How The Self-Driving Car Dream Became An Absolute Nightmare | Jalopnik

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It can be tough to keep up on the myriad of messed-up decisions and scandals in just the automotive industry alone, but a story from the New Republic manages to connect everything together and boy, is it a tough look at our collective predicament.

The reason our self-driving utopia hasn’t arrived, it argues, is because it was never really supposed to. Instead, the promise of self-driving cars were just a lure to keep cities from building public transit, something America’s scions have been at since the mass production car first spawn an entire new galaxy of industries. From the Republic:

"In 2018, the New York Times reported on how the Koch brothers were using the prospect of driverless cars as part of their war against public transit. The libertarian billionaires and longtime fossil fuel allies were funding Americans for Prosperity to organize dozens of campaigns in cities and states around the country to stop measures that would put more money into transit service. One of their primary arguments was that public transit was outdated and a waste of money because self-driving cars were just a few years away. Five years later, we’re still waiting for the self-driving revolution—but the Koch brothers’ bad-faith ideas about public transportation are still around."

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How The Self-Driving Car Dream Became An Absolute Nightmare | Jalopnik

MoBikeFed comment: What do you think? Have opponents of public transportation really been using the lure of self-driving cars to stop investment in public transportation?

It seems too strange to be true - but stranger things have been seen in the realm of politics.

Read the full article and see what you think.