
How Driverless Cars Could Reshape Cities - sethbannon
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/disruptions-how-driverless-cars-could-reshape-cities/
======
elchief
So driverless taxis will be cheap.

Taxi medallions are licenses by the city for taxi companies, to prevent abuse.
But if the software is certified, you don't really need the medallions. Drop
$500,000 off the cost of a taxi.

You don't have to pay the 2 drivers that normally share a cab. Drop $80,000 a
year off.

Assuming the cars no longer crash (version 2.0?), drop $10,000/year off for
taxi insurance.

Combine that with Google-quality routing, and smart-phone taxi ordering, and
you're looking at a major price drop for taxi service, assuming some sort of
competition. I'm guesstimating a 50-75% drop.

Most people in cities will opt out of owning their own car, and use robo-
taxis.

You are looking at an 80-85% drop in the required number of cars in cities
(even accounting for current peak traffic volumes. see the KPMG report. I also
came to the same number back-of-the-envelope).

Obviously, this will destroy GM and Toyota. Might be good for Tesla as they
are still tiny, and I'm sure Elon and Larry have discussed this.

Some other interesting outcomes:

\- should increase the total number of trips and miles driven, as lower prices
lead to higher quantity demanded, so more wear and tear on cars, and more gas
consumed (though less for idling).

\- with many driverless cars, they can communicate with each other, driving
faster and closer together, and co-ordinating intersection crossing. price of
oil change is ambiguous.

\- fewer deaths and injuries from accidents, or none at all. The organ
transplant industry dies.

\- more trees and less concrete lead to cooler cities?

\- you can probably get away with more single-lane streets, with no parking,
increasing usable land areas in cities by 25%, significantly dropping housing
prices.

\- in your driverless car, you can talk on your cell, use your laptop, read a
book, not be stressed from driving. people may be willing to drive farther to
work, increasing sprawl, and also dropping the quantity demanded for housing
near the core, dropping prices.

\- public transit disappears? though driverless buses would be cheaper too.

\- more people bike to work, as it's much safer

\- software requirement: interior management for driverless taxis. some video
or image recognition for lost purses, people having heart attacks, people
throwing up in the back seat.

~~~
oftenwrong
Or they might keep the prices high and keep the difference in operational cost
as profit.

~~~
criley2
One company keeps the profit. The next one undercuts the hefty margin to steal
customers. The first lowers prices to be competitive.

I mean, something like five+ companies are working on some level of autonomous
cars. It's not like we're looking at a future monopoly on the production of
them.

~~~
LockeWatts
Establishing a government backed monopoly on a taxi service due to 'safety
concerns' sounds well within the realm of reality though.

~~~
criley2
The Federal government absolutely would not mandate a monopoly over the
country for safety concerns. The vehicles are already licensed on a per-state
basis and it stands to reason that states or cities, who already regulate
taxis, would extend that power to autonomous taxis.

Which means, if SF gives a monopoly to Google, then LA might give one to
Mercedes, while NYC gives one to Ford. (Or whatever). The point being, there
is still competition overall to win the business of municipalities.

~~~
LockeWatts
That's the same argument that allows Comcast to be the only ISP in my area.
There's no competition within my area that allows me to make a conscious
decision to reject a company.

If my municipality is making the decision, then there is a politician who can
be bribed into keeping that utility into place. Really, a terribly system.

------
fennecfoxen
"There are risks, of course: People might be more open to a longer daily
commute, leading to even more urban sprawl."

Gotta love the NYTimes for the tendentious moralizing. People having more
choice, and exercising it, is a _risk_! Attempts to have a _backyard_ or extra
bedrooms, or just pay less for real estate, are dangerous and wrong. Worse, if
you can buy extra bedrooms you might be tempted to have _kids_ and we wouldn't
want any of those consuming the Earth's precious resources would we :P

(Not that there isn't anything to be said in support of that point. But it's
tendentious and moralizing all the same.)

