Comment by panick21_

> much closer together and increase road capacity

So you are assuming there are essentially no more humans driving?

Also, if you want to improve capacity, how about bicycles and buses?

> Even with failures, likely less dangerous than leaving critical decisions to individual human drivers.

You know what's even less dangerous, like essentially no danger, train.

> This would require collaborative networked/distributed self-driving

So the most complex possible solution that is 100% unproven and even in the best cases is far worse then having a city optimized for walking, biking and trains?

Like I just don't understand. Why do you start with the most inefficient solution possible, and then try to apply (expensive) technology to try to make it better.

How about you start with the most efficient, cheapest technology and apply that in 60% of the cases. Then solve the next 35% of the problem with existing technologies that already solve these problems.

And then for the last 5% you can try to solve them with some amazing future tech.

Its quite simple, design cities to be walkable. Make that safe and a priority. Then extend that by the most energy efficient (and space efficient) mode of transport, bicycles. Then use trains to connect different walkable parts of the city with each other.

Then at the very last step, maybe have some fancy self driving cars for a few special cases.

We know this works. It has been done. And its not expensive, it in fact safes money.