How Self-Driving Cars will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it)

Well worth to watch 'Not Just Bikes' new video 'How Self-Driving Cars will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it)': [VIDEO]

It's long, but well worth an hour of your time. He even states in the comments that he set out two years ago to make a positive video about AVs: What was most surprising to me was that when I began researching this video (two years ago!) it was going to be about some of the technical challenges that would need to be overcome in order to make self-driving cars a reality, but the conclusion was going to be that ultimately, AVs would be a good thing. By the time I was done researching this topic I was absolutely horrified of our future self-driving dystopia. [VIDEO] The future he illustrates seems mostly plausible, except that it depends on all of the technology functioning flawlessly. I have a hard time believing that streets full of high-speed AVs functioning in perfect synchrony is likely. However, that doesn't change my general agreement with the conclusions he draws in that video and the rest of his channel.

Don't fall on the trap of self-driving cars will make our lives better. They won't. Building cities for people first is what will improve our lives. Watch: How Self-Driving Cars will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it) [VIDEO]

I highly recommend watching the notjustbike video on autonomous vehicles. It outlines a disturbingly plausible path to a dystopia simply by following the lobbying incentives to logical conclusions. This feels like step 0. I'd strongly suggest that if this is coming to somewhere near you, you object, tell your city no, protest, etc. Link to the start of where he starts outlining a path to dystopia (though the first half of the video is informative too) [VIDEO]

I honestly hope that they do not succeed in the end. Ubiquitous self driving cars will spell the end of what's left of walkable areas in North America and bring about (in time) similar destruction of the urban fabric to Europe and elsewhere. I'm not very articulate and English is my second language but this video below is really worth watching before we all swallow as an axiom the idea that autonomous cars are going to be a good thing: [VIDEO]

Please, don't. Let's not normalize yet another corporate attempt to privatize urban mobility: [VIDEO]

I ride my bike several times a day, and I have very mixed views about Waymo, etc. I care immensely about traffic safety (so much I moved to the Netherlands). If you took the world as it is now and left everything the same except that every car was a waymo and there were no human-driven cars left, I would be ecstatic. Humans are horrible drivers and some of them are downright murderous. If every car were a waymo I could even imagine letting my kids bike to school in the bay (where I used to live), which I wouldn't dream of now. But I think the second-order effects of self driving cars could be terrible. It removes any incentive not to have an incredibly long commute (exacerbating sprawl), and so far every time there has been a situation where the needs of walkers and cyclists were pitted against the needs of drivers, drivers won. I think the same will happen with self-driving cars, and people will be made to wear beacons just to walk across the street. NotJustBikes discusses this well here [VIDEO] But if we have proper regulation (pretty unlikely I would say) and use things like waymo to stop humans from driving (remember, drivers are the leading killers of children in the US!) that would be great.

Reminds me of this enlightening video mapping out a possible future where self-driving cars have dominance. [VIDEO] It's very possible that it won't be the utopia it is portrayed to be.