I’d like to see AVs compared to the average good driver. I’d bet it’s a lot closer in that case.
60% of US drivers survey to using a hand held cell phone while driving.
an intersection, but not exclusively 30% of US drivers survey to driving under the influence of alcohol in the last year; and that's generally excluding "buzzed"/under the legal limit - which may be lawful - but likely take one out of the "good" category.
Then you have medical conditions that go unchecked for driving in the US, peripheral vision, far-sightedness checked once a decade, reaction time, physical disabilities.
Then you have following too closely, speeding, accelerating too quickly, braking too quickly, taking turns too quickly, vehicles lacking maintenance (tires with little tread, inappropriate tread for roads, brakes not bled every ~2 years, lights out, suspension unchecked, carolina raised trucks)
Finally, you can add in US infrastructure, which traditionally maximizes speed and minimizes safety -- and generally gets a C-.
Petty little things like political ramifications have a funny way of not being so petty,by definition 51% of people in a democracy can decide they will not be stopped from driving.
This is an oversimplification. First of all, some percentage of legal drivers are not allowed to vote (non-citizens, 15-18 year olds, felons). Second, this assumes a "pure democracy," which the USA is not for several reasons, first of which is the fact that it's representative, second of which is that its representative rations haven't been updated in like a hundred years (if they were, there'd be thousands of members of congress, and California would have over a tenth of them), and finally, because of disenfranchisement through voter roll purges, gerrymandering, and political arrests (such as when ex-con felons in Florida were directly lied to and told they were allowed to vote so as to entrap them into committing the felony of voting as a felon).
Anyway we shouldn't assume people wouldn't vote against taking away the right to drive, if it came with the building out of good public transit infrastructure in return, which is what the USA desperately needs anyway. Not that I'm naive enough to think there's political will to make this happen, but the whole self driving car thing would be pretty moot if it was easy to get around San Francisco as it is to get around Paris, NYC, Tokyo, Taipei, etc.
I am pretty sure among those 51% of people only a fraction is made up of total assholes that wouldn't change the way they drive if rules were more strict while another fraction could accept more and more stringent laws, especially if they come gradually and would increase their standards of driving to keep that privilege.
remove them from the road
[1] which would become immediately more profitable or less unprofitable depending on the area.
So you have to fall back on paid trips, and that is too much money for a random shift making anything in the realm of minimum wage. It just doesn't work economically.
Many many areas without sufficient transit will suffer badly.
Besides cars are more expensive than riding a bike to a place where public transit is available.
In aggregate, people are correct to feel entitled to get around town without going bankrupt trying. Why would that baffle you?
You're not talking about exceptionally bad drivers, you're talking about half of them. That makes a big difference.
People don't need cars. This is a luxury they based their life one. They can adapt the other way too.
Th number matters for whether it's feasible to implement.
In a large sense everyone is a bad driver.
> People don't need cars. This is a luxury they based their life one. They can adapt the other way too.
People are stuck in situations that need cars. Adaptation without external help would take decades. Tens of millions would suffer badly.
With enough change cars could be turned back into a luxury, but right now they aren't a luxury for most people in the US.
They can bike short distances, but longer trips would depend on access to vehicles they don't own, whether transit or other people's cars.
If you give them enough warning they can adapt. But for a change like this the only solution for many people is "don't live there, good luck moving".