Much like cell phones, driver-less cars will change how we live. In particular truck accidents will be reduced, and a lot of truck drivers put out of work.
We may no longer have a family car. Rather an Uber like app will summon a car from a central location, and take us to where we want to go???
Change is coming. Deal with it.
Yeah, sure....Uber is going to take me on a rugged road along the Blackfoot River near Missoula, MT? Uh huh...Oh...rugged roads will only be for the ELITES who OWN their OWN cars.
You sound like a left-wing fascist which is really the only kind there is anyway. Who the hell wants to ride in a smelly public-transport used vehicle someone recently puked in that you aren't allowed to personalize or customize? There are so many negative connotations to this scenario it's positively repulsive. What about serial rapists lurking in the trunks or back seats of cars that are dispatched to unsuspecting female users? What about bombs surreptitiously placed underneath vehicles dispatched out to innocent users? This is a terrorists' dream come true. So the only people who will have control of their vehicles will be first responders and law enforcement? The rest of us will just be stuck in robotic vehicles, right? This is nothing more than the left's next incarnation of "buses for everyone, just minus the bus driver". Mass transit is mass transit which is really what YOU ALL want. The left wing's most fashionable wet dream, to finally take the automobile away from the masses. I have a lifted truck which cost me a lot of money to set up the way I want it and it is unique. I'm not interested in some leftist snivelling control freak telling me what kind of machine I can and can't drive. You leftists just can't stand anyone making their own decisions because you think you know how to live their life better than they do. Just another attempt to "engineer" more freedom and independence out of the lives of Americans, and turn us into sheeple. Arrogant twits with your "change" bullshit. It's NOT CHANGE. It's more of the same old leftist Marxist crap. You don't ram anything down my throat. What's gonna get changed is YOU.
People will rant, whine, rail about conspiracies, say ‘hell no’... much as they did with cars in the first place.
Me, I’ll put my money where my beliefs are and invest in things that will grow as these become more common.
I think if TPTB try to FORCE people to give up their cars it won’t go over well, many like customizing their vehicle and some can actually drive well; but for a LOT of people having the option is going to be really nice, and for people who no longer are able to drive it will be a Godsend. It will be GREAT for the entertainment industry, specifically bars and nightclubs.
We may no longer have a family car. Rather an Uber like app will summon a car from a central location, and take us to where we want to go???
Change is coming. Deal with it.
I can see situations where one weekend I need a pickup truck and another weekend I need a van or sedan, or perhaps a sports car.
I just spent two weeks on vacation in N. VA and DC area. If you don’t live there the roads are a real challenge and change daily. I can’t imagine a driverless car meeting all the challenges. Traffic. Construction zones, changeable lanes, weather..(snow, blinding rain and ice storms). Mixing driverless cars and manual cars is just not possible. Sure 97% of driving is straight and level, but the other 2-3 % requires flexibility that it is difficult for any set of sensors and computer to handle.
Freedom will be taken away by those who control those centralized car platforms.
Better to keep human independence and ownership of cars as a viable and realistic option.
Is Uber going to haul my boat for me?
I remember back in the late 1970s when ATMs first started appearing and my father swore to never use one of those "infernal" machines and insisted on going inside the bank to a human teller. He had all these nightmare scenarios such as how the money wouldn't come out and your account would get charged for the withdrawal nonetheless. Or you'd make a deposit and the money would conveniently "disappear." All apparently valid concerns at the time that many people had.
Fast forward nearly 40 years later, my father (now in his 80s) not only has been using ATMs for decades but now does online banking and uses apps on his tablet to order and pay for things just like any other teenager he loves to criticize for always "having their faces buried in a screen."
For better or for worse, technology has a way of permeating itself into society and changing the way people do things. Eventually, even the most resistant among us are pulled along.
As for driverless vehicles, even today it seems a bit outlandish. Just like how trusting a machine to dispense cash and take your deposits did back in 1979. But anybody paying attention can see that it is coming, whether we like it or not.
“Much like cell phones, driver-less cars will change how we live.”
As I near 70 years old, I’m interested in the possibilities of driverless cars. I can see it making it possible for older people to maintain more independence than they can now.