~~~
old-gregg
"People exercising their choice" sounds nice, but there will always be limits
imposed by the society. You cannot "exercise your choice" to commute in a
school bus today.

Zoning restrictions in the cities exist for the same reason: people just don't
respect each other enough to trust them with their choices. Personally I
cannot stand HOAs, yet another level of bureaucracy and taxation to deal with,
but I will not argue with the fact that HOA buildings/neighborhoods are nicer
than "free" ones.

~~~
toomuchtodo
"Nicer" is relative.

~~~
dclowd9901
I don't know about you, but my neighbor with the 5 beat-up old jalopies in his
yard is a bit of a fucking eyesore.

~~~
toomuchtodo
If we're going to be all hyperbole, my old HOA president who had someone
booted from their home over the wrong shade of white exterior paint should be
dragged out of his home by an angry mob.

Show me someone who has an eyesore, and I'll show you some asshole who is
abusing their power.

------
aetherson
Lots of people jump to the notion that if driverless cars are available, we
will go to a dominantly short-term-hire model of car ownership. By why?

Yes, taxis would be cheaper in a world of driverless cars. But they would
still be dubiously clean (perhaps even dirtier without a human there to make
the passengers clean up). You would still not be able to leave your crap in
them. And they would still be only intermittently available at times of high
demand (or else they'll be quite expensive).

In contrast, if you privately owned a car, it would have all its present
advantages and also it would be usable even if you intended to get drunk; you
could use the time that you were driving to read or use the computer or watch
TV or whatever; you wouldn't need to circle around and try to park; you could
still potentially utilize the car more than the present situation (for
example: your car could drop the kids off at school while you get an hour of
work in, and then come back and take you to the office), giving a cost
savings.

By the way: does anyone who has kids young enough to require car-seats think
that they could get away with a taxi-approach to cars, even if taxis were
arbitrarily cheap? Don't underestimate the value of a personally owned car as
a mobile receptacle of your stuff.

I don't know which of those models would be more dominant in a driverless car
world. They both have advantages over the present state of the art. But I'm
pretty sure that the people who jump immediately to believe that the taxi
model would become massively dominant are basing this more on their wishes
than the facts.

~~~
LockeWatts
I think there will be a hybrid model. Owning a driverless car will still be a
very commonplace thing, car ownership is too ingrained in the American mindset
to just let it go.

However, I believe owning a car will also come to be seen as an investment
option, like owning property. What if your car was loaned out to a taxi
service while you're at work every day?

The taxi service has no drivers, no cars, no real capital. It's just a website
with a server coordinating cars to people and to destinations.

As a vehicle owner, you are given a share of the profits for the utilization
of your capital. Sure there are a lot of kinks to work out, but I could see
this being a very common thing.

~~~
karamazov
Renting out your car while you're not using it negates the advantages of
owning one that GP points out. In addition, you're now taking on the risk of
damage and the onus of maintenance for a car that's used as a taxi. I don't
think this will be a popular option.

~~~
Avshalom
Also if you want to go home now, or go to the store now and it's rented out by
some one: you're basically fucked.

You can program a range limit and certain hours (be no farther than 30 miles
away by 4pm and not in use) sure but when anything unexpected comes up (on
either end) you don't have a car for X period of time.

Even just sharing the car has this problem, oh it can drive back home empty,
but the logistics of making sure it can drop Bob off drive home get Alice
drive her some were pick Bob back up up drop him at home in time to go get
Alice are only barely more convenient than "sorry I need the car today" for
twice the mileage cost natch.

~~~
aetherson
I don't think within-family-car-sharing would be a HUGE deal, certainly. But
there are a lot of situations in which I end up chauffeuring my fiancée or
vice versa because one of us needs to get to point A, but the other needs the
car for the day. And there's lots of little friction points in terms of lining
up our schedules there. It's not a huge pain point, but my car would be
noticeably more valuable to me if it handled these situations for itself.

It might not be wildly convenient, but it's even less convenient for me to
drive my fiancée to where she needs to go and then drive back.

------
CapitalistCartr
Self-driving cars can completely change our cities, here in America, because
our cities are designed around cars. When I don't have to fight for a parking
space, I don't need vast car parks around everything. When the cars drive as
members of the same team instead of playing cutthroat, we don't need more
lanes, more automotive bandwidth. We can remake our cities on our scale
instead. Whether we will or not is the question.

------
jgrahamc
How about "How Driverless Cars Could Reshape Car Ownership"?

Why bother owning a car at all? Couldn't I just subscribe to some service that
will have a car drive to me when I need it? And when I need a two seater, or a
five seater or a seven seater I just tell the smartphone app that? And when
the car is dirty is just drives somewhere to be cleaned?

