> Optimizing the personal automobile leads to optimizing for a horrible living experience in the city. Let us reconsider all of this. This is bad. We can do better. We must.

I agree with you insofar as I am always in support of making cities more friendly for pedestrians and cyclists, and like the idea of closing off parts of cities to cars.

But to not even acknowledge the benefits to society of a technology which can reduce serious traffic accidents by 90% just feels hopelessly extreme to me.

Americans will vehemently deny this, but you're absolutely right. Decades of car industry propaganda has convinced people that the ability to drive anywhere is true freedom, and they can't see that the freedom not to need a car (all the time) is better for everyone; cities are quieter, more comfortable, and less polluted with fewer cars (no, electric cars don't fix this). It leads to other absurdities, like US cities frequently having parking minimums for bars. That's insane!

There's also the classic problem of people wildly misinterpreting statements and getting mad about it. You can say "we should design cities not centred around cars" and people will hear "I'm going to make it illegal for you to own a car". Or my favourite exchange, "Let's improve public transit" followed by "but public transit is bad for me, I can't take it".

> let's redesign our cities to be car free

Or, let's not spend trillions of dollars on a behavioural experiment and get pedestrian safety with now-proven kit.