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Comment by mortureb | Hacker News Reader

I said all vehicles. If they’re all automated, they can all talk to each other and effect all those changes.

Do you think that people would be on the road _less_ if everyone were using taxis instead of personal cars? If so, why? What's the actual reason why robotaxis reduce the demand, or consumption, of road miles?

Of course. If automated driving was the only way you could get around it would make no sense to get your own vehicle.

Now you've just alienated two groups: environmentalists that realize cars are bad for the environment, and car people that are interested in driving their own unique vehicles. The former you were never going to get, but the latter could concievably have been on your side about getting bad drivers from behind the wheel.

You've gone from "People won't have to drive", to "People cannot drive". And the latter will likely play poorly in rural areas.

Probably. I can see the only automated car rule being for freeways only or large urban areas only and it would still make a significant difference. Or maybe the automated vehicles get their own two lanes on the freeway. Many ways to go about this while still being effective.

I'm not interested in providing a public subsidy to Uber. If they want two lanes of the highway dedicated to their vehicles then they can pay for two lanes of the highway dedicated to their vehicles. I expect their road tax to be considerably higher per mile.

> or large urban areas

Please tell me your plan is not to have the cars speed up where all the pedestrians are

This doesn’t answer my question, which was about road miles per person, not private car ownership.

The claim here is that even with more cars on the road traffic can be reduced if cars are able to communicate with each other. E.G. all the cars stopped at a red light accelerate at the exact same rate as the light turns green, no more brake checking/rubbernecking causing traffic on highways. I think in the long run this effect will probably exist, whether it overpowers the increased number of road users remains to be seen.

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