~~~
vecinu
This argument often pops up and I am confused as to why people think everyone
can subscribe to this kind of service.

Owning a car is completely different from renting one temporarily.

~~~
ebiester
It works in some places and not in others. In San Francisco, it would work
pretty well. In larger metropolitan areas, it may work with a hub-like form of
public transportation. An autocar takes you to the train, which takes you to
the destination city, where you can use another autocar or other public
transportation to get to your destination.

Will it work in rural areas? Of course not. The sun belt cities may have
trouble utilizing it. But the Boston - DC corridor opportunity would be enough
to make it worthwhile. Add to that many European cities and there's enough of
a market.

------
archagon
I don't know why people are expecting this to happen so soon (if at all). Even
if we have the technology for driverless cars sometime in the next few decades
(QAed for all possible conditions and failures, of course), there will be no
way that they'll be street legal without a (sober) driver at the wheel. We
have fully automated TRAINS -- vehicles that only have to go back and forth
along a single axis -- that still require conductors. Airlines, despite being
99% automatic, are very, very strict about pilot safety and training. How
could you possibly expect something that's an order of magnitude more
complicated to be any different? Top it off with some of the most advanced AI
(yet to be) invented and you have a problem with a solution much farther into
the future than one might think. Me, I'd rather stick with good old fashioned
public transit.

------
jellicle
Yay, the weekly driverless car puff piece.

> Imagine a city where you don’t drive in loops looking for a parking spot
> because your car drops you off and scoots off to some location to wait, sort
> of like taxi holding pens at airports.

What location is that? The magic one? Just "some" location that apparently
will magically appear when the magic cars come.

Actually, your driverless car takes up the same room on the road or in the
parking lot as everyone else's. YOU don't drive in loops, but your car still
does.

Imagine a theatre at 10PM. The show is letting out. Traffic is snarled for
five miles in all directions because a theatre's-worth of empty cars have been
circling the block for an hour, making sure they are ready to pick up their
ever-so-important passengers.

In effect, adding traffic to roads no longer imposes a personal cost on your
time - it's only a financial cost on your bank account, which is highly
affordable to some people. The same people who currently have 14 cars in the
garage of their mansion can now take all 14 cars with them to the Hamptons for
the weekend, in case they want to drive one. Just order them to circle the
block near your beach house - well, not your block of course, the neighbors
would complain, but someone else's block. Maybe the traffic on the Long Island
Expressway is terrible, but your 14 empty cars don't care, they'll make it out
to the beach house eventually.

Cost of housing getting you down? Just buy a van and a sleeping bag, and order
it to drive around randomly all night and arrive at your work at 9AM. Now
you've effectively perma-rented a 9'x14' spot on the nation's roads, without
paying a cent.

The push for carpooling is a way to use our limited road space more
efficiently, by increasing the number of persons per car up from the current
average of 1.59. Driverless cars are the anti-carpool - cars driving with zero
humans going anywhere, pushing that average down.

Driverless cars are a net negative for the way the world is going, not a net
positive.

~~~
gfodor
I have to say, this is one of the most cynical and unimaginative posts I've
ever read on HN. I think you should save it somewhere so you can laugh at
yourself if someday driverless cars become prevalent.

