When all the cars are autonomous, it might be possible to raise the highway speed limits to 90 or 120 MPH, because of course robots can drive safely at that kind of speed.
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But what will I complain about when Iâm sitting in my car being chauffeured around if not other drivers?
::rolls down window, yells::
âYour robot driverâs algorithms are so old, theyâre written in FORTRAN!â
âCareful buddy, itâs easier for me to reload when I donât have to have my hands on the steering wheel!â
Edit: What are Hollywood car chases going to look like when you canât drive a car? That scene from Minority Report? How are cars going to react if youâre being shot at while riding in your car? Will they get you killed because they donât understand how to drive away from a pursuer?
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Theyâre called race tracks. You can visit them today for quite a bit of fun.
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Suits me but iâll take the duckduckgo car, thanks.
You will still be able to drive of course but itâll be for the wealthier hobbiest in designated areas, just like you can still own a horse for purely recreational means. Of course youâll pay more for the privilege as your insurance premium will go way up when the meatsack behind the wheel becomes a liability.
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OH I am aware. But I mean something more interesting than a circular track. Several miles of old winding âback roadsâ for example. I mean I have never raced my car, and while I drive too fast, I have no desire to ever go on a race track per se. But I, like a lot of people, enjoy an occasional drive where you just go out and drive around. Especially if you have a little âsecretâ spot where you have some interesting curves or scenery, or you just like the aspect of the drive.
If no one can manually drive any more, I see private manual courses like that to be very appealing to some. And then in a generation they will probably go away. And then in another generation they will make a retro come back!
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I get driven to work already.
I take public transportation.
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Add me to the canât wait column. I really loved driving when I was young and reckless and didnât live in Seattle. A decade in this town has made me hate driving.
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Iâve been saying that robocar speeds will be really fast for all of my adult life, but of course Iâve no proof of that.
Good. Iâm a shitty driver and itâs a miracle Iâve never killed myself or anyone else.
And by âshitty driverâ I mean that in more than half a million miles of driving, Iâve clipped the mirror of one parked car, and been rear-ended while stopped in highway traffic by another. I didnât say I wasnât better than most, just that human-piloted automobiles are objectively insanely dangerous.
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I am not sure one can be objective and then use the term âinsanely dangerousâ. I am quite comfortable driving, while there are many mildly dangerous things I wouldnât dare do. I wouldnât set foot in a car were it truly âinsanely dangerousâ.
Well, thatâs the thing. Iâm actually quite comfortable too, because itâs easy to think that I wonât be one of the 30,000+ people killed or 2,000,000+ injured this year. And yet, with the possible exception of smoking, getting into a car is about the single most dangerous thing that large numbers of people are legally permitted to do in our society. You can set the bar for âinsanelyâ dangerous wherever you like, but if anything worth mentioning meets it, itâs driving.
I donât really think banning human-piloted vehicles will ever be necessary, or politically feasible in any event. But Iâll cheerfully take my extremely safe-driving self out of the equation the moment it becomes feasible to do so without sacrificing my ability to get around, and I doubt Iâll be alone.
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I wouldnât mind being able to knit or read in the drive time it takes to get the kid to school, then to work. And before any smartrypants chime in about public transit, the school takes 45 minutes to get to by bus (itâs a 15 minute drive), and work is another 30 or so (for a 10 minute drive). Plus we have real winter with snow and sub-zero temps. Itâs amazingly inefficient to take the bus, plus it costs more than driving my stupid Prius by at least a dollar per trip. So bring on the autonomous cars.
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I also wonder how adding yet more cars (robotic or not) is the solution to our traffic problem in urban environments.
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Oh, but these are smart cars. Only smart people get them. /s
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I donât know⌠Iâm fully on the side of paying more into common sense public transit in high density areas, with a large federally funded high speed rail system linking the country together. But you know, I guess itâs better for us to line the pockets of the people who are going to materially benefit, rather than actually taking the transportation problem seriously. Because of course âsmartâ in this case is really just a stand in for ârichâ and thatâs whoâll be benefiting from robotic cars.
This isnât aimed at you, BTW, just sort of expressing my frustration with the whole generaly concept of autonomous cars. But you know, I guess I just hate the future⌠
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I think weâre in an accidental agreement contest. 
I not only dislike the marketing lies about autonomous cars, I dislike the idea of carbon-emitting consumer cars generally and would vote to ban them tomorrow.
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I figured we agree. I always hesitate to weigh in on these threads, because there is such a fetishization of the topic, on a number of levels. It never seems to come back to the question of what this means for the environment, etc.
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Yes, and I think the first fetish is sometimes that because math gives you simple, Rational and correct answers then social problems must also have simple, Rational and correct answers.
And if the simple, Rational and correct answer is a long line of slowly moving autonomous smart cars blowing carbon in heavy traffic then the answer isnât invest in public transportation.
Itâs that identifying as smart means professing the inevitability of carbon and traffic â and, some day, electric cars.
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