Posted on 01/24/2013 12:36:57 AM PST by Vince Ferrer
Much of the reporting about Google’s driverless car has mistakenly focused on its science-fiction feel. In fact, the driverless car has broad implications for society, for the economy and for individual businesses. Just in the U.S., the car puts up for grab some $2 trillion a year in revenue and even more market cap. It creates business opportunities that dwarf Google’s current search-based business and unleashes existential challenges to market leaders across numerous industries, including car makers, auto insurers, energy companies and others that share in car-related revenue.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
The employment picture is far more than just getting rid of driver jobs. There are many secondary jobs which will drastically change, or even be eliminated. For example, do we need all the small town hotels and rest stops when we can sleep in our car as it drives across the country?
I don see this ever happening...the possibility of lawsuits from software or hardware crashes resulting in car crashes, property damage and deaths will never let this industry get off the ground
I don’t think you will get that much sleep as the car veers trying to avoid hitting deer running across the road, or tore up tractor trailer tires bouncing and flying towards the car, or just thinking about the possibility.
Considering that the car would have sensors, it could probably do a better job of avoiding the deer than you. I’d be more concerned about adverse road condittions, than anything else.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AExusyOAD5s
What’s the point for a car to ride alone? Unless you can teach it to shop for you? I know I know I must be getting old but I sure don’t see why a car would just go around alone..hilarious.Can someone enlighten me please?
It'll happen. And sooner than you think.
The folks at google have undoubtedly thought of all of the potential gotchas, legal and otherwise. Production cars will probably contain redundant systems that will push reliability off the charts.
You can still be in the car, you just won’t be driving it.
Or more accurately, you won’t have to drive it if you don’t want to. Atleast in the beginning.
And commercial vehicles, like trucks, don’t need drivers at all to haul cargo. Or busdrivers, or taxis.
And then there will places you can’t go. Where you go will be recorded. Limits on the distance you can travel in a day
California will pass a law that nobody can leave the state unless they’ve paid their taxes a year in advance
I think it would need it’s own roads.
This is Google. If you tell the car to, say, go to the library, it will automatically stop at places that paid their fees and at places it thinks you want. It will drive you by the right billboards, and log all the places you go, in case its “needed” someday.
Legislatures can tackle the software defect problem ~ but remember how far the Democrats got with trying to scare us about 'a million lines of code'? Sorry ~ we are too sophisticated to worry that much about code ~ these systems will all have substantial redundancy.
Just give me a reliable targeting algorithm, some radar and infrared, an updated travel~pak and I'll be out there driving blind in no time.
The only problem I can see is the transition period where we have a mix of automated vehicles and those with nothing but a human being behind the wheel.
Your car becomes your robotic servant!
I am old enough to remember how xerox machines were supposed to relieve office support staff of the tedium of cutting stencils ~ and, besides they were much faster, and made far more efficient use of paper. Then somebody hooked the xerox machines up to the telephones and we were swamped by messages ~ and that was relieved only through the development of e-mail, and you all know where that went.
This technology will make travel more efficient, but it will also eliminate public transit, trains, and airplanes within 200 miles. Driving age restrictions will disappear and kids will swarm all over the highways. Blind people ~ among the first to be attracted to this new technology, will be showing up where they've simply not been common in the past ~ in your grocery store just to buy a loaf of bread!
Dr. Who, Star Wars, and a whole genre of Japanese sci-fi cartoons have played off that angle and shown us what a globe girdling traffic jam of automated flying cars would be like!
your car could be in communication with vehicles ahead gaining information about local road conditions ~ spot ice, water puddles, dead pedestrians in the roadway rather than in the median where they belong ~ in very short order the fully equipped stand alone models will become networked!
He didn't exactly lose his shirt on the truck ~ it made lots of money ~ but the snow blade just sat there in the garage year after year ~ then one day he made it all back!
The advent of the automated car will mean the conversion of most automobiles from expense items into potential investment opportunities just like dumptrucks ~ for one car up to large fleets of automobiles.
There's no sense having your car sit in the drive when it could be out on the road being rented out to travelers who don't have a place to park! There's no sense in buying such a vehicle if all you have to do is rent one for immediate use.
Google claims it can reduce the number of cars by 90%, since “a car sits unused some 95% of the time.”
While true, this is to a very considerable extent irrelevant. By the same token, office space could be reduced by 75% simply by optimizing its usage over a week.
But nobody wants to work the off-shifts necessary to make this work.
Similarly, not very many people want to do their shopping at 3 am.
Paranoia= ON
Driverless robotic car? Hmmm... Great idea until the Local/state Police or DHS decide that they want to talk to you.
Dispatcher/monitor: Mr. X has gotten into a vehicle at 23rd and Elm.
Shift Supervisor: Do you have the Number for that vehicle?
Dispatcher/monitor: Yes Sir we do.
Shift Supervisor: Excellent! Procedure 7 then, bring him in.
Paranoia=Off
It seems to me that sometimes these great ideas and inventions have very bad “Unintended Consequences” pre-loaded into them.
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