I can drive but it’s extremely stressful and I average at least one major anxiety attack from driving every month. When I was laid off a few years ago, I basically never drove. I’d walk through dangerous intersections to avoid it. My ex got to the point where she could barely drive at all from her anxiety.
The only reason my mom drives at all is because my dad is so terrifying a driver she’d rather drive him than the other way around. Other than work and the grocery store, I basically don’t drive now. You’re definitely not alone on any of this.
Viable public transit is probably a better long term solution for humans as a species but self-driving cars are a must while we work on convincing people to build public transit. So many people are affected in one way or another.
It may be easy to ignore for people who aren’t directly affected but it’s a huge impact to the people who are affected.
I’m really grateful that my partner is an extremely calm and competent driver. One of the first things that kicked off my attraction to him was how completely safe I felt in the car with him. He wouldn’t miss driving too much though if we ever get complete automation, road trips a little and random neighborhood exploring at night.
This too… just because it’s a self-driving car doesn’t mean it’s being developed/created with this particular segment of the population in mind. There can be any number of ways that a self-driving car might still have accessibility problems, right?
Sure and I think @nytespryte and I agree with you here. But that’s not how it’s being thought about, at least in the public discourse. I don’t think I’ve seen disability mentioned in what I’ve read on the topic. Whether or not these are part of the conversation behind the scenes, it’s not in the public. It seems to be focused on dealing with traffic/volume and as a cool toy for the elite at this point. I’d love for this aspect to be part of the conversation, but I haven’t seen that happen.
This! It also seems to me that the self-driving car discussion is also being used to supplant public transit rather than supplement it. It’s another privatized, money-making solution, to a very public problem, I think.
Almost 50% of Americans support a political party that believes “proactive public policy” is exactly the same thing as communism (and also believes communism is bad.)
Almost 50% of voting Americans. A sad distinction.
Most of the objections have already been tested and resolved. We lived in Vancouver and didn’t own a car for 12 years, instead using the local car co-op. It was excellent, with cars almost everywhere, relatively low cost (compared to ownership), and all the vehicles were well maintained and clean.
When you picked up a car it was incumbent on you to check it for mess, scrapes etc. And in cases where there was an issue the charge went to the last person who used it. That system worked very well, and I see no reason it wouldn’t in a larger group. Certainly people would abuse it, but then they would lose their access very quickly.
Aside from the obvious benefits of not having to worry about maintenance, insurance etc, we also had access to a wide range of vehicles - from minivans to economy cars to pickups. All useful in certain cases and not others. I see no reason why that wouldn’t be a applicable in the larger sense. If a vehicle was broken down we just made a call and got another. An online booking system made planning extremely simple.
Our most expensive month in 12 years came out to about $400, which is the baseline cost (so far) of owning our current car (including fuel, maintenance, insurance and the purchase price).
More recent models such as Car2Go and Zipcar have only added to the approaches to car sharing - all with benefits and drawbacks. The simple fact is that if they are convenient enough and cheap enough, most people will make the switch sooner than later.
Of course there will be people who feel an irrational attachment to keeping their own vehicle. Good for them, if they want to work an additional decade or so to satisfy their wishes. I’ll give up owning a car in seconds when the better option comes along. I still use car sharing when I visit the city, and see no reason to change that.
"from 5% utilization to near-100% utilization"
I look at all the traffic on a major highway during rush hour and can only think how replacing all those drivers – but not their cars - would make any difference.
Individual transportation is the problem, not the individual driver.
But what if the cheapest way to “park” your autonomous vehicle is to have it endlessly circle the block while you’re at work?
I do something like this now with my helicopter. When I am going out to run errands and such, I often lock the controls so that it continues to hover in place. Then I lower a ladder to climb out and in. The fuel is expensive but it is often cheaper than parking on top of garages or dealing with complaints from parking on other rooftops. The only hitch is that I really need to remember to get back while it still has enough fuel to stay aloft. This can be more stressful than running to pay the parking meter!
Nobody really likes to think about the depth of our commitment to Big Oil, Auto, and Tire. It’s not really acceptable to directly challenge their stranglehold on public discourse, the most anyone can do is nibble around the edges.
They are of course perfectly willing to move us toward a car free, oil free existence, just as long as they get the same dominant position as they have now. So a gradual push toward self driving electric cars, still keeps us isolated from each other in little metal and glass boxes, commuting toward workplaces we have no say in locating or managing. It’s as if there was never a viable existence before the automobile, and there could never be one after, either.
Start taxing autos and fuel the way it’s done in Europe and Japan, and we’d start seeing high speed rail here in the states sooner, rather than later. Trains here are a political non-starter as long as cars are king.
There’s a popular brand of kitchen tools that the designer made with his wife who had arthritis in mind. Then everyone else saw them and realized that a well designed spatula grip is something they would be willing to pay for.
There should be no net reduction in the number of maintenance workers. Most vehicle maintenance is mileage based. Why should that go down for autonomous non-personal-ownership vehicles? If anything it will go up because more people can afford to rent for shorter distances, people who might not own a car now. I suppose this will trade off slightly against the improved reliability of modern cars but this is true even if vehicles stay non-autonomous. Also, some service does need to keep vehicle interiors clean enough for non-personal fleets.
I do expect an interior camera system and/or random inspections after a rental trip to try assessing interior damage against whoever caused it, possibly damaging their ‘credit rating’ if damages could not be paid for, much as rental cars are handled today.
You’re part of the solution, not the problem, and in the vast minority. Americans in general do not like to share things. I like to go to the laundromat and do all my laundry in parallel and be done with weekly washing in an hour and a half, but how many people do that? Most people I know, especially homeowners, have their own wash facilities. Basically, when you can afford to have your own, you do. The only solution I see is that basically, personal car ownership becomes financially unattainable.
I don’t think this is a fair comparison. There’s many drawbacks to using laundry facilities; you can lose garments easily if you’re not super careful, lugging that much laundry around is a literal pain in the back, and you lose out a lot more time doing laundry at a laundromat (you have to stay there with your laundry and can’t really multitask errands, unless you want to risk not getting back exactly on time and someone dumping your laundry all over the place); while if you only let laundry pile up with one load at a time you can just do that load and put it up every few days or so, and multitask at home while that happens. From what I know of many people who have in-home laundry, this is what they do; they don’t have one big laundry day.
On the other hand, if public or public-like transit was point-to-point and on-demand, I think that it would drastically reduce car ownership. The Uber-like companies are already doing this by providing a cheap and more convenient way to have a taxi-like service. Eventually, I think that many, if not most, people would forego car ownership for these services; as long as they meet what people need.
I just think you underestimate what people need, or think they need. It is not enough just to address the drawbacks of public transit (or laundry). For people to actually change their behavior, there has to be a cultural shift, and many people don’t want it. This goes back to @blackanvil 's original assertion, with which I don’t want to agree, but do.
Public laundry is a hassle if you have too many items that can’t go into the dryer. But you can do those items last, put them in a water proof bag and hang them as soon as you get home.
It gets nightmarish though if you have a sick pet, a sick kid, or any kind of incontinence. It is more than just convenient to get that stuff into the wash immediately.
This all presupposes buying into the idea of ownership in the first place. Another approach to the laundry problem is to frame the house as belonging to the community, so that its wash facilities are shared also.
I agree. I don’t want to own stuff or have to do stuff. I want full automation and property to just be available for my use whenever I want it. Without it smelling like someone else’s habits. Is that too much to ask?
I don’t know. It just seems to me that matters of managing real-world resources of land and materials would obviously be mostly concerned with what actually exists, instead of people wanting things.
