We’ll see how this all plays out, but I think it is a very short step from “driverless cars” to driverless cars that require buying assorted special government chip privileges to go certain places in lieu of toll booths.
Next, liberals will want programs written that will aggregate data and determine who is going where all for the super innocuous benefit of automatically “helping” people car pool. This is before they actually mandate car pooling if the algorithm shows your going to the same location at roughly the same time. Otherwise - surprise! - you can pay a hefty fee to use your individual driverless car. Really, not much different than car pooling lanes in many cities — outside of the sheer coercion.
I’m not against technology, but it seems to me that there are forces out there that are moving mountains to bring about driverless cars. For what real reason or benefit? And more importantly, who is asking for driverless cars? As far as I can see, no one at all has been clamoring for driverless cars outside of groups and people who are certain that globull warming is a major issue.
And that’s what scares me!
A company is already working on car pooling to replace taxis in New York City. The models claim that 13,000 taxis can be replaced by 3,000-4,000 self-driving cars. Since taxi medallions in New York City went for $1,050,000 in 2013, but currently go for $425,000 to $649,000 http://nycitycab.com/Business/TaxiMedallionList.aspx it looks as though self-driving cars of the future may already be affecting taxi medallion prices.
I think there are several forces in play. You have the techies that want to sell the products that go into the auto. Highway planners in big city metro areas want it to decrease commute travel times, etc. Then there are the ride sharing companies and transportation firms that don't want to pay for drivers unless they have to.
It’s the next killer app, or in this case non-killer app. Self driving cars have been a sci-fi staple for generations, so everybody in the nerd community knows the concept. Add to that the fact that car accidents are still the number 1 killer on the planet. Then you’ve got the fact that we are not expanding road capacity to keep up with people or car quantity and that only leaves one solution to traffic congestion: make the cars take less space. Self driving can do that.
Then you’ve got the industrial drivers, expensive people with expensive licenses that get revoked easily, and have limited time windows of driving available to them. Long haul trucking want self driving vehicles badly. Cab companies want them.
There is a lot of money to be made and saved with self driving vehicles.