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Self-driving cars
Oct. 15th, 2013 10:32 amFor various reasons, the social impact of self-driving cars has been on my mind lately. Herewith, in stream-of-consciousness order, are my thoughts.
1) We will always have traffic jams. Cars are mechanical things and will break down, roads will need to be maintained (ask me about my commute today!), ice, snow and rain will affect all vehicles, and there can only be so many cars on a given amount of road. When all cars are automated, traffic will flow better, but it won't be perfect.
2) I've heard people offer the idea that, in the self-driving car era, people will be willing to live a long way from work, because they can sleep in their cars on the way in. Really? You're going to get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, climb into the car and take a nap on the way into work? A few hardy souls may, but most people won't.
3) I expect that there will be a lot fewer two-car families. In many families, one car is used to take somebody to work, where it sits in the parking lot for eight hours and is driven home. In the self-driving era, that car can be sent home and used during the day for other purposes.
4) With "taxis" being replaced by self-driving rental cars that can come and pick you up then take themselves back to the shop, there will be a lot of one-car and no-car families. However, there will still be people who need their own car. People with sales or repair jobs, for example, use their cars as storage / portable offices. For those people, having their own car will be even more important.
5) The ability to manually drive a car, at least in low-speed parking lot situations, will still be useful. People are going to want to go shopping, park their car in a space of their choosing, run into the store and come back out.
6) Harried parents are going to want to use their cars to send their children places as opposed to drive them there. Because of point #1, there will be arguments about how young a child can be and be left alone in a vehicle, and from time to time, some poor kid will come to grief due to a bad decision on somebody's part.
1) We will always have traffic jams. Cars are mechanical things and will break down, roads will need to be maintained (ask me about my commute today!), ice, snow and rain will affect all vehicles, and there can only be so many cars on a given amount of road. When all cars are automated, traffic will flow better, but it won't be perfect.
2) I've heard people offer the idea that, in the self-driving car era, people will be willing to live a long way from work, because they can sleep in their cars on the way in. Really? You're going to get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, climb into the car and take a nap on the way into work? A few hardy souls may, but most people won't.
3) I expect that there will be a lot fewer two-car families. In many families, one car is used to take somebody to work, where it sits in the parking lot for eight hours and is driven home. In the self-driving era, that car can be sent home and used during the day for other purposes.
4) With "taxis" being replaced by self-driving rental cars that can come and pick you up then take themselves back to the shop, there will be a lot of one-car and no-car families. However, there will still be people who need their own car. People with sales or repair jobs, for example, use their cars as storage / portable offices. For those people, having their own car will be even more important.
5) The ability to manually drive a car, at least in low-speed parking lot situations, will still be useful. People are going to want to go shopping, park their car in a space of their choosing, run into the store and come back out.
6) Harried parents are going to want to use their cars to send their children places as opposed to drive them there. Because of point #1, there will be arguments about how young a child can be and be left alone in a vehicle, and from time to time, some poor kid will come to grief due to a bad decision on somebody's part.
