Many people tend to doze off so much they would absolutely get fooled. I admit I might, too, especially if the wall is made of a material that needs no guy wires to prop it up. They either used digital effects or a very good color grading job, it’s uncanny.

relevant

Depends on where you live. In most of Europe, trains are frequent and direct between city centers.

My parents tend to prefer the car for the 3-hour trip (also 3 hours by train and bus) to Grandma’s when at least 3 people go because it’s cheaper. A higher toll on the highway could change the threshold, and we’d go more comfortably. Politicians can smoothly adjust the number of people for which public transport wins out with taxes and investments. You’re more likely to cling to the car and they’ve accounted for that in their models, maybe making you switch for a specific kind of trip is not worth the investment. There are lots of factors, such as political alignment, culture, wealth distribution, existing infrastructure etc. that make some jurisdictions able to move the threshold faster than others. Still, the majority of people using cars is unsustainable for lots of reasons:

• noise, smoke, particulate matter pollution
• high energy use per unit of distance per person regardless of drivetrain and resulting climate change
• cost of road maintenance
• waste of space for parking, resulting in poor land use and sprawl
• accident fatalities
• unwalkable areas ruin business opportunities, resulting in towns that simply go broke

so there is an obligation to eventually push the threshold in favor of public transit for most trips.

Road tax
ROAD TAX
ROAD TAX!!!

Many people expect public transport companies to be profitable while allowing an incredible portion of tax money for road maintainance. If you want people to take personal responsibility for the consequences of something that destroys cities when in large amounts, you add an appropriate tax.

So you’ll keep using it. And enjoy narrow but way less jammed streets. Maybe you’ll be incentivized/required to join the self-driving network, but in decades, not years, after positioning markers have been added to every road in the last repaving, while infrastructure funds have been directed towards making the city traversible for non-drivers.

It’s not a binary decision between all cars and no cars. If trains and public transit have enough capacity and convenience to make most trips feasible by them, car infrastructure will no longer have to be added (in fact can be converted into bus and bike lanes) while shortening trip duration (less cars = less jams) and improving safety.

Also, you barely have luggage for most trips. 99% of my trips are made with luggage I can carry to the nearest stop and board the bus with.

Yup, cameras and humans share various exploits. Self-driving is going to work better than humans once every car has it and communicates with each other, allowing for minimal gaps even at high speeds, once roads are all very standardized and in a database, and-

Wait, that’s trains

Fucking build more electrified high-speed rail and forget tech bros’ shitty promises

Pre-cutting the polystyrene to make it collapse in a more cartoony way