The same problems exist in metropolitan areas in US as well, like Bay Area, NYC, Chicago, etc. although to a less degree than those in China. In Bay Area, people are so exhausted by long-commute driving. Check how jammed the traffic is in 101, 880, 580, 237, etc. Bart and CalTrain's coverages are pretty limited. With self driving cars, I bet plenty of people will quit driving by themselves for the commute. Imagine one can read, relax, read a book, or even work in the car, instead of sitting behind the wheel for 2 hours a day.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/chinas-traffic-jam-lasts...
- Drivers in Beijing drive slowly when there's heavy rain
- The sheer number of cars
- Drivers in Beijing advance into traffic-light controlled intersections even when the path ahead of them is blocked, causing a junction to get blocked up, even when all lanes leading away from it
I'm not sure what the other causes were (I heard that road space had just been reduced by the addition of a bus lane on the third ring road). I'm not sure what made that day much much worse than others (and it wasn't just me - I had a friend report a similar speed coming from a different part of the city).
I really wish Beijing had yellow boxes, and strong enforcement of not-stopping-in-junctions, like in London: https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/red-routes/rules-of-red-rou....
I wish even more that the problem of humans needing to drive were solved.
But I'm not sure "Self driving cars are much more valuable to China than the US" is true. Each has a similar number of cars overall. China might skew more towards urban. But the cost for a full-time driver in China is 15%-25% of what it would be in the US, so the amount of GDP replaced by self-driving cars would be higher in the US, no?
Moreover, the lack of parking won't be solved by self-driving cars alone. People who can afford their own car will need to be persuaded to use car-sharing services instead. Without this, people will still want their cars to be near where they sleep, meaning that unused cars will still be jamming up the city whilst unused.
This is the literal "gridlock" problem, which can lock up a road system. The US had that problem in some cities until New York City introduced "Don't Block the Box" around 1980. It took a PR campaign, and, some ticketing, and painting a big box with diagonal lines across some intersections, but eventually drivers got the idea to not enter the intersection until they had a way out of it. San Francisco is starting to have gridlock again, and a new "Don't Block the Box" campaign was started in 2014.
I live in the Seattle area though, not NYC.
"In this business there are very few problems that can't be solved with some yellow paint and a little bit of common sense." - Henry Barnes, NYC traffic commissioner.
[1] https://twitter.com/moi_qataren/status/643829644253261824
Also, I've never seen a traffic cop actually pull someone over or do enforcement at all (maybe some DUI checkpoints, that's it!). If it wasn't for the cameras, no laws would ever get enforced. They only enforce parking laws a couple of times a year, so many two lane roads have become one lane as citizens take advantage of a lack of parking enforcement and a lack of cheap parking.
People in china are already ok with Uber, didi, and of course taxis. The private car was more about prestige and convenience (availability), not sure what to do about the former, but the latter is fixable easily enough.
I am not sure about U.S, but my guess is that the cities started to grow a little bit later, the people probably looked at the European kings cool-looking roads, and probably decided that they could do even better and just went for an even cooler looking grid instead just some avenues scattered here and there!
I'm guessing that you haven't driven anywhere near New York City or Boston. I've seen my fair share of drivers backing up or driving on the part of the road they're not supposed to just because they missed their exit. Someone said I've done that myself, but I'll need to see proof.
(And I wasn't driving, rather sitting in the taxi, but I digress)
An almost weekly occurrence is seeing people stick half their car onto the street when leaving a parking garage I drive by often, and only then stopping to watch for incoming traffic. I've parked in that garage before and I know there's plenty of visibility from the exit; it's like people don't realize there's a whole chunk of metal before the driver's seat.
This would never happen in China! Yielding? Ha! Instead the car would just plow out of the parking garage irrespective of any cars or people on the road that weren't right in front of them! Same goes for right turns and anywhere else yield might be required...the concept just doesn't exist in China's driving culture.
Remember those Scifi chase scenes in movies like fifth element.... Felt like that.
New Yorkers in Manhattan know that dashing from extreme right to extreme left is the norm for yellow cab drivers.
Self driving cars potentially solve all that by optimizing limited infrastructure and standardizing driving behavior. It has the potential to make cities that are bursting at the seams (like Beijing) much more livable and viable. Couple that with an authoritarian government that can dictate rules much more easily, I predict that self driving cars will be a thing in China much faster than in the west (even if much of the tech still comes from the west).