> For fucks sake, where are the pedestrians??

You're watching it wrong: It's a dystopian future in which all humans died out after years of being forced to take part in a city scale version of frogit with perma-death against autonomous vehicles.

This reminds me of another article on HN a while ago, about really wide multilane road outside of a school with a pedestrian crossing. The argument was against the design of this road, generally you shouldn't have pedestrians crossing giant roads like this because it's so big and comfortable for vehicle to go fast. I imagine this animation could be reality on a large crossroad without road level crossings, but on smaller ones the vehicles would have to navigate signals still... although they would have the benefit of being able to interface with the pedestrian light system to A) wait to let immediate stream of traffic pass and B) slow down the next lot approaching to increase efficiency by preventing complete stop while the pedestrians cross.

On roads where you can drive 30+MPH (50 KMPH+), I would suggest removing any possiblity for pedestrians to cross. Either make the road 20MPH (30KMPH) max where all space is shared with pedestrians, bicycles and cars - or make much better, safer & faster 50KMPH+ roads.

Is this satire? How do you walk anywhere otherwise?

Maybe, but it's an interesting concept.

My city put bridges over a lot of the major roads for people to cross. A few roads have a tunnels underneath as well.

I imagine you don't even have to put too many of them in, before any pedestrians give up and drive---having tired of needing to climb and descend four flights of stairs or, worse, walk an extra block along ramps, just to cross the street.

If I'm in a car, I'd like to not brake-accelerate-brake-accelerate but rather move in a constant tempo. If I'm a pedestrian, I'd like a car-less safe environment to walk.

Make the whole city 20mph max? Fine by me :)

In many large cities in Asia, the solution has been to elevate the pedestrian layer entirely using a system of skybridges, at least at the most congested roads. Of course, this would require a large investment in infrastructure.