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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

"XYZ demographic should be forced to use self driving cars" is a fantasy that the tech crowd continues to believe but will never happen. Everyone is able to drive and will continue to be able to drive. In fact you should assume that the worse someone is at driving the more likely they are to want to drive for themselves, because that's how the world usually works.

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I think it's the inverse. The people who are left lane camping in their Fiat 500 because the right lane has merging and that's scary will be the early adopters. The people who really "get it" will keep driving themselves because they can do better.

This is basically the same adoption path as every other labor saving tech.

Even in self-driving, Telsa's behavior proves there is a market for cars that are programmed to speed and roll through stop signs. Waymos are safer than the average human, but the average human also intentionally chooses a strategy that trades risk for speed. Indeed, Waymo trips on average take about 2x as long as Ubers: https://futurism.com/the-byte/waymo-expensive-slower-taxis

What happens if an upstart self-driving competitor promises human-level ETAs? Is a speeding Waymo safer than a speeding human?

I can imagine that wide adoption of AVs could increase the speed limits (at least for them if not all vehicles). Also I believe that high saturation of AVs will finally shorten ETAs naturally as stable, predictable driving without cutting in, forcing others to stop suddenly etc. reduces traffic jams. (Can't find the study that opened my eyes on that right now).

Over the next decade or two, insurance will solve a chunk of this problem (it'll be way more expensive to drive yourself), regulations will solve another chunk, but the biggest thing that will solve it: we're lazy.

We might drive every now and then, but come on, do you really think once this is ubiquitous and you can get in a (or your) car and then play a video game, take a nap, text on your phone, or doomscroll, that we're still going to want to drive all the time?

Nah.

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