Except (1) expressways already don’t have traffic signals, (2) “more and more streets – especially high-speed expressways” and “limited to a few suburban and isolated rural roads” don’t sound like he meant only expressways, and (3) even assuming we are referring to only limited-access highways, I doubt motorcyclists would be pleased about being banished from the Interstate Highway system.
Look. This is all hypothetical at this point. We’re still quite early in the development of self-driving cars. So we can only speculate how society will adapt to the idea or the reality of them.
You can in the current environment of cheap mass produced personal vehicles. Can you still afford it when human operated cars are a specialty item? Will you still want to when the cost of ownership keeps rising while the cost of using an automated vehicle is substantially lower?
I think the idea of everyone using steering wheel-less cars and human driven cars being banned being a long way off. However what we will see is a rise of more and more auto-pilot system like in Teslas. Eventually the majority of cars on the road will have these systems which will make the transition easier. I could see expressways adding “autonomous car only” lanes and tollways giving discounts to autonomous cars. It’s going to be more about incentivizing rather than banning.
Wow this person who wrote this has no idea and has to get a clue. Ending with people will have sex in a car as a bad thing shows some religious-like bias. Thinking that cars that drop owners off at the door and drive away to find a parking spot away from the congestion will be worse they people driving around and looking for parking spots is just ridiculous (quite the opposite, it will free up parking spots in the congested area stopping the endless search for parking).
Worried about the parking revenue, I’m sure the government can come up with a fee tax for parking avoidance - problem solved.
Liability, with self driving the state can assume liability and set the standards, it and make it up in fees, unburdening the people from it and making it a community issue agreeing on those standards and the unfortunate consequences of them.
Work in the car, not everyone can due to motion sickness, some can take advantage of this ability to shorten their work day.
Yes, but the speculation phase eventually shifts to the design phase, and a stakeholder group that’s not even in most people’s conceptions could get frozen out of the designing and potentially screwed by the resulting system. It’s easy to start designing for the no-pedestrian, no-bicyclist environment of expressways, then find you’ve locked in features that don’t work on surface streets. All I’m saying is “we’re here, don’t forget us.”
No kidding.
I can get out of my driveway and subdivision early in the morning after a big snow because it’s down hill. Having a ‘car’ pick me up won’t work unless you send a Uni-mog. It then gets plowed during the day and I can get home.
If ownership becomes more liability than asset (as it is for many who live in places like Manhattan), then I won’t own a car; I’ll be on the other side of the transaction, paying for the privilege of farting and picking my nose in other people’s self-driving cars.
I frankly don’t understand this ornery attitude. I love driving (and used to do track days and autocrossing), but I also see the advantages that autonomous cars are going to bring to daily life. I guess some people just don’t like change.
For some there isn’t any real concrete advantage. Only disadvantage. Cheaper? Well if it really is, that would be OK. But not that important to me.
Car sharing is already a thing – are you being forced to participate?
Autonomous vehicles will change the car sharing market because they will make the process more efficient and thus more palatable to people who currently don’t want to walk two blocks to pick up their zipcar. But autonomous cars are not going to end private car ownership because there are always going to be people who are willing to pay for said ownership.
The U.S. won’t require self-driving cars until at least five, and more likely ten, years after they’re proven safer than human drivers. So if self-driven cars are widely introduced in 2025, studied for five years, and given 5-10 more years for interpretation of the studies, rulemaking, and effective dates of new rules, my estimate is between 2035 and 2040. Whether it’s earlier or later depends on how cheap the technology is and how much safer it is than human drivers. Those will affect the cost-benefit analyses that support rulemaking.
This would be one creepy and expensive way to do it but I think this…
is much more likely. It compromises privacy less and is cheaper for the company.
Yup. That’s a problem. There’s another problem you didn’t point out. If you are a messy eater and a smoker who can’t abide by the car’s rules, you know the next person will complain about your taco sauce and smoke smell. You can preemptively report your own mess and let it be the next person’s problem. That happened to a friend of mine who gave up on Zipcar when he was charged for some later person’s mess in the car. They waived the charge when he complained but he still quit using the service. The rental services can certainly learn over time who is falsely reporting their mess as someone else’s mess but it’s still a logistical speed bump on the way to a utopian shared-car future.
I agree with you only because you specify that this will happen a long ways off and only after most cars have self-driving features. Converting existing lanes to autonomous-car only lanes wouldn’t get support from the majority when most people have self-driving cars. Toll lane discounts for autonomous cars really only work if there is some public benefit that justifies preferring self-driving cars, such as that they are proven less likely to cause accidents or traffic backups. That requires experience with the cars.