The positive economic effects and the transformative effect driverless cars
will have on society is pretty hard to overstate. You seem to falling into the
trap of thinking that infrastructure will not be updated around the assumption
that cars are autonomous, and clever people will not exploit this new reality
in ways that benefit the world. To attack your specific example, why do you
assume the cars will drive around passenger-less, and not merely continually
make productive uses of themselves, such as by servicing other passengers or
acting as deliverymen for physical goods? Why do you assume people will own
cars in general, when a service which provides on-demand autonomous
transportation in clean, well-maintained, up-to-date vehicles will be more
convenient, less work, safer, and will be cheaper? Why does the car that drops
you off need to be the car that picks you up? Why do you think highways will
not become wildly more efficient and safe even if the average passenger per
car (one of several metrics of efficiency) goes up? Why do you think parking
garages and cars themselves will not be able to be packed in more efficiently
and quickly when they can autonomously coordinate their insertion and removal
from a fixed area? Why do you even think that centralized parking garages will
be as necessary when autonomously controlled vehicles can coordinate to
efficiently fill _any_ designated parking space that is road accessible?

When the _assumptions_ of society change in such a dramatic way (that a human
must navigate a road-based vehicle manually) the downstream effects are hard
to predict but undoubtedly will follow the same path all automation has: more
efficient, less polluting, and more productive use of time and energy. When
you're dealing with something as ingrained and as prevalent as the automobile,
you're talking about a massive boost in these things across the entire world.

~~~
jellicle
If people wanted to share things with others, the world would be an entirely
different place. But people are selfish.

The city block you're living on probably only needs one stand mixer, one
waffle iron, one clothes iron. You could all just share one of these rarely-
used appliances between you. Why don't you?

We could already build the world you are envisioning, trivially. Any
municipality in the world could create an excellent fleet of mass transit
vehicles - I mean a truly excellent system, capable of getting you anywhere
you want to go at a very reasonable price and high speed. But no place does
that. It exists nowhere.

Because people want their own cars. They don't want to share. And the cheaper
these vehicles get - a requirement for your techno-utopia - the more people
want their own.

Do you think Bill Gates' car will be out delivering packages when he's not in
it? Okay, now why do you think everyone else is different from Bill Gates?

> Why do you even think that centralized parking garages will be as necessary
> when autonomously controlled vehicles can coordinate to efficiently fill any
> designated parking space that is road accessible?

That doubles the road problem, not decreases it. The autonomous cars spend
four hours in a traffic jam on the two-lane bridge in order to park in the
$1.50 parking lot instead of the $2.00 lot. You don't mind because you aren't
in them. Anyone who has to actually cross the bridge is screwed. Traffic jams
are actually BENEFICIAL to autonomous vehicles - free unpaid parking and low
fuel usage - as long as the vehicle isn't needed immediately. Autonomous cars
will SEEK OUT and JOIN traffic jams, when not needed, to minimize their cost
of operation.

~~~
gfodor
As I mentioned elsewhere, this argument somehow equivocates black car services
with car sharing. The point is, why own a car that you have to maintain,
depreciates, and requires parking when you can have brand new, well-maintained
vehicles transporting you around for a small monthly fee?

Your Bill Gates analogy only seals my argument. Bill Gates, in all liklihood,
has a personal driver and rides in a top of the line vehicle most of the time,
that he may or may not own. (He likely doesn't care.) The reason this
lifestyle is only available to the rich is not because of the cost of the car,
but because of the cost of the driver. If the driver were to be removed, your
average person could likely afford to be transported in a clean, new, safe,
well-maintained vehicle they pay for on-demand from an autonomous vehicle
fleet.

~~~
jellicle
Why own a washing machine when you can rent one at a laundromat for a small
monthly fee?

Why own a phone when you can rent a payphone for a small monthly fee?

The answer is a combination of convenience and personal status.

------
Dirlewanger
"And the regulatory issues to be addressed before much of this could come true
are, to put it mildly, forbidding."

Yeah, how about the massive laundry list of liability issues that come around
without a human controlling the wheel? What happens if the car hits a biker? A
pedestrian? Another car with a driver? Another driver-less car? The driver
causes an accident and then blames it on the car (surely logs of some sort
will prevent this, but this all has to be established). So. Many. Scenarios.
And bloggers always seem to avoid this topic because no one wants to deal with
all this _necessary_ clout must be sorted out before these things ever become
an actual thing. To me, they have a looonnnggg way to go before I feel
comfortable behind a 2 ton moving death machine and have no control
whatsoever.

