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> When I think back to the covid lockdowns and how much nicer and more spacious the city felt with no cars on the roads, that’s what I think cities should be like.

Me too! Short of another global pandemic, the best thing to have on the ride beside "no cars" is self-driving vehicles.



I don’t follow why that’s the next best thing.

It seems like making cars more convenient would induce demand (i.e. add more cars), opposite of what the parent comments desire.


My expectation (from what I know of Waymo's current behavior) is that cars will be perfectly safe and predictable road citizens, no more threatening or dangerous than a Roomba.


Which completely fails in any dense city because all it takes is one random pedestrian to cut you off - and you won’t be moving for hours. Because no one is going to yield if you don’t make them. And waymo won’t try to make them because that is how you get accidents.

There is a reason city drivers are aggressive, and it’s not just because they’re stressed out. It’s literally necessary to make any forward progress in many cases.


Seems like the cars all need to talk to each other then these interactions can be auto negotiated ahead of time


Ah, the classic engineering approach.

When the cows don’t behave, it’s because they aren’t spherical enough.

Good luck with that. It works, to some degree, when you can control all the variables.

Good luck with that approach when you’re dealing with NYC pedestrians, or Midwest winters, or cyclones/hurricanes, or auto rickshaws, etc. etc.




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