[garjog]

Unlike the proposal in the article here, driverless cars may not require much government investments in new infrastructure.

All that is needed is new sensors put on existing cars since most of the technology is already here.

Traffic accidents and fatalities would be cut in half (since most accidents are caused by human error and the scanners are 90 times more precise than human operators.)

The positive impact on the economy would spur a burst of productivity.

Think about it: no traffic jams. People would program the car to a specific destination and the trip would be coordinated with all other cars on the road. Travel speed could be greatly increased.

When you go out to eat, the car drops you off and then parks itself.

[garjog]

Instead of sitting at the wheel in traffic, drivers could text or surf or work on their computers.

Efficiency would explode.

While professional drivers would be put out of business, new spin-off jobs would greatly increase the number of employed workers.

To say: driverless cars puts thousands of truck and taxi car drivers out of work!

is like saying that the invention of automobiles or the transcontinental railroad put buggy whip makers out of business.

[garjog]

The economy will expand with new jobs that are more fulfilling.

For example, if the vast majority of workers now have an hour or more of extra time since commute time is reduced, these workers would spend it consuming products and services that need employees.

Drivers freed from driving might go to health club and be trained. Or take part in some kind of entertainment or go shopping. New jobs would emerge.

Google was founded in 1998 and is now a $163.2 billion or more company. YouTube was founded in 2005 and is now a $32 billion dollar company.

Before these companies were founded people couldn't even imagine the thousands of jobs that would be created.

It would be like saying: the internet is a crazy idea. Do you know how many mail carriers and fax machine makers would be put out of business?

[garjog]

Check out my blog:

Transportation Futures for links to pro and cons of driverless cars.

http://dreamtransportation.blogspot.com/

[wita]

Unfortunately when fully developed, the government is going to “demand” that all folks transporting themselves utilize the “system”.

That would be wrong, and so government needs to stay out of the professional driver business. No one yet knows the unintended consequences of the “system”.

[bunkerhill7]

One of the first driverless forms of transportation was invented here during the 18th Century. Every midnight the headless horseman races down the road with the the clippity-clop coming and going. It seems his head was blown off by a cannonball. Even the boy scouts camping out here at night on a jamboree see it every year. But it ain`t Sleepy Hollow- it`s another haunted area.

[Wuli]

“Think about it: no traffic jams.”

That’s the arrogance of the technologists talking, not the reality.

The largest cause of traffic jams is not accidents but the sheer congestion of how many drivers want to go in the same direction in the same area at the same time.

Believing that robotized cars can solve this is foolish nonsense.

The idea arrogantly assumes there is always a “better route to take” to avoid the traffic jam.

That is most frequently not the case. Most of the alternatives turn out to be either just as bad, or longer in distance, or “off-highway” - in other words stop signs and traffic lights as opposed to on highway”, or multiple delays involving multiple route changes to make the “alternate route” work, and n the end getting the driver “out of the congestion” but NOT getting the driver to their destination in any significantly greater time frame.

The technology has its greatest possible achievement of putting more people who were “going the same way” onto more routes without actually achieving the greatest desire of the drivers - less time spent getting to their destination.

Once people realize they are only fulfilling a need of the technologists and not their own, they’ll have their robots in their autos “uninstalled” and ask that the technologists be exiled to a land with no roads. Then the technologists will put themselves to work perfecting the individual air car - for their own needs, and they’ll be invited back. Next time they’ll work on what people need and not on what they simply want to prove to themselves but need the gullible people to pay for it.

[Windflier]

No thanks. I have a natural resistance to the concept of giving over my innate right to freely transport myself, to a government-run, automated people mover system.

Concepts like this one, all forward the society’s momentum toward greater and greater control by a massive central authority, and less and less autonomy and freedom for the individual.

It’s anathema to the concepts our country was founded upon.

[bgill]

The first time a speck of dust gets into the system causing an accident will put the company out of business within a week.

[mikrofon]

Based on the way some cars are navigating the roads (or looking at who’s behind the wheel & seeing no one ;), I thought we already had driverless vehicles....

[Eaker]

Computers crash all the time.

Try having your car reboot at 70mph and then for whatever reason it makes a hard turn and causes a huge wreck.

Pretty efficient.

[newzjunkey]

Great opportunity for cyberterrorism.

[Mr. Jeeves]

Well, that’s one way to preempt the preppers from bugging out when the SHTF scenario unfolds. Just turn off the master control to the driverless car system and give the police time to loot everyone’s supplies before they can escape. :)

[Eye of Unk]

As soon as there is driverless cars along comes a group that will fill one of those cars with explosives and end it to a destination with nobody inside.

There cannot be any argument that people won’t take advantage of transporting an empty vehicle. With a bomb inside.

Nor can you argue that all the bad/crazy/ terrorists will be removed from society, all the sharp objects and any chemicals known to make bombs outlawed.

I am just saying what a wonderful idea it would be to call my car at home to come pick me up, or it could be an emergency transport say if my other means of transportation broke down, who needs a cab then?

With advancement come the mis-use of advancements.

I still say we should be like Israel. The liberal states can hide behind their barriers, bomb sniffers and use their laser drones to kill anyone openly carrying sporks.

[garjog]

In case anyone is still looking at this thread, even after the heated and I think irrational posts against a driverless car network, I am even more convinced it is a great idea that should move forward.

If we want to preserve our car culture in America and prevent liberal bureaucrat social planners from forcing on us rail solutions to the insane traffic congestion that exist in every major city.

How do we keep a system in which you freely choose to get into a car and go where ever you want when ever you want?

Few freedom-loving Americans would choose waiting in line to sit on a bus or train that takes you sort of near where you want to go when an individual car fulfills the ideal perfectly.

If in our major cities we had a computer coordinated network of robotic cars the traffic deaths and traffic jams would be a thing of the past — like piles of horse manure that once covered the street.

[garjog]

Posters reacted hostilely to this plan here.

As best as I can figure, the hostility is due to a negative reaction to any kind of social planning.

These objections are justifiable, as is the fear that a central database would know where everyone is going and where they have traveled.

But, I think that we could ban the collection and misuse of this data.

We could also institute filters to prevent personal data from leaking.

Or we could keep one lane for the old fashioned driver driven cars to placate the paranoid who fear social planning.

I think that once everyone sees that a coordinated network driverless cars gets you to your chosen destination in half the time people will accept the potential loss of privacy.

Just as we do when going on a site like this or Facebook. There are privacy settings and controls that mitigate the loss.

The advantages far outweigh the drawbacks.

Some posters above doubt the technology would work, but anyone who has researched the topic will discover that we already have the technology and there is a growing amount of evidence that driverless cars work really well.

The best argument for conservatives maybe that promoting a driverless car network can be offered as an alternative to the money wasted on light rail and “high speed” trains.

[garjog]

A couple paranoid posters above accuse me of trying to make money off my blog. That is both idiotic and rude.

I posted a link to my new blog about driverless cars to help with anyone who wants find quick links to pro and con articles and videos about driverless cars.

http://dreamtransportation.blogspot.com/

Please check it out. It is an educational blog without any ads, so I don’t make any money. Sheesh.