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Comment by kanbara | Hacker News Reader

this is 10000% the wrong approach— the approach is to build better, more walkable cities, with better zoning, and public transit so elderly or disabled people aren’t left out of society.

these people shouldn’t be behind the wheel of a car; to me one of the biggest annoyances with american life

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Between inventing better FSD cars and rezoning cities / completely upending urban lifestyles, I think the first one has a better < 100 year time horizon while we push for the second one.

My father can barely walk a block before he needs to sit and rest. Your plan would not work for him. A more walkable city would be great for me, someone who can walk well. Him? Nope.

Another aim of walkable cities is many amenities you need being within that one block.

So roughly the distance from the car to the store's entrance.

In a neighborhood like Culdesac Mesa AZ, your father could downsize to an electric scooter. And maybe meet his neighbors.

Wheelchairs and other assistive devices work well in walkable cities.

So tear down every city in the country and rebuild them all from scratch, then force the ~45% of people that don’t live in those cities to move there.

And that’s better than mandating a small percentage of the population use FSD cars?

Not sure I like the autocratic tone of that plan

This is a pretty uncharitable read of the parent poster. Many cities are upzoning, which means that corridors are being torn down and built more densely. During those times, we're seeing a lot more mixed use, walkable and bikeable spaces introduced. In Seattle we're seeing streets being closed and lanes being removed to support biking and walking.

You can make walkable enclaves neighborhood by neighborhood. And those sites are really desirable. Especially near transit. The right approach is to build more like this until there's no one left who wants to live there and cannot. For the remaining folks who have no interest in it, sure, they can have automated cars.

But right now the line is out the door for this sort of place and we cannot build them fast enough.

> This is a pretty uncharitable read of the parent poster.

Which is pretty fair because the parent poster was using a very uncharitable read of what they were replying to. 10000% the wrong approach, really?

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