Who couldnt see this disaster coming.
Driverless cars is a stupid millinneal pipe dream.
millinneal?
And automobiles with the human driver has never killed anyone!
Sort of like the Accelerated bridge that just fell onto the street killing people after being up for less than a week in Florida.
I suppose the multiple pedestrians killed everyday by human drivers is a disaster, too.
Well, no.
The footprint of automobiles varies greatly from city to city, but when one accounts for highways and roads, plus parking, more land in most U.S. cities is used for cars than for housing or business. Yet most cars sit idle most of the day, while congestion during rush hour is awful in larger cities. The inefficiency and wastage is enormous.
It makes perfect sense to envision fleets of autonomous cars that would be instantly available on call while, as shared assets, also being in use most of the time. People confuse this with a separate issue, the loss of personal autonomy. I don't think that's a fair linkage. The autonomous car would still take you wherever you wanted to go. It will even take you there safely if you are drunk. And if you thought the local fleets don't provide adequate service, you could own one for yourself, though you would have to sacrifice living space and money for a garage. (Autonomous car users won't need garages either, which means bigger and/or less expensive houses.) It is true that a driverless system will be controlled by GPS, which means that your trips to your local drug dealer or your extracurricular activities when you are supposed to be working will be visible to the managers. But I'm willing to live with that. The reality is, if the police are surveilling you, they can track you now. Your wife has to work a little harder to do it, but if she's determined, she can do it too.
The liability issue will have to be sorted out. Beyond that, when the technology is mature, the transition will be driven by popular demand, with laggards being driven to it by the insurance companies, which will quickly realize that most accidents are caused by driver error. The autonomous cars will ultimately be safer. Eventually, driving your own car will be considered reckless public endangerment. In 50 years, perhaps sooner, the automakers won't even be making conventional cars except for some specialty applications (like military vehicles), and most people will never bother to learn to drive, as they will prefer the convenience and lower costs of the fleet approach.
Driverless vehicles will kil a whole bunch of people, then they will be taken off the roads.