidents to cause traffic jams.

> Parking... Where are the cars going to park exactly? How far from the restaurants and homes etc? Won't the extra trips from/to parking lots create more traffic?

It could be several miles from where the passengers are being dropped off. See above for why traffic won't be worse.

> Reduced income requirements, that's a new one to me. These cars will have more tech that's more expensive to build and maintain. How does that make them cheaper?

Of course new technology is expensive initially. Over time, it becomes cheaper and cheaper. Just like air travel, personal computers, broadband internet, etc.

> 50%+ of car trips are less than three miles... as a society what we need is a way to make those trips without cars.

More efficient use of the roadways from self driving cars would create opportunities for improvements in this area as well. Dedicated protected bike lanes, for example.

> 50%+ of car trips are less than three miles... as a society what we need is a way to make those trips without cars.

then you've only fixed 50% of car trips, and much less than 50% of vehicle miles and probably not done much at all for highway deaths.

all the urban bike infrastructure in the world isn't going to do much for rural and interstate problems.

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