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Comment by HPsquared | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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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