10-25-2012, 09:06 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-25-2012, 09:08 PM by FireIceTalon.)
This is interesting. As someone who used to live in LA, I always wondered why the freeways were always so ridiculously jam packed. The high population explanation didn't make sense to me because on the freeway you just go - there is no signals or pedestrians to stop you. I would get frustrated driving on them because I knew it was people wanting to get over last minute that was causing most of the congestion - there are no traffic signals there so it would frustrate the hell out of me cause I knew such jams could be avoided if people thought ahead and paid attention a little bit more instead of putting on makeup or talking on a cell phone. I can understand mass traffic and congestion on surface streets, because you have signals, pedestrians, intersections and what not, but on the freeway I never understood it, and in some ways I still cannot wrap my mind around it.
Driverless cars seem plausible to an extent, but I am not sure it can fully solve the problem of growing populations. No matter how accurate and responsive they are, when a population gets to a certain point, there will just be too many cars, driverless or not, to avoid traffic congestion. More than anything I see them as a personal convenience, and a way to at least greatly reduce accidents. I guess they are worth it for these things alone.
Also, cars have always been very class dependent. You don't see too many blue collar workers driving a Bentley, right?
Driverless cars seem plausible to an extent, but I am not sure it can fully solve the problem of growing populations. No matter how accurate and responsive they are, when a population gets to a certain point, there will just be too many cars, driverless or not, to avoid traffic congestion. More than anything I see them as a personal convenience, and a way to at least greatly reduce accidents. I guess they are worth it for these things alone.
Also, cars have always been very class dependent. You don't see too many blue collar workers driving a Bentley, right?
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"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (on capitalist laws and institutions)
"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (on capitalist laws and institutions)