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Comment by awongh | Hacker News Reader

This is the classic urbanist anti-bike tragedy of the commons that is referenced often.

People use cars because they are (rightly) concerned about safety. People avoid using bikes because there are so many cars. It’s very hard to ban cars or restrict car usage because it seems like no one wants to use bikes, but it’s a self-reinforcing system.

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And the losers that neither (gross generalization here) the bike people or the car people care about are the pedestrians. We are lucky to live in an urban environment where our family of 5 usually walks everywhere. Crossing the street with children is an unwelcome adventure. But you are absolutely right I would ride an ebike with the kids if it did not seem so dangerous.

Solution: make cars safer (as in, less likely to harm others) through road design, and things like automated emergency braking and self-driving.

Then the cars are safer both for the occupants and pedestrians/cyclists, so paradoxically people might be more inclined to walk or cycle.

I'd sooner see a more practical solution that works on the roads and cars we already have.

Aggressively limit speed and enforce it until you're onto the fast roads.

If cars could only roll on at 10mph I'd feel a lot safer and I'd probably be able to use my bike and make better time for the local stuff.

Yeah, I think I’ve seen a statistic that getting hit by a car going 30km/hr, you’re probably going to be fine. If you get hit by a car going 50km/hr, you are most likely going to die. I can’t think of any reason to allow cars to travel over 30km/hour in urbanized areas, outside of designated arterial roads.

Enforcing speed limits requires constant labor and doesn't scale.

Making adjustments to roads requires some upfront capital and scales to every car on those roads.

Check out this great resource of traffic calming measures from the Institute of Transportation Engineers[1].

Chicanes, Chokers, and Corner Extensions are just three examples of measures that can be taken temporarily and cheaply.

1: https://www.ite.org/technical-resources/traffic-calming/traf...

Well, while we're talking sci-fi: personal teleporters.

I mean it's happening already, cars are getting safer aren't they? Driver assistance features are gaining adoption. It takes time.

I assume by "getting safer" you mean that they're getting safer than they used to be, which, I suppose I agree. I don't know what you therefore think is "happening already", though. I see no indication that autonomous cars will ever be safer than human drivers.

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