my area doesnt even have sidewalks

Because to them, 'car' and 'vehicle' mean the same thing.

I find these discussions seem to be dominated by young urbanites. People who don't need a car to get around as opposed to the huge number of people who live in areas that require a car to function. They are also physically able to bike many miles every day in any weather.

I took public transportation when I lived in a big city and was glad to have it but anytime I needed to go beyond a limited area in the city I needed a car. Now I live in an area with very limited public transportation and very very little is in walking distance and biking for my needs is not an alternative. Frequently using 100% public transportation routes would increase your travel time by a large amount, time you may not have or want to sacrifice. If you live in country like France it seems like the transit unions have a stranglehold on the nation as they can shut down everyone at will, if you have a car you at least have an alternative. There are also breakdown issues, maintenance shutdowns, etc. You also run into the last mile issue a lot. Where you need to go is frequently not a reasonable distance from the stop. I usually needed a car to get to the train stations for instance.

Autonomous vehicles work better on rails. Also without having to deal with pedestrians.

Because a train isn't going to drive me from home to anywhere that's not a train station.

Just an add here ... Pedestrian fatalities are up, largely due to huge vehicles in general. But EVs tend to be very heavy because of the batteries. So collisions tend to be very unpleasant.

What is the advantage of autonomous trains over regular? It seems to me that when driving a train is your job, the autonomy just takes it away.

For me it's because I want an electric car and don't really care about other modes of transit. I don't want to be in a dense city, and a car is far more practical outside of one.

Bicycles are one of the most energy-efficient ways to travel, and electric ones even more so. But absolutely no one refers to them as "vehicles"...