alt Hacker News>By fixing education, road design, and other factors, those 40k killed can be reduced by seven times before you even need to bother with automation.
1. [citation needed]
2. Just because it's theoretically possible, doesn't mean it's an option that actually exists. I'm sure you can dream up of some plan for a futuristic utopia where everybody lives in a 15 minute city, no private cars are needed, and the whole transportation system is net zero, but that doesn't mean it's a realistic option that'll actually get implemented in the US, nor does it mean that we we should reject hybrid or EVs on the basis that they're worse than the utopian solution, even though they're better than the status quo of conventional ICE cars.
> 1. [citation needed]
Traffic-related death rate statistics for Denmark (being 7x lower than the US), Sweden, Norway, Japan. The US does remarkably bad on this statistic, even compared to Canada.
> 2. Just because it's theoretically possible, doesn't mean it's an option that actually exists.
Denmark exists. I've been there. There were cars.
I think the west in general is lagging behind when it comes to EV adoption (and given the politico-corporate interests of many governments, I don't expect that to change). I don't think anybody wants to completely abolish cars in general and I think the drive to maintain ICE cars with all of their downsides just to support a fledgling industry is a ridiculous waste of taxpayer money.