Driving while inebriated is illegal, self driving is not.
Traffics jams and erreactic behaviour could be fixed if everyone is in a self driving car, but at that point it woild be far more energy effecient, environmentally friendly and cheaper for society to build electrified transit instead.
If you prioritize the street so that only self driving cars are on it and they need wireless communications to function, how do other road users like cyclists and pedeatrians safely use the street?
Self driving cars are not here to make your life better, they are here to make a handful of people rich.
I don't think public deaths is a valid cost for creating self driving cars. We could be builidng safer and more effecient transportation systems. Some billionaire is going to make even more money because they were allowed to use the general public and city streets as a testing ground for their product. This is not fair to the family or the people who are injured or killed by self driving cars.
We gotta start somewhere. Remember that food security is a big part of the issue as well. We can't just stop spraying the toxic stuff without an alternative because global food systems could collapse. I don't like that we were using the toxic stuff in the first place but it has become a cornerstone of our food production.
I highly doubt the average canadian standard of living is higher than the average in countries like Switzerland, the scandinavian countries and some other well developed countries. They all have better social services, better access to public transit. Finland almost comepletely solved homelessness. We might still be in the top 10, but I doubt the top 3.
Edit: it can be difficult to gauge exactly how to measure QOL. This website tries to break down a few different metrics. Canada has a high QOL when reading US based news, otherwise well developed European countries dominate the list.
Nobody profits (maybe shoemakers) when you walk across a bridge. Oil companies, car companies, tire companies, insurance companies, mechanics, they all profit a little if you drive across the bridge.
This BRT route is proof that any city is not "too car centric" for transit. Once you effectively prioitize the transit and smooth out the boarding process (rasied landings, left lane priority) the transit becomes very competitive. I'm excited to see how well this BRT performs when more density is built.
Canada exported 123 billion worth of oil in 2022. We only care about the carbon if it's on our soil, seems to be no problem selling the oil to be burned elsewhere.
Remove fossil fuel subsidies and use that money to pay for training/employment of firefighters and forestry management. We should be fining fossil fuel companies and big polluters but just removing the subsidies is a start and will free up funds to solve problems they helped create.