Otherwise, special autonomous car lanes would likely be opposed by everyone who is designing comprehensive self-driving systems today, and by everyone who wants more lane capacity to get to work faster. Most self-driving cars now are being designed with the idea that they have to fit into today’s auto ecosystem. These cars won’t need the special self-driving lanes. The self-driving lanes would only help the least developed self-driving cars that can’t handle a wide variety of situations. Makers of advanced self-driving systems may oppose special lanes because: (1) it would be easy for copycat competitors to jump in with simple lane-correcting, car-following cruise control systems that aren’t really self-driving but might be approved for autonomous use in the special lanes, and (2) the existence of special self-driving lanes might justify restricting self-driving cars only to those lanes while requiring manual drivers everywhere else. This would obviate billions of dollars of autonomous car research being conducted now to make sure that self-driving cars can handle almost anything thrown at them.
What you are suggesting are that there are road conditions where no one without a Unimog should travel but you might want to go out anyways and try our luck. Drivers don’t show great judgment about the road conditions in which they are safe to travel which is how you end up with 67-car pileups like this one in the news this weekend: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/weather/bs-md-icy-conditions-20161217-story.html
There’s no reason a Unimog can’t be autonomous. It would probably cost more to rent an autonomous Unimog than an autonomous Prius that might have to stay in the garage on a particularly snowy day. You could decide on that day whether it’s worth paying the premium for you to get to work or the mall that day.
That’s fine with me. But some are saying that it will eventually be forced down our throats.
If I lived in a crowded city with parking and traffic problems I might be singing a different tune. Those are the folks that don’t understand that it may not be ideal for everyone.
I’m sensitive to this issue too. Self-driving cars are going to have to deal with motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians (the last of which you completely ignore).
I happen to believe in the long run self-driving cars will be much better at dealing with these factors than drivers. It’s seven times more dangerous per mile to travel on foot in the U.S. than by car. I drive about 6000 miles per year but I walk well over a thousand. My reduced driving means I less likely to die while in a car but the added risk of my walking means that I still face roughly the average American’s risk of dying in a car crash. How is that fair? I am in favor of self-driving cars that eliminate my risk from getting killed by a drunk, distracted, or careless driver.
Driving is one thing.
Sitting in traffic hating people is not driving nor is it fun. If I lived in a place like DC or NYC I’d do my damnedest to live without the need for my own car.
They’ve been testing self-driving cars on surface streets for a while, so they’re already being designed for.
I didn’t suggest that at all. From MY house to where I get on a plowed two lane mountain highway is about 2 miles of gravel road with no one but me on them. That’s the Unimog part. The part that IS UP HILL is getting TO my house. It’s down hill and often unplowed when I leave in the morning. It’s no problem because it’s downhill. The other direction will take much more than a 4x4 with good snow tires.
Some of us DO drive in extreme conditions every day, and do very good in it.
Some people are suggesting that mandating self-driving cars is a good idea. I’m one of them.
No one is suggesting mandating car sharing. But once the roads are filled with self-driving cars, shared cars make a world of sense. They are cheaper than today’s taxis because you don’t have to pay a driver. They avoid part of the moral hazard of today’s rental and shared cars because the user’s driving skills are irrelevant. Self-driving cars will drop you off right at your destination every time so you don’t waste energy coming in from a distant parking spot (you might waste some time waiting for the shared self-driving car if you don’t plan ahead). You never have to pay for parking because the shared car will just go on to its next user. You never have to deal with break downs because self-driving fleets will be well-maintained and, in the event of a rare breakdown, a working car can be dispatched immediately. You can have the giant pickup truck, the 13-passenger van, the frugal economy car, or the impressive luxury sedan any time you need them, but you only pay for the limited use of each of them that you actually need.
The question is, if sharing a self-driving car fleet is cheaper and better than ownership, why would you want to continue owning your own car? There are a few reasons. It will always be available for your use, even during periods of high demand, like the day before Thanksgiving. You can leave your stuff in it. You can avoid other people’s cooties. Alternatively, if you are willing to risk cootie exposure, you can rent your car to a self-driving fleet and maybe make some money back. I can’t think of any other reasons.
I’m rich enough that guaranteed availability is enough reason for me to always own my own, personal self-driving car. I’m frugal enough that I might be willing to rent it out to others anyway. I can understand why many people expect that they will probably just share self-driving cars.
To be clear, I’m talking about special lanes akin to a carpool lane. Self-drive cars can get into all lanes, but only self-driving cars can get over to the special lane.
I think it’s pretty clear that a lane or a highway with only self-driving cars will undoubtedly be safer and smoother, especially if they can all talk to each other. No random stops, no aggressive driving, no “oh crap I need to exit right now and I’m all the way in the left lane.”
The key shortcoming to car-sharing is that it **won’t **be a solution to rush hour traffic.
Yes, most people’s cars are unused except from, say 7 to 8am while they drive to work and from 5 to 6pm when they drive home. But everybody else’s car is used on the exact same schedule.
Just like you can’t make a real 2x4 out of sawdust & chips, you can’t add up all the cars sitting unused between 2 and 3 am and use those car-hours to create more cars from 5 to 6 pm.
Car sharing for the masses works once we eliminate standard working hours so 1/24th of the populace reports for work each hour of the day. Once you consider how far-fetched that is, you see how car-sharing will not be a solution to commuter rush-hour traffic. It may make a dent in car ownership, but it’ll be a small dent.