[archetypical]

The Google car is a truly clueless idea with no imagination. We don't need automated cars, what we need as a society is to reduce our dependence on cars.

Want to stop car crashes and reduce fatalities? It's dirt simple. Stop driving cars.

[EliRivers]

If that's the goal, we can reduce fatalities to zero by all being sterilized. Once we're all dead, there will be no humans left and the human death rate drops to zero, permanantly.

[protomyth]

What mode of transport can actually replace cars in the USA with its current infrastructure and rural / suburb / city living?

[archetypical]

Bicycles and trains. The current infrastructure of roads and highways should not be sustained, nor will it be affordable to taxpayers indefinitely.

[protomyth]

Bicycles do not work in northern climes in winter. The average person cannot ride a bike in below zero weather with 40mph gusts. Trains are more expensive than roads. Neither of these solutions work for anywhere but the coasts and a few urban areas in between.

How exactly do you expect people to move furniture?

[archetypical]

You can't seem to envision anything but a world of cars, mass consumption and long supply chains we currently rely on.

Thinking has to change, lifestyles have to change. People must become more resilient and do business locally. This isn't optional. It's the imminent economic and ecological reality.

[protomyth]

Where are you getting your food from? The whole concept of these self-contained cities surrounded by miles and miles of empty land is absurd.

[archetypical]

When you refer to empty land that surrounds cities, are you talking about one of the most underappreciated assets a city could have which is arable land in close proximity to the population?

Arable land may become a valuable economic engine for many cities as peak oil and climate change realities break our current modes of distribution.

Building more roads and tacky exurban houses destroys this valuable land we all may need, and only a few benefit from it (and everyone will pay more in taxes). Think about it.