Good point, and don’t forget about re-training auto mechanics.
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The solution is canals and giant shrimp to ride on? Not what I was expecting but who am I to stand in the way of progress.
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No I’m saying that it will rapidly get to a point where it’s obvious that human drivers will just plain cost more. Humans do stupid shit in cars that makes them more accident prone, automation doesn’t have that specific problem. Like I said, it may be a ways off, but a large portion of “solving” traffic will get easier if you drop humans, and their messy driving behaviors out of the mix. Their are still many variables, like weather, pedestrians, debris in roadways, and so on that can’t be controlled for. Humans driving cars is a variable that can be controlled.
So I see a tipping point were there are significantly less human drivers that share that distributed risk for driver error. Which will lead to higher rates for the people who want to drive manually, until it just becomes cost prohibitive.
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eh… I dont buy your argument, “fuck you if your bills are too high”. We didn’t always buy $1,000 phones every 2 years, the avg full size truck now costs $50,000, avg car payment is at an all time high, and we pay more for cars with technology we dont need.
BY “getting insane pretty quickly”, did you mean for people will die from autonomous vehicles? Quickly like 5 years? Or quickly like 40 years?
I dont think the autonomous revolution will take away manually driven cars. I say this only because not everyone will be able to afford high tech cars. There will always be cars such as the no frills Nissan Versa on the road.
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Yes! haha
Yes, it will start with corporate vehicles. A self driving semi doesn’t have limitations that truck drivers do. Self driving semi’s don’t need need labor laws, sleep breaks, piss breaks, time to eat or salaries. Having a mostly autonomous fleet of trucks, or shared trucks, is going to save companies money, even if the vehicles initially need to be updated or replaced.
Why wouldn’t the same people mind the huge increase in cost on their car notes and road taxes?
Because I think that car ownership will decrease too. Why own a car if you can survive with a automated Uber model.
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Writing code to replicate human visual detection is extremely accident prone. The current standard software for collision avoidance in cars is based on a model of the visual circuits I study in grasshoppers. It doesn’t come close to what any sighted animal can do. We are nowhere close to being able to build cars that can deal with unexpected problems as well as a person can. And for as long as roads are outside and not immaculately maintained this will always be a problem. Mass transit using automated vehicles not on rails, but free to move anywhere, will still require trillions more in investment
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“maybe” … so your telling me there’s a chance!
I agree. And all I want is to be able to play Call of Duty while my car drives me to work.
MPG is pretty bad single metric to drive environmental policy, though, as it assumes that curbing car use is outside of the scope of the effort. I prefer minimizing VMT (vehicle miles traveled), which some transport agencies are starting to move to for highway planning purposes (vs the older goal of maximizing LOS “level of service”, basically minimizing motor vehicle delay, which is how so much of the US came to be built for cars and cars alone).
I’m more of a Nintendo guy, but playing Switch games on the train works pretty well 
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BY “getting insane pretty quickly”, did you mean for people will die from autonomous vehicles? Quickly like 5 years? Or quickly like 40 years?
No the exact opposite. Human driving errors will be the problem when self driving cars get better (and yes, that still might be a ways off.) It will be easier and safer (not accident free) when humans are out of the traffic equation.
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Very true. Our roads are awful. The whole idea of autonomous cars ruling the road is just too expensive when you think of all that is involved.
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yes I miss riding the train to work. I used to read so many more books.
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I’ve been trying to temper my comments with the fact that I do understand that this may be a ways off. At least further then the 2-5 years that companies like Uber were claiming. But in 20-30 years, I think it’s possible that the visual detection problems could be solved. When that time comes, I think things will change quickly.
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Yes you bring up some good points. Vehicle ownership will definitely decrease. I realy like the last part of what you said, “Why own a car if you can survive with a automated Uber model.”
I am a owner of a sports car with a gas powered engine and I’d hate to give up the thrill of driving. However, if I could own a street legal Level V autonomous car I would give up the manually operated car I currently use in an instant. I have a long commute and used to take the train when I was working for my previous employer. No train to my new office. So I sit in my car 2 hours a day wishing I could be reading or taking a nap.
I agree that in a few decades many of the tech problems will be worked out, and that could bring a sudden change. Its just that I’m still hoping that before then we will realize that we can do better than cars and instead put some of that investment into replacing cars rather than just spending trillions to improve the ride
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I just had an idea… I’m going to buy a fleet of Level V autonomous cars and as a capitalist, I will sit at home while my self driving cars act as Ubers.
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Hell, when I was a teenager buying the Dire Straits CD Brothers in Arms because it had the DDD logo (all digital recording and mixing) I would have though you were crazy if you told me that in the future most of my paid media consumption would be rented. But most of the media I pay for now is subscription based, and I don’t have physical copies when I stop paying for the subscriptions now.
Will the self driving Uber model be expensive, sure it will. For most people it will probably still be cheaper the owning your own vehicle. Kind of like really rich people and private planes right now. It’s cheaper to have access to a small shared fleet of planes, fuck you money is when you own your own. I’m just pessimistic with everything related to right to repair and rental models getting better before that BS can spread to our transportation.
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And – for some at least – believing that having a cool car will make you more attractive.
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Are those bigger than jumbo shrimp…because – if so – have I got a great recipe for that!
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Good point, I could see a future with all cars owned by corporations, and passengers will be bombarded with audio visual advertisements, and forced to give their personal info.
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