[michaelt]

Cars aren't the best option, but you can drop self-driving cars into an existing car-centric society one car at a time, with the car buyers paying for themselves.

Making a car-centric society meaningfully less car-centric requires the enthusiastic support of that society, along with competent political leadership, and probably a fair chunk of taxpayer cash too. Suburbs with huge lots make for long walks to the transit stop - but densifying those suburbs is not easy.

I don't own a car; I travel everywhere by bicycle and public transport - but the public transport I use was all built in the 1850s. Some time between then and now my society reorganised into a form that has a lot of difficulty delivering public transport projects.

[runarberg]

This is a false alternative, because robocars do not exist, while public transit does exist but simply hasn’t been adequately implemented everywhere.

Politicians (and grifters alike) like to point to a future technology to solve an existing problem only to delay existing solutions which they don’t want to implement, most often for political reasons.

[laurencerowe]

Robocars most certainly exist. They’re probably about 5% of car traffic in San Francisco. I’ve not taken one yet (taxis/ubers/Waymos are mostly impractical with a young kid in the US as you must use a car seat unlike in most European countries) but as a pedestrian they seem mostly a safer than other drivers. As a driver I expect they will eventually induce gridlock but the city can always create more bus lanes.

[seanmcdirmid]

Portable booster seats are pretty small. I can’t see it working if you have a kid younger than the booster seat min though. Only a few states have strict rules here, Washington and California being a couple, although I think California has a taxi exemption.

[laurencerowe]

Living in San Francisco I've not seen the taxi exemption for California anywhere. New York City taxis are exempt like most of Europe.

My kid is too young for a booster city. It's pretty impractical to take a child seat or booster with you unless you plan to hire a car the other end. When I travel back to see my family in Europe I take the train from the airport. So we bus and Bart to the airport even though it would be much easier with luggage to take a taxi.

[runarberg]

Robotaxis ≠ robocars.

The robotaxis that do exist only do so in very limited places using very expensive technology (including off-shored service center for intervention) that is not available for the public consumer markets.

[dotcoma]

How old is your kid? In which European countries do you think the law does not mandate child seats ?

[laurencerowe]

My kid is 2. New York City and most EU countries (including Spain, Portugal, UK, France) allow children to ride in taxis without a car seat.

This makes it far more practical for people to live without a car - hard to imagine in most of the US I know. As most such trips are low speed around town (e.g. getting to and from a train station or airport) it seems a reasonable trade off.

You of course need a car seat in a private car.

[dotcoma]

Oh, ok, in taxis you are right.

[handoflixue]

> robocars do not exist

How do you manage to discover Hacker News and not know Waymos are real? I'm truly fascinated by this new level of ignorance.

[debugnik]

They mean consumer robocars as opposed to robotaxis. The latter exist, the former don't. And the latter are remotely controlled by operators when hard situations arise, but a blind consumer would presumably be on their own or would have to pay an additional subscription for that service.