Self-Driving Cars
Being a parent of a child under 16 means trying to figure out ways to get said child from here to there, say from school to home, and from home to after school activities, and then back. There is often a fair amount of juggling involved – one or more, er, “caregivers” are typically involved in the process To an economist, therefore, being able to put a child in a self-driving car means, potentially, more output in the economy and more secure cars as many of them have brakes for towing making them more functional and secure.
That’s a parent or grandparent that doesn’t have to take time away from something else (work?) to traipse across town, pick up the kid, drop him/her off, etc.
And of course, its not just kids. Other people or things that sometimes can’t drive themselves include some of the elderly, women and packages. And for those who do drive, I wouldn’t be surprised, for instance, if typical commutes become longer, but time spent on the commute will be “more efficiently” used – for instance, in a self-driving vehicle, one can eat a leisurely breakfast and read the morning news while on the way to work. So, what changes do you anticipate we will see as self-driving cars spread?
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I only want to see self driving trucks. That alone would reduce the carnage on the highways a lot and make driving at least a tolerable endeavor again.
Trucks that obey a single set of rules would be nice.
The thing about self-driving cars is that they rapidly become a public transit system. Only the rich would bother to actually own one, and the people who won’t let go of their cars will probably continue to buy non-self driving cars (with whatever adaptive driving “assistance” becomes effectively standard safety features by that time).
So that means that it’s the same rules as buses, subways, commuter rail. It’s not really your space, it’s a public space, and for a lot of people there would be quick cost reductions available if they carpooled, which probably turns into something interesting with computers mapping routes.
Uber wants to get to this future, but if I was betting on a winner in the self-driving cars future, it’s Enterprise.
I’m 75 years old and dreading when I will have to quit driving.
For me, at some point a self-driving car would mean I could maintain my independence much longer.
In the Boston area there is a car service operated by the MBTA called “The Ride.” Kind of a subsidized reservation-based service intended for disabled people.
I would think that such things are available in most urban areas. Self-driving brings that to the masses, and massive car sharing probably would reduce the cost.
Interesting thought: cabs pay a much higher charge to use tunnels and bridges in Boston. Is a self-driving car a cab?
I’m still skeptical about self driving cars. The technology for the next five to ten years seems to require that a human driver be ready to take control on a few seconds notice when the car can no longer drive itself due to road, weather or traffic conditions. That isn’t going to work for packages or people who can’t drive.
I’m willing to believe that self driving cars will be better than that in twenty years or so, but this will require a new family of low cost sensors and much better software to do the integration and analysis.
I totally enjoy driving my car. I can’t even do cruise control. To me it’s a example of freedom, within the bounds of traffic laws of course. You’ll pry the steering wheel out of my cold dead fingers 🙂
Even more deaths thanks to computer glitches. At least when my laptop freezes, I don’t have to worry about getting killed.
Not only that, self-driving cars are still cars, the worst invention in human history as far as depleting resources, destroying the environment, causing human death and serious injury and defiling of the natural landscape go. Given the rampant destruction already being wrought due to climate change, we should be massively reallocating resources to public transportation and killing off the privately owned automobile altogether.