For example, imagine driving in to the city for some business meeting and then rather than worry about the hassle of finding a parking spot you just let the car drive about by itself for a couple of hours. Now multiply that by however many hundred (or thousand) people have the same idea.

Congestion used to be the one inconvenience rich people couldn't buy themselves out of. I can understand the impulse to keep it that way, though the benefits of congestion pricing probably do outweigh the symbolic problems.

Maybe I'm naive, but is this really different than today? Let's say Volvo implements some new kind of crumple-zone tech that drastically reduces fatalities in head on collisions, and patents the tech. Is this a big ethical problem?

I think the distinction here is that failure conditions in current vehicles are almost entirely human caused, so that new safety tech only matters after a human has already made a mistake. With autonomous cars, humans aren't making mistakes anymore, software is.

So essentially, we're looking at transitioning from protecting people from themselves, to protecting people from the machines. Which is something we FEEEL very differently about, even if the big picture isn't all that different. I mean, it's certainly something that changes the dynamics of liability, that just a matter of of who's paying the insurance bill.

I also think this is a big reason for the apprehension of self driving cars. While some advocate safety, people are more than familiar with software bugs in our phones, computers and web apps.

Sure there is a difference. The software in mission critical applications like pacemakers, aircraft navigation, etc. has to be thoroughly tested and designed to be either failure proof or failing in a safe way or having a redundant system. But will the products Uber and Google develop have the same level of testing Boeing puts into aircraft or SpaceX puts into rockets?

I guess in many areas public transport doesn't make much sense to begin with (low density).

In higher density areas, it can impact the decisions people make. A household having 1 car or no car makes it an easier decision to take public transport if it is cheaper than hailing a self driving taxi (or faster during a rush hour or whatever). It makes it easier to bike to work without worrying about the weather. And so on.

I really hate this argument. America use to have tons of rail. People today say "America is too spread out," but that didn't just happen. It grew that way.

Cities like Jena, Germany have ~100,000 people, yet it has 4 tram lines and three intercity stations. Chattanooga, home of the famous Choo-Choo song, has no Amtrak lines at all (where once it had street cars and was a major intercity rail stop).

In America if we started building rail, we'd watch suburbs collapse. Parking lots are huge blocks of lost real estate. Once you have rail and 1/3 of the lots are continually empty, you'll see stores selling that space to developers. Suburbs can being to collapse, simply because of the insane amount of parking lots we have.

I think Seattle will be good example of if this theory holds true as the ST3 expansion will push deep into a lot of suburbs.