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Comment by moduspol | Hacker News Reader

Of course. We're still there with the horses -> cars transition. There are still plenty of places that horses can get to but cars can't.

And similarly: the transition will also go in the other direction. We'll start making roads and navigation easier for self-driving cars and prioritize the destinations we care about the most. At the tail end of the transition, there will still be areas with ridiculous intersections and confusing rules that only humans can do. We just won't care about them as much by then because everything we do care about is reachable by self-driving cars.

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> ridiculous intersections and confusing rules that only humans can do

LLMs are already better at this than humans:

https://x.com/petergyang/status/1707169696049668472

I think it's actually going to be the other way around. We'll build infrastructure exclusive to AVs where the rules are too complicated for humans, but allow AV traffic to move more efficiently. For example, an AV shouldn't need to stop and wait at a red light if there's no traffic to wait for.

In most cities there is simply no physical space to build separate infrastructure for AVs.

The logical conclusion being that we should look elsewhere for AVs to take off?

To be fair, you also don't have to stop at a traffic light if there's no traffic to wait for if you don't want to. Just drive across the bridge to Oakland to see it in action.

Roads are already easy to drive. We already have signs on roads directing people to the most prioritized destinations. And now we have navigation apps that can even provide turn-by-turn and lane-by-lane directions. The issue is that most people simply ignore traffic rules when it is convenient to do so.

We didn't redesign roads and navigation for taxis or rideshares, and we're not going to do that for self-driving cars either.

We absolutely do redesign roads when the existing design becomes suboptimal as indicated by an increased number of accidents or driver complaints. And we do sometimes have lanes specifically for buses / taxis, too.

We already do this stuff, and we won't need to rebuild 99% of roads. It's the "less than 1%" that are already tricky for normal humans that might need a rework. Or self-driving cars will just take suboptimal routes, if those roads / intersections aren't the only ways to important destinations.

This depends on where you are.

Where I live in Seattle, they have rolled out significantly more 5-30 minute loading only zones on former street parking to deal with the uptick in rideshares and food/parcel deliveries, because the alternative is a bunch of illegal double parking.

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