this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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Fuck Cars

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Highway spending increased by 90% in 2021. This is one of many reasons why car traffic is growing faster than population growth.

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[–] yimby@lemmy.ca 24 points 2 months ago (16 children)

Two facts:

  1. The average occupancy of a car in my North American city is 1.2 people per car. This does not vary much by city.
  2. Autonomous vehicles will almost certainly be worse for traffic than human driven cars. They will circle empty with no passengers and drive to pick up passengers empty (dead heading) even with a fully rideshare system. If there is widespread private ownership of autonomous vehicles (and you bet your butt that car companies will campaign for this aggressively to keep sales up), the dead heading problems only multiply. If you don't believe me, look up any recent literature on the topic: by most accounts it will be worse, not better. Dead heading is only the tip of the iceberg of problems there.
[–] abfarid@startrek.website -3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (7 children)

Regarding your first point, I'm aware that that is the unfortunate truth. That IS the issue with cars when it comes to efficiency. ~~If you load the car with 3-5 passengers it easily beats busses in efficiency, according to my calculations. But that's not gonna happen.~~

Regarding your second point, the core of the issue is just capitalism, not self-driving cars or privately owned cars.
Cars don't have to drive around empty if they are some sort of shared transport that can pick up the nearest passenger.
If companies aren't gonna cause unnecessary car purchases only those who need them anyway will own them.

Basically, the problem with cars is not cars themselves as a concept, it's the overuse and misuse. But unfortunately, that isn't changing anytime soon.

[–] calcopiritus@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Would love to see those calculations.

[–] abfarid@startrek.website 0 points 2 months ago

See this.

Spoiler alert: I decided I was wrong.

But try the cool calculator I made!

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