David Zipper

Chicago, you are beautiful but I don’t understand why you waste downtown real estate on drive thrus

In 1984, an episode of Murder She Wrote featured a self-driving car with a murderous remote operator. Seriously.

@wesmars.bsky.social explains (clip from the new pod, out later this week)

The biggest drawback of driverless cars Driverless cars could save thousands of lives. They might also break our cities.

"AVs almost by definition lower the friction and costs associated with driving ... And we already know, from the last century-plus of experience in the US, what happens when we make driving easier: We will get more of it. And more concrete and asphalt infrastructure to accommodate it."

Seems bad

sfstandard.com/2026/03/03/w...

Congestion Pricing Wins in Court After Lengthy Battle With Trump

For once, at least, sanity has prevailed

Very grateful to @rmartincole.bsky.social for unearthing this treasure.

Chairman Alan Bible (D-NV) replies to Vickrey's proposal for congestion pricing in Washington DC:

"I think it has some possible possibilities, [but]I would not think it would be a good platform, perhaps, Professor, to launch into a political career on."

Currently reading the 1959 Congressional hearing where Bill Vickrey — a future Nobel Prize winner — made the first public case for congestion pricing.

Vickrey: "One of the advantages of this type of charge is that you discourage the peak use at the same time that you encourage the nonpeak use."

BONUS EPISODE — Live from Fort Lauderdale — is now available: lookbothwayspod.podbean.com/e/bonus-epis...

Get answers to all your South Florida transportation questions, like "What happens when a Brightline train meets a sidewalk robot?"

The Screens in Cars Are Becoming a Problem "Infotainment” systems are increasingly flashy and distracting—and the auto industry is just getting started.

If you're wondering, NHTSA does nothing to regulate touchscreen safety.

Zip. Nada. Zero.

(I wrote this story 5 years ago, and t's still accurate.)

These authors reviewed 73 previous studies examining car touchscreens.

Conclusion: They're awful

"Touchscreens tended to have negative effects on driving performance, visual attention, and secondary task performance compared with voice control and physical controls."

doi.org/10.1016/j.tr...

Big news for transportation sickos

this elicits the same thrill as seeing nic cage holding the declaration of independence

​Greetings from the Northwestern University Transportation Library, where Rachel just showed me the original!

Plan to pedestrianise London’s Oxford Street given official go-ahead Sadiq Khan promises to create ‘world-leading urban space’, with remaining traffic removed this summer

As of this summer London's Oxford Street will finally be car-free.

Yes, but that's really an argument for automatic cameras that reliably compel drivers to obey traffic laws (and are far easier/cheaper/faster to deploy than replacing human-driven cars with AVs).

Same goes for speeding. Yes, AVs don't speed, but neither do today's cars w/ Intelligent Speed Assist.

VIDEO: Waymo seen blocking first responders during West Sixth shooting A video shared with KXAN shows a Waymo car blocking emergency and first responder vehicles during the active scene of the deadly West Sixth Street shooting in Austin.

Last night a Waymo vehicle froze on an Austin street after a mass shooting, delaying emergency response.

Note to regulators: Crashing is only one of the ways AVs can harm people.

A self-driving car traffic jam is coming for US cities A century ago, cars remade America. Autonomous vehicles could do it again.

This is exactly what I warned about in my keynote at a transportation conference in Florida this week (and previously wrote about in @vox.com, below).

AVs make car use easier, which will lead people to take more (and longer) car trips.

More car use --> More congestion.

New meta-analysis of 26 published studies concludes that AVs will lead people to use cars a lot more — which would thicken congestion and worsen pollution (even if AVs are electric).

"AV deployment is anticipated to lead to an overall increase in Vehicle Miles Traveled."

doi.org/10.1016/j.tb...

New NBER paper finds that US crash deaths rise by ~15% on dates of major album releases.

Distraction from smartphones is a likely culprit.

www.nber.org/papers/w34866

I'm in Fort Lauderdale, where a local official toured me through the glittering downtown and towering condos.

Me: "Other than tourism, what's the local industry here?"

Him: "OnlyFans."

I thought he was kidding. He wasn't.

Trump's NHTSA administrator pins the blame for US crash deaths on "run-of-the-mill bad behaviors of far too many of our fellow Americans."

Deadly roads? Rampant car bloat? Lax regulators? Sorry, never heard of them.

www.linkedin.com/posts/nhtsa-...

New Legislation, Backed by Bike Safety Groups, Proposed to Regulate E-Motos/E-Bikes - Streetsblog California “Electric bicycles are transforming how Californians get around, but the rapid rise of high-powered electric devices has created confusion that puts people at risk,” said Marc T. Vukcevich, Director o...

“Faster and more powerful electric motorcycles are being marketed as e-bikes, which is dangerous to children and adults. SB 1167 makes clear to consumers whether they are buying an e-bike, which has defined limits for power and speed, or something else.”

👏👏👏

Waymo's insistence that that it uses remote "assistants" rather than drivers seems to be all about liability — not semantics.

Illuminating post from Junko Yoshida: junkoyoshidaparis.substack.com/p/why-does-w...

Do Americans Actually Hate Traffic Cameras? Data Suggests No. Also today: How cities can stage a tourist comeback after disasters, and why Florida’s governor wants to kill property taxes.

Researchers consistently show that automatic enforcement reduces traffic violations — and that most people want more of it.

A big reason people think cameras are less popular than they really are: Journalism that exaggerates controversy.

There’s been a huge surge in S.F. traffic tickets — and police aren’t the reason Though San Francisco’s speed cameras only began issuing fines in the final five months of 2025, they brought traffic tickets issued in the city to levels not seen in more than a decade.

I'll say it again:

It's journalistic malpractice to publish a story about automatic enforcement that puts the number of tickets in the headline without mentioning safer streets.

AVs will someday be safer than average human drivers.
More important question: Will AVs make city streets safer?
A: Only if the deadliest human drivers give up driving.
Meanwhile, more useful analysis from @davidzipper.bsky.social

*Insurance Institute FOR Highway Safety

IIHS are the gold standard on this issue

We Still Don’t Know if Robotaxis Are Safer Than Human Drivers And even if self-driving technology proves to be less dangerous, there are many better ways to improve traffic safety and prevent fatal crashes.

For more on AV safety, here is a deep dive I wrote last month.

The Waymo die-hards were, uh, not happy about it.