I drive for meals on wheels and see bad things on the road every week,
A yellow light means 4 more cars,
A red light means, at least, one more car,
A stop sign means slow down and then go,
Distracted driving, no matter if it’s because of a cell phone,eating,drinking or anything else,
Double parking right beside a parking place,
Speeding or weaving back and forth because of the other people on “your” streets.
SDC may not answer all these problems but it can’t hurt.
P.S. Watch out for anyone who say they are a “good” driver.
Like Mdcastle and Chronos I believe that the rideshare-for-all model will not come to dominate too far beyond the dense urban areas that already today depend on taxis and transit. Where people now can afford to own a car, they will still own one even if it’s a robocar. Even with automaton cars people will want their vehicle to be *immediately *at their disposal (and goshdarn it, be a metallic green crossover with a bike rack) and as mentioned by Chronos some of us want to keep stuff in the trunk. Plus then there’s what iljitsch brought up – having a fleet of on-call cars simply cruising about may be inefficient. Where do the idle ones go? Just keep going around wasting fuel/charge and wear&tear? No, they’ll still need parking.
Some may wonder about an impact in use of collective transit, if instead of 60 commuters in a bus you’ll have 20 commuters in the bus and 40 in robocars, times however many buses you got; but that one can be market-solved through dynamic pricing – as long as it’s still cheaper and faster to take the Red Line, people will. Unless I suppose like with the cell phone, employers and customers will come to expect that you *will *use robocars to get where they want you NOW rather than be willing to wait for you to get off the 5:15 Express.
OTOH I believe those looking forward to the elimination of traffic lights and stop signs underestimate how long it will take for human-driven vehicles to be off the street. And may I point out that even today, animal-pulled vehicles and bicycles have the right to use the surface streets/roads and we motorists*** do*** have to respect those rights.
Like all technology, self-driving cars are a transition toward something else. Perhaps actual flying cars . . . which was a prediction that didn’t come true, partly because of human navigational issues. Self-driving passenger drones are a very real possibility. Leave the roads to the human drivers. In the long run, elimination of roads altogether.
The difference between horses vs cars and manual cars vs self drive cars is huge though. There is a massive technological gap between horses and cars whereas the gap between a manual car and a self drive is tiny and the practical benefit of a self drive car is small for many people.
Every car you see on the road today that is slightly impractical (sports car, convertible, 4WD, etc) is driven by someone who likes driving cars, not by someone who just wants to get from a to b.
I could see effects on current air travel. There’s already a trade off point where the time getting on and off the plane makes up for the difference in travel speed. If you get cars that can travel a little faster safely, ride in more comfort than the more restricted plane and do other things during the trip car travel becomes even more attractive for some trips.
I can imagine race courses and the like for less-wealthy people but otherwise I totally agree with your point. In 20-30 years young people will be incredulous that we dared to drive a car despite 30k people dying every year. “But grandpa, that was so dangerous!”
No reason why a SDC can’t be a sports car, convertible, etc. And no reason why everyone has to be facing the front, or even sitting. It could be more like a mobile room. Imagine a high-speed, cross-country trip, in which your seat converts to a bed. Road trips can be more like rail trips, but not confined to a rail.
And everyone you see riding a horse is someone who likes riding. There just aren’t very many of them any more.
Oh, sure, anyone who likes driving now will probably continue to like driving, for most or all of their lives. But will the next generation take any interest in that particular hobby?
The time will come when a lot of people never learn to drive - they won’t need to - and a lot of those who can drive will, most of the time, not own a car.
And when self-driving becomes a recreational hobby that people engage in for their own entertainment, then sooner or later questions will start to be asked about how much money the community should be spending, or how much road congestions/traffic accidents they should be tolerating, to accommodate these self-indulgent types on the highways that are meant to be for normal people who need to travel from A to B safely and efficiently. So less and less of the road network will be welcoming of, or even open to, self-drivers.
(You can’t ride your horse or your bicycle on the freeway. The day will come when self-driving on the freeway will be regarded in the same way.)
Or, alternatively, we could build these self-driving cars out of material consisting entirely of bosons, so there would be no impediment to having them occupy the same space at the same time.
(Come to think of it, even if we all continued to drive our own cars around, this would still solve the parking problem.)
There is a limit to how cheap Uber can get - e.g. it can never get cheaper than minimum wage. Self-driving cars have no such limitation, and it will eventually become cheaper than owning your own car.
Once self-driving cars become common, it will become pretty much mandatory. Because employers will stop providing parking space for employees. Eventually businesses will stop providing parking for customers. There will be a huge change in how cities and suburbs look; no longer will big-box stores and employers be separated by wide expanses of parking lots. Suburban homes will no longer have driveways and garages.
I think it’ll have huge implications for real estate prices. Right now, people are willing to pay a lot to avoid long commutes. But if those commutes got shorter and if you could use that time to drink your coffee and read the news, that house in a far ring suburb looks a lot better.
No, many are driven by people who like to own and/or show off expensive items. They will find other ways to satisfy their craving for owning nice things or for showing off their wealth.
Also, say you “like driving” in the sense that you’d rather drive to work in a Miata than an Accord. That doesn’t mean driving is your favorite activity in the world. Given the choice, you might prefer to spend your commuting time watching your favorite TV show than driving a Miata. Or, you may be pressed for time and you’d rather use that time to catch up on sleep, or catch up on e-mail.
What “like driving” might mean to a lot of people is getting out on the road once in a while, and driving up to Mendocino County on Highway 1 through the redwoods, or up to Yosemite or June Lake in the Sierras, or down to Monterey and Carmel and Big Sur along the coast, or . . .
IOW, your standard weekend scenic drive out in the country somewhere. Now, for some people, the car trip is just what you have to do to get there. But for a lot of people, the drive is part of the fun, what with all the scenery along the way, all the little towns you might stop at along the way, etc.
People are going to want to hang onto their own private cars to be able to keep doing that. And for some of those people, driving the car yourself is part of the recreational activity.
As Chronos says, that is something that might simply die off with the current generation.
Or that future generations will indulge by simply hiring a car a few times a year for such jaunts. If that’s all you really want it for, buying, maintaining and insuring a car, and finding storage space for it at your home, is massively inefficient.