Solution to Traffic
- Better public transport
- More car-free zones for pedestrians, bikes, and scooters
- Remove human drivers. Only autonomous cars.
Even the simple task of walking on a crosswalk when the light is red has become a challenge. Drivers seem to get worse as time goes on. Sometimes you even get blamed for doing things the right way.
What’s going on? Where are the adults in the room?
We know screens are making people dumber than ever before. But, as always, things tend to be multifactorial. The state seem to be non-existent when it comes to traffic enforcement. Nor can I recall a time in my entire existence when I could point to a memorable change that made such a drastic difference in my city’s traffic patterns.
Aside from government ineffectiveness, solving traffic will likely require radical cultural and technologic changes. Maybe we are not that far away from them.
Browsing through Hacker News, I got surprised when I read people from San Francisco, USA, describing the exact same issues I’m having as a simple pedestrian: human drivers performing illegal maneuvers, running red lights, not respecting crosswalks, genuinely putting other people in danger, laughing and screaming at those who are actually doing things right.
On the forum, they were discussing a study showing Waymo is making streets safer. For those who don’t know, Waymo is a company attempting to push forward autonomous vehicles. You can pay for a ride in cities where they operate. It’s like Uber, but without humans. Just cars riding by themselves.
Of course, it’s far from mature. The driving has its quirks and stuff. It’s such a hard problem to tackle, mind you. But what I find incredible is that even with how imperfect the system is, it is already better than many, many human drivers currently on the street.
Just look at the numbers:
- 92% reduction in pedestrian injury crashes (humans 100 → Waymo 8)
- 82% reduction in cyclist injury crashes (humans 100 → Waymo 18)
- 96% fewer injury-involving intersection crashes (humans 100 → Waymo 4)
- 85% fewer serious injury crashes (humans 100 → Waymo 15)
Impressive. Furthermore, people at Hacker News reported they genuinely feel safer when they see a Waymo car near them.
This got me thinking very hard about the present and future of traffic. I honestly think we, sooner or later, will get rid of human drivers for the better. And it will happen naturally. People will realize it’s just so much better to let a computer drive across the streets. It can be the most patient driver ever, because it doesn’t have the payload of human emotions.
Looking forward to this future.
Also, check this beautiful Youtube channel about successful urban planning and public transport stories.