Self Driving Cars: Will It Completely Change The World?

Catching up on my reading, the Economist had an article this summer about how they think self driving cars may change the world. Here are some of their ideas if government actually lets cars drive unlicensed people.
1) Seniors could keep their mobility. I have an uncle who is still mentally very with it but his poor vision has taken away his driver's license. Now he could just tell his car his destination and be driven there.
2) End of school busses? Just send the kids to school with an electric car and re-send it to pick them up at 3PM.
3) No more drunk driving? Just have your beers and get in the back seat, let the car bring you home.
4) Taxi's? Just order one over the phone.

Or do you think people and government would be unwilling to let cars operate without licensed, alert drivers? I hope this doesn't happen. It would be nice to grab a nap on my commute to work. Or a cross country trip, go in the back, make a sandwich.

FredHayek wrote: Catching up on my reading, the Economist had an article this summer about how they think self driving cars may change the world. Here are some of their ideas if government actually lets cars drive unlicensed people.
1) Seniors could keep their mobility. I have an uncle who is still mentally very with it but his poor vision has taken away his driver's license. Now he could just tell his car his destination and be driven there.
2) End of school busses? Just send the kids to school with an electric car and re-send it to pick them up at 3PM.
3) No more drunk driving? Just have your beers and get in the back seat, let the car bring you home.
4) Taxi's? Just order one over the phone.

Or do you think people and government would be unwilling to let cars operate without licensed, alert drivers? I hope this doesn't happen. It would be nice to grab a nap on my commute to work. Or a cross country trip, go in the back, make a sandwich.

Being a mechanic, I've yet to ever see or hear about a mechanical device that doesn't wear out in some way or eventually malfunction. You would need that 100% certainty because otherwise, who is held accountable if an automated car was to malfunction and hurt someone or cause some sort of damage to property? Who would the lawyers sue, the cars?

Don't some rail systems like Vegas's work without human operators? I know there is much less to go wrong with a train than a car, but you could be right, our current liability system might require a human operator to at least monitor the auto-driver. Based on an article I read about pilots losing skills, it appears that most of them have been reduced to an emergency switch on passenger and freight flights.

Freight deliveries might be very different too. Robot trucks pulling into loading docks.

Merging.... Computers HAVE to be better at merging than people...

ExtremeModerate wrote: Merging.... Computers HAVE to be better at merging than people...

I believe the accident rate would go way down after the first year.

Wow. I hadn't read about the electronic license plates before. I would worry about mission creep on that one too.
George Orwell was an optimist?

Since autonomous vehicles will most likely travel in a line or pack we will all be held hostage behind the slowest of the vehicles on the road.

gmule wrote: Since autonomous vehicles will most likely travel in a line or pack we will all be held hostage behind the slowest of the vehicles on the road.

The slowest vehicle could be programmed to take turnouts and allow traffic to pass - unlike human drivers that take the line forming behind them as an indication of how 'safe' they're making people drive.

But there might be less aggression too. If people are checking e-mails or watching TV they might not care as much about slow traffic. They can still be productive.