Wow. What a goal post move. I don't think this is how successful technology spreads. Governments usually accomodate tech because it proves itself in the market, not vice versa.
"Fighting Traffic - The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City" By Peter D. Norton
> Summary
> The fight for the future of the city street between pedestrians, street railways, and promoters of the automobile between 1915 and 1930.
> Before the advent of the automobile, users of city streets were diverse and included children at play and pedestrians at large. By 1930, most streets were primarily a motor thoroughfares where children did not belong and where pedestrians were condemned as “jaywalkers.” In Fighting Traffic, Peter Norton argues that to accommodate automobiles, the American city required not only a physical change but also a social one: before the city could be reconstructed for the sake of motorists, its streets had to be socially reconstructed as places where motorists belonged. It was not an evolution, he writes, but a bloody and sometimes violent revolution. Norton describes how street users struggled to define and redefine what streets were for. He examines developments in the crucial transitional years from the 1910s to the 1930s, uncovering a broad anti-automobile campaign that reviled motorists as “road hogs” or “speed demons” and cars as “juggernauts” or “death cars.” He considers the perspectives of all users—pedestrians, police (who had to become “traffic cops”), street railways, downtown businesses, traffic engineers (who often saw cars as the problem, not the solution), and automobile promoters. He finds that pedestrians and parents campaigned in moral terms, fighting for “justice.” Cities and downtown businesses tried to regulate traffic in the name of “efficiency.” Automotive interest groups, meanwhile, legitimized their claim to the streets by invoking “freedom”—a rhetorical stance of particular power in the United States. Fighting Traffic offers a new look at both the origins of the automotive city in America and how social groups shape technological change.
In regards to my initial point, government made regulations around cars after there was already an overwhelming market demand for them.
To be clear, I am not in favor of building our urban transportation networks with an automotive mode focus. I feel that non-motorized transportation and safety needs to be the main focus, even if that means auto modes become inconvenient.
> Drive.AI founder Andrew Ng, a former Baidu executive and one of the industry’s most prominent boosters, argues the problem is less about building a perfect driving system than training bystanders to anticipate self-driving behavior. In other words, we can make roads safe for the cars instead of the other way around.
I'm not going to give up on crosswalks just so you can make money on your shmancy new cars.
Downward-spiraling is the internet default, so effort is needed to avoid it.
The guy in the article seems to be implying that pedestrians don't have the right to be in the road. I think it's pretty OK to be dismissive of that.
Point #2 is more subtle and more important. You picked an uncharitable interpretation in order to get snippy at it. That's a self-referential activity, not the thoughtful engagement we're looking for. This is why the site guidelines say:
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
That applies to articles and quotes as much as to fellow commenters. If people just rail against weak versions of what others say, the only ones interested in reading it will be others in the same mood. Everyone else will get bored and leave, which in the long (or maybe not so long) run amounts to the death of this community. That's a downward spiral we really don't want, so please make an effort not to do that.
In short, please follow the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html