A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
Highway spending increased by 90% in 2021. This is one of many reasons why car traffic is growing faster than population growth.
While I'm a strong proponent of reducing and possibly eliminating car use, this image is disingenuous. They neatly packed 69 (nice) people into a medium bus, sure. But when showing cars, it's almost 1 persons per car (I counted 15 cars in a row and there are 4 rows, so 60 cars). You can definitely use cars more efficiently than that.
Assuming that actually autonomous self-driving cars exist, they could be extremely efficient. Especially if you treat them like ride sharing taxis. In other words, a lot of people could share the same car and that would reduce the amount of owned cars. They also never waste space being parked. So I can see how when we make a real self-driving car, it can potentially reduce traffic. Especially for all those cases where public transportation doesn't work.
And what the heck is a "connected car"?
Two facts:
Regarding your 1st point, yes, it is a problem that cars are underutilized. So I think that in addition to promoting public transport, for the time being, we could also promote proper usage of cars. Here in Europe, we don't have much problems with cars compared to US, but oh boy you guys overseas need to tame your F-150 owners.
Regarding the 2nd point, it's not a fact but an opinion. With which I don't really agree. I believe that true self-driving cars will eventually surpass the capabilities of meatbags, but I will look up the literature. Solely based on what you said, it seems to me that the "dead heading" problem is just a logistical issue that can be solved using science/technology (if the fleet of cars is algorithmically dispersed enough, they will always pick up a nearby passenger, as a hypothetical solution).
But yes, the corporations remain an issue and they will surely find a way to mess everything up. That is a separate problem that also needs solving, capitalism and overconsumption.