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Comment by felipeko | Hacker News Reader

> people actually like to drive

This does not appear to be true, do you have any research?

> road safety could be improved way better with other improvements (better education, harsher fines, lowering and enforcing speed limits)

This also does not appear to be true. It's like saying humans can get better than computers at Go if you push them hard enough. And we know that's false.

> environmental impact decreased by moving away from motorized transportation etc.

While i agree, i can point out that a self-driving car will mean less cars (as it can be shared), so it will be more environmental efficient than private ownership of cars.

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1. Why do you think it is controversial? People like to drive fast cars, people even like to watch others drive fast cars. Some like manual transmissions. I do think recreational driving is thing, not necessarily commuting.

2. I'm not arguing humans are better at following rules, I'm arguing we could have safer roads tomorrow if we were interested and would actually enforcing traffic laws. I think driving is a much harder problem than go, so saying we can solve a simpler problem does not imply we can solve the hard one.

3. Car pooling and shuttle services are nothing new and it is not an alternative to ownership, it is more part of the on demand transportation toolchain. Parallelism still remains a problem with self driving cars.

1- I don't think it is controversial that some people like to drive, but I think this is such a tiny fraction of the market as to not matter. This point - that people like to drive - contradicts your "transportation alternatives" more than self-driving cars, as self-driving cars are closer to "driving a car" than public transportation.

2- Your point was that other improvements were way better. I don't disagree that we can make roads safer without it.

3- Self-driving car will certainly diminish the need for ownership. But I was just arguing on the environmental point of yours, that even if it does not solve, it will help alleviate.

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