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.

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runarberg an hour ago | parent [-]

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.

	▲	handoflixue 6 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> 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.
	▲	laurencerowe 26 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		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 the city can always create more bus lanes.