this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2026
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Self driving cars as so far pretty shit. They have a tendency to fail ungracefully leading to considerable death and destruction.
This could be fixed by making purpose built roads for electric cars so that the environment is always predictable. However at that point you're describing a train track and might as well run trains on it.
but... you have to lay down tarmac instead of metal rails
I'm gonna lay this on you, but it is not an attack on you specifically. A railroad track, while way more expensive upfront, has a way lower maintenance cost on the long run. Asphalt road, while cheaper upfront, essentially needs to be rebuild virtually from scratch every six months or so. Depending on weather and heavy load usage, an asphalt road –despite being made out of almost 90% recyclable material– will cost just as much and maybe even much more than rail over the span of 10 years. On the same page rail is, not entirely but almost, completely impervious to weather and heavy load damage. So the maintenance costs are nearly fixed and highly predictable. Asphalt is variable and unpredictable, a road could last 18 months or 3 months. Finally, the labor costs of road maintenance are way higher than rail maintenance, while being several times more deadly. Because drivers keep insisting on running over road workers.
Alternative facts?
Ummm... no?
I guess you're a shill and are going to say that self driving cars have caused way less death than human operated ones. While true, statistically the deaths caused by each self driving car is much higher than by each human operated car.
Also it should be argued that a machine should be held to a higher safety standard than a human.
I looked for studies, but completely autonomous driving has too little data yet. But from A matched case-control analysis of autonomous vs human-driven vehicle accidents | Nature Communications, severe injury and fatalities are lower. I suspect "per driven mile" it's even less and it depends on model.
Not sure where you get your numbers shout DEATH AND DESTRUCTION!!! about self driving cars. I can only assume it's out of your ass.
It doesn't even matter. 65 fatalities over a few years is nothing. What matters is how the technology improves in the next years and how the numbers look once there is significant adoption. That it's as good as it is now basically means you're already wrong.
First of all thank you for a more well reasoned answer.
I do think that there are several issues remaining however. First of all the cited article states that in case matched scenarios autonomous vehicles are less likely to crash, however this does not apply in bad weather conditions where they are about 6 times more likely to crash.
The above illustrates my point about failing gracefully, the autonomous systems work great under a huge range of conditions, the catch being that these conditions have to be preconceived. When encountering new conditions these systems tend to fail. These untested conditions might occur to bad visibility or water over camera lenses and so on. A human just is better at adapting to new situations quickly which is also confirmed in the above figures.
Now to the point of the future development and mass adoption I am not really opposed due to safety concerns, it is possible to make these systems safe. However in order to make them safe you would have to make their surroundings extremely predictable. I.e. you would have to adapt the infrastructure to suit the autonomous car. If you're building infrastructure anyway, why not built rail infrastructure? It's proven, cheaper, more efficient, has a proven safety record and is environmentally friendly.
Cars are great for situations where you need transport over areas that are quite unpredictable e.g. many rural areas with badly maintained roads. However autonomous vehicles are not suited for this unpredictability.
The fact that autonomous vehicles are being pushed anyway regardless of the risks is stupid in my opinion as the resources and brain cycles could be much better invested.
I've recently imagined if you could build some kind of "micro monorail". Like some simple 4x4 inch metal rail that is used for a very small "pod" similar to the podbike / a velomobile. Like a 1 seater or 2 face to face seater which only weights like 200 kg instead of large heavy trains. You could just use earth screws and poles and weld them to the microrail, have it close to the ground or rise up 6 meters high to cross over existing roads or obstacles. You could also have a welding robot on that same rail to endlessly extend the rail and do all this installation automatically. And everything could be recycled.
I'm not sure you can follow this somewhat mad idea, but this could connect rural and urban areas without the need to build costly roads, and at the same time transport internet, energy, goods, trash, maybe even water. Fully automated and with ultralight vehicles this could be the cheapest, least invasive and lowest energy transport ever.
Anyway, I'm a fan of rail, but it does have a problem: You need railroad switches and that adds a lot of complexity compared to a car. Every stop, turnaround or crossing needs it's own stopping rail and switches which adds a lot of moving parts. So for some parts this could be a great solution, but for others it's overkill. Basically in a city, there is a limit to how close rail can get you to your house.
So in a city you're stuck with waiting for larger train cars and longer walking times. Small individual railcars won't work, and so they can't replace roads or cars. I believe that it's like a fundamental mathematical density limit to rail. And if you go shopping, you don't want to carry heavy bags or crates for like 10 min to your house. You can, but it kinda sucks.
And I don't believe that within a city at 50 kmh energy consumption between a self driving "podbike" with rubber inflatible wheels on roads and a tram or metro is significant. It probably only is about 10% at max, or maybe even less.
So in an urban area self driving "micro cars" would be the most universal scaling solution that would be most comfortable to people as well because they can drive you and your baggage directly in front of your house and can pick you up.
Obviously I haven't run the numbers, and I don't understand why there aren't any self driving narrow 1 or 2 seater cars build out of bicycle parts. Isn't this the obvious solution? There are so many advantages. Just build a million of them for one metropolis and completely switch over, ban all cars and test how it works. And make it publicly owned, basically free to ride robo taxies. It'll be cheaper for the city. Just the amount of real estate you'd gain from no big cars would be worth so much money.
No, reality.
we're going to need a source on that
Ok Im assuming you're either deluded, paid or an LLM. In the case you're actually human, go find some statistics.
I don't know how to prove I'm a human... cock shit asshole with fucking toejam stuck in my dickhole... is that something AI would say? Does that work for you.
Anyway,
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai
In 2017 about 20% of companies were using AI. In 2025 that number was at 88%
"The share of respondents saying their organizations are using AI in at least one business function has increased since our research last year: 88 percent report regular AI use in at least one business function, compared with 78 percent a year ago. At the enterprise level, the majority are still in the experimenting or piloting stages with approximately one-third reporting that their companies have begun to scale their AI programs"
"The use of AI overall is broadening within organizations. Respondents increasingly report that their organizations are using AI in more business functions. More than two-thirds of respondents now say their organizations are using AI in more than one function, and half report using AI in three of more functions."
"By industry, the use of AI agents is most widely reported in the technology, media and telecommunications, and healthcare sectors."
"Many companies, particularly smaller ones, have yet to integrate AI deeply across their workflows... Nearly half of respondents from companies with more than $5 billion in revenue have reached the scaling phase, compared with 29 percent of those with less than $100 million in revenues"
Cool, although I hope you're aware that you're confusing LLMs (mainstream in 2022) and machine learning which has existed for decades. Also what does this have to do with self driving cars?
oh, sorry... this was not for you
Well, that's embarrassing
Self driving cars being dangerous, idk, that's your claim not mine. YOu got a source to back up that they're causing death and destruction?