Human driven cars have been "sharing" space with pedestrians and cyclists with gory results. AVs mildly annoy human drivers, but are much better behaved. In fact they annoy drivers BECAUSE they are much better behaved.
> Human driven cars have been "sharing" space with pedestrians and cyclists with gory results.
That's why in places with good infrastructure, the infrastructure is separated.
Pedestrians are on tall sidewalks with few ingress points for cars (unlike in the US where every corner has a lowered curb for 20m just in case some random truck needs to go on the sidewalk??). Sidewalks are on streets with traffic calming, frequently separated from the actual road by a nice hedge or trees or a patch of grass.
Bike lanes are completely separated from roads and intersections are also traffic calmed (no slip lanes, roundabouts, multiple lanes separated so that the intersection doesn't require crossing 6-8 dangerous lanes at once).
Etc, etc.
Do you think it's realistic to maintain 2 sets of road infra for cars (human vs AI)? We can barely maintain 1 set and it's already forcing many places into deeper and deeper debt or even bankruptcy.
I'm not sure where you live, but we don't have any separate infrastructure here. It's all car infrastructure, and cars suck at sharing. Let them share with road users they can't bully for once.
> Corners have ramps for wheelchair accessibility.
Yes, but they don't need 20m of lowered curbs. I'm from Europe and you just need a small 2m corridor to each direction. Otherwise what's the point of the curb if there is no curb for so long in a dangerous spot such as an intersection? :-(
