Most of the cost comes from paying the drivers, but also cost is a proxy for emmissions?
Drivers emit a lot of CO2, just like every person in the US. A driverless car allows these emissions to be reallocated to other more productive areas.
I don't understand why we have to do napkin maths to guess what's more polluting. There is countless research showing buses emit less than individual cars per passenger per km, self-driving or not.
And there's no reason buses can't be self-driving as well, if anything, them driving slower, on dedicated lanes and on fixed routes would make it much easier.
No. A person driving themselves does not create any _incremental_ CO2 emissions. They don't need a dedicated full-time position to do the driving.
> There is countless research showing buses emit less than individual cars per passenger per km, self-driving or not.
Care to share it? I actually read through most of highly cited articles in this area, and it's not at all so clear-cut. For example: https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint