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To: Vince Ferrer

For now, anyway, the “black boxes” are only local monitors, without any real-time reporting capability (except for BMW, according to what I have read) or the ability to control your use of your car.

I’m not happy about it, but I have had the black box in my last 2 cars.

I am concerned about schemes to base taxation on miles driven as a replacement or supplement to fuel taxes. That will be one giant step forward to complete monitoring of a person’s movements, and something to be fought tooth and nail.

Insurance companies (e.g. Progressive) are pushing a monitor device that rewards docile behavior with reduced rates. For now, it’s voluntary. In the future, it might not be.

The first self-driving cars will, of course, offer the option of do-it-yourself driving, for traditionalists like myself. That last little bit of freedom will gradually slip away as the golden chains are tightened.

These erosions of personal freedom always come as gifts from the masters, wrapped in shiny paper and bright ribbons, with promises of lower costs, better health and safety, and as always, benefits “for the children”.

As for the pizza delivery, I would only require that the self-driven car be occupied by a good-looking android!

(Sorry for the rant!)


42 posted on 10/20/2012 11:29:17 AM PDT by Fresh Wind (If Obama is an empty chair, then Biden is the whoopee cushion.)
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To: Fresh Wind
How do you think taxicabs will change with self driven cars? I would hope that the industry will be completely changed from what it is now, because for most of the last 80 years, it has been an extremely anti-competitive industry. The industry is highly regulated and controlled by cities in order to block competitors from entering the market.

Here is an interesting case, IJ Breaks Up Denver's 50-Year-Old Taxi Monopoly

Proponents of self driven cars feel that an individual can give up ownership of cars because there will always be a self driven car around you somewhere that can be called like a taxi and take you where you need to go. I don't know if the market will ever get that saturated, but it is an interesting idea. But this will bump up against most city's laws against "gypsy" cabs.

59 posted on 10/20/2012 9:56:44 PM PDT by Vince Ferrer
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