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Comment by k99x55 | Hacker News Reader

Don't fall on the trap of self-driving cars will make our lives better. They won't. Building cities for people first is what will improve our lives.

Watch: How Self-Driving Cars will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0

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The city where I live—Yokohama—is very different in layout and density from the U.S. cities shown in that video. My neighborhood consists of many small plots of land, each with a different owner, separated by narrow streets. Unless it all gets wiped out by a tsunami, it’s never going to be rebuilt or have its layout changed—the landowners, many of whom live on their plots of land, would not stand for it.

My house is on the side of a steep hill. If in a few years—I am now 67–I become unable to walk up that hill, the only way I will be able to go anywhere is by calling a taxi. (No one in my family here knows how to drive.) Because of demographic trends, there is a shortage of human taxi drivers now and that shortage is likely to get worse. If I do become significantly less mobile five or ten years from now, I will be able to keep living in my home only if self-driving taxis are available.

So for me, in that very likely scenario, self-driving cars would make my life better. In Japan, there are millions of people in similar situations to mine.

You raise a very valid point, and it is a point that I do not see expressed very often.

While it is "easy" (and, I think, proper) to build new areas of cities to be walkable at some point in the future, the fact remains that today cities already exist as they stand and many of them may not be very walkable.

Even in already-walkable cities, it is important to consider the fact that all of us will eventually (hopefully!) live long enough to be considered old.

Looking forward to when I myself may become old, I think I'll still like to be able to get from A to B (and back) with a minimum of fuss and at a time of my choosing.

So it is my hope that by the time I reach that point, the world will have options for me and other old people that are better than old people have today.

And that's just me, some day.

But many people are old right now. They can benefit from things like self-driving cars right now, even in walkable cities.

Cars are the most age discriminatory mode of transport of all: only 18+ and not too old can use it, and most disabled cannot use it. A

Bicycles work to all ages, all abilities.

In your case an ebike, trike (etrike?) or even mobility scooter might be a much lighter, cheaper, scalable option.

Hey why not a self-driving e-scooter? Why does it have to weight 2 tons in the first place?

Bike infrastructure is not only for bicycles: its for trikes, wheelchairs, mobility scooters, ebikes.

Watch:

* Who else benefits from the Dutch cycling infrastructure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSGx3HSjKDo

* 8 to 80, people of all ages cycling in the Netherlands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swqaAIkGtpA

Have you ever interacted with a person over 70 that has mobility problems? Do you really expect an 80 year old to ride a scooter up a hill in the rain/snow? Getting into the car is difficult enough.

I'm not saying to ban cars, just to de-prioritize them The use case for bicycle-and-similars is way more than the use case for cars specially urban places (also outside urban places)

Dunno - check out old guy on mobility scooter video: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2028301917230649

I'm a little like that myself - not as old at 60 but have switched to an ebike to still go fast.

...that's a meme post of a guy in a mask. It's not an old guy.

Ah so it is! Still I was looking at getting a mobility scooter for my dad, about 85 at the time, though I don't think he would have pulled wheelies.

Or move to a flatter area ?

Let's give that self driving e-scooter four seats, oops that's a kei car... They weigh almost exactly one ton too, before adding four adults and a suitcase or two.

Just take see how roads in Tokyo already look like[1]. Cars are already driven like factory floor robots[2]. Actually automating those hurts nothing.

1: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=factory+agv

2: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=driving+tokyo

I know what you're getting at here and I agree with you in spirit, but:

A lot of life-alteringly physically disabled people can drive cars. For example, lower-body paraplegics and double amputees can use hand throttle and brake controls. Single leg amputees can drive with a single leg, single arm amputees can drive with a knob on the steering wheel, and so on.

And bicycles do not work to all ages in the same way that cars don't. When you can't make safe decisions in traffic a bike can't work. Heck, a tumble off a bike could be the end of mobility for an elderly person.

(I wonder how many places expect mobility scooters to be on the sidewalk vs. allowed on a bike path?)

Almost all of these "cars bad" arguments fall for the trap of focusing solely on the disadvantages of cars while completely ignoring the huge upsides that make them by far most popular form of transport in rich countries in the first place: Long distance transport directly from your home to the front door of your destination in a private, climate-controlled cabin with zero transfers or unnecessary stops.

Self-driving will make our lives better because it takes that already very successful form of transportation and makes it significantly safer and more efficient without compromising any of its advantages.

I have no desire to educate but I have to indicate that there is plenty of research on why people prefer cars and that’s not it.

Still, assuming that walking from home to a train / metro station is a problem has to come from a car centric place. It’s ridiculous. In many cities that is the best part of the day for many people. You rarely hear from people driving that car commute is the best part of their day.

In very specific situations (in the summer on a sunny day in a low-crime area when its just you commuting with no small children or excessive cargo and no time pressure) walking a few blocks to and from a train station could indeed be a pleasant experience. Take away a few of those points though and cars start to look pretty attractive again. Even more so if we're talking about a hypothetical self-driving future where several of the few remaining disadvantages of cars have been mitigated.

I watched part of "Watch: How Self-Driving Cars will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it)" and the arguments seemed pretty weak. A lot of it was along the lines of current cars cause problems in cities and self driving cars are still cars so self driving cars bad. But there's a lot of flexibility as to how they get used and regulated.

Just thinking about one city issue local to me - I live near Oxford Street in London which is currently overcrowded with thousands of people plus buses and taxis and the like. They've wanted to pedestrianize it for ages and probably will but there are problems with accessibility for the handicapped and delivery of stuff to the stores. That could maybe be sorted with slow moving self driving evs picking those up? I'm not sure but at least it's another option.

Tokyo doesn’t need to be built for people. It already is.

Who says self driving cars will need to pertain their existing form? Hopefully that fact that you wont own the vehicle will lead to companies building more minimal form factors since in most cases it's a single rider and they'll incentivised by keeping costs as low as possible.

That video was rather thoughtful. Almost makes me want to short SDC companies, buuut lobbying.

Self-Driving cars will make roads safer and open up cheap travel for millions of people.

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