Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives • Hacker News Board

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#851

Post by oblio » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 9:34 PM UTC

WD-42 wrote: post #760

oblio wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. That's false. Riders will want a car to be at their location ASAP, or they will try to call another company. So the incentive will be to put/drive cars very close to where people are. That whole "cars will be stored at the periphery" is propaganda.

And this is worse than 2 cars in every driveway how?

If you live in the US, it's not worse. If you live anywhere else in the (developed) world, it is worse.

My hope is that the bottom-of-the-barrel US approach isn't shoved down the throats of everyone else just when we're finally managing to rebuild cities for people, not for cars.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#852

Post by bookofjoe » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 9:42 PM UTC

phainopepla2 wrote: post #242

GrinningFool wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With that many accidents, I'd assume bankruptcy if she didn't. re: 2) yes that was the point. She'd have to be paying multiple thousands in an assigned-risk pool policy with that record of at-faults.

An estimated 1 in 6 drivers in Los Angeles don't have insurance. I know at least a dozen people who have been hit by uninsured drivers, and that's not counting hit and runs, who probably are also mostly uninsured. The victim's own insurance will pay if they have uninsured motorist coverage (you'd be a fool not to have it, living in LA at least), but there is basically no punishment for the uninsured driver, assuming…

2002-2004 [most recent I could find] California Department of Insurance (CDI) study showed Los Angeles County’s uninsured driver rate at 24.0% (2002), 23.4% (2003), and 23.7% (2004).

https://www.insurance.ca.gov/

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#853

Post by nonethewiser » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 10:06 PM UTC

Tinned_Tuna wrote: post #492

nonethewiser wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If I could get around by bus, light rail, bike, and all of the wasted city space devoted to parking could be turned into more housing and amenities, that would be great. I guess it depends on where we're talking about. The majority of the US is not inside a city. So just diverting all resources into public transportation is only serving the metros. If we're talking about a small country then sure.

> The majority of the US is not inside a city. I think this isn't true for the US any more, maybe it hasn't been true for decades? WorldBank seems to have the ubranisation rate at around 80% for the US: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS?locat... There is a bit of a definitional problem, with people living in suburbs identifying as rural, as do folks in exurbs. I don't think they're considered rur…

Its not simply population. A vast majority of the area of the US is not in a metro.

You can say “well people need transportation , not land.” And that’s true. But what’s not necessarily true is that we want to cram more people into the cities as opposed to supporting a broader distribution of the population. We absolutely want the latter in terms of housing prices.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#854

Post by JoeAltmaier » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 10:13 PM UTC

fwip wrote: post #297

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pedantically true. By population density, NYC is essentially the whole state, or what matters anyway, to the huge majority of residents.

About 60% of New Yorkers are outside of NYC.

And what fraction of the traffic?

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#855

Post by JoeAltmaier » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 10:18 PM UTC

Gigachad wrote: post #231

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #115

We'll have arrived at the automated transit network when they stop putting up road signs. The cars know where they are, and how to get there. Signs are for fallible ignorant humans.

GPS not nearly that reliable. There's a reason drones are moving towards computer vision rather than purely relying on GPS. The physical signs won't glitch out and show 100m offset because a tall building was reflecting GPS signals. Maybe in a 100% automated system we would replace the icons with QR codes or something but physical markers will likely be here to stay.

Human-readable? Why? Just sprinkle RFID tags in the roadway, and drive it and register the tags and GPS/Inertial frame with a database and now you know where you are with machine-readable 'signs'.