~~~
elchief
Right, except they won't crash. Google has driven almost a million km without
an accident.

The car takes in a gigabyte of data a _second_ to analyze. It knows the biker
is behind it. It will slow down if the situation is risky and stop if
something is imminent.

The car has 360° cameras and LIDAR and records everything.

~~~
mcguire
" _Google has driven almost a million km without an accident._ "

Current rates in the United States, for normal, run-of-the-mill automobiles,
is about 1 fatality per 100,000,000 vehicle/miles[1] and 1 "crash" per 500,000
vehicle/miles[2].

1\. [http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx](http://www-
fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx)

2\. [http://www.caranddriver.com/features/safety-in-numbers-
chart...](http://www.caranddriver.com/features/safety-in-numbers-charting-
traffic-safety-and-fatality-data)

~~~
warfangle
That would be 160,934,400 vehicle/kilometers and 804,672 vehicle/kilometers
respectfully.

'Cause comparing 1m kilometers to 100m miles is a silly thing to do when you
can actually compare the same unit of measurement.

~~~
mcguire
What, you can't do that conversion in your head? :)

------
Techpope
I always hated cars, maybe not having humans be in charge of them will
decrease my hate.

------
thrownaway2424
This is not unrelated to last week's discussion "Why Green Architecture Hardy
Ever Deserves the Name"[1]. The urban form that allows and requires the car is
an obsolete artifact of the "oil interval" which is passing into history. In
the future you will neither need nor want a car, driverless or otherwise.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5995141](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5995141)

~~~
toomuchtodo
Until everything or everyone I interact with is within walking or public
transit distance of me, I'll still require a car. Not everyone I know wants to
live in the city with me. Not all of my service providers will be in the city
with me.

------
31reasons
I would like to add some more interesting changes that will happen with
driverless car (sounds familiar..um horseless carriage?)

You don’t need drivers license, so no more DMV lines.

Fewer parking lots means more parks,house and office space for people.

No more DUI

Car theft will go significantly down because there is no one to drive and
steal it.

Car will be smaller and lighter because it will not need drivers seat and
steering wheel and other driver related gears. This change will make cars more
fuel efficient.

Less Pollution

More comfortable rides. The car will know when to gracefully slow down and
speed up because it knows the "shake map" of the entire city at a very minute
details. For example, it can remember in what area it experiences bumps and
can slow down in those areas.

No road rage. All cars will be driven by machines so no need to show
aggression.

By my rough estimate, 180 billion hours of time americans spend driving their
car every year. These hours will become free to do basically anything. Another
wave of Cognitive Surplus!

In car entertainment will mature to the level of in-home entertainment
industry, because of more room and free time in the car.

In car office model will pop up. Professionals that rely on heavy traveling
will prefer their offices right in their car.

------
rwhitman
As others have mentioned the commercial possibilities of driverless taxis seem
to be the biggest positive from this. The issues around the infrastructure to
support driverless cars I think is a bit questionable. Eliminating traffic
lights, self-aware parking spots etc sound a long way off, especially in
poorer municipalities. I'm also really skeptical that the general public will
adopt driverless cars the way they are expecting, I can definitely see the
general populace rejecting them out of fear and frustration for a long time.

But in the case of taxis that are subject to city-wide mandates a bit of urban
planning and infrastructure to facilitate an automated city-wide taxi network
sounds like a realistic scenario and kind of exiting. And for other commercial
applications as well, the efficiency advantages are obvious. Any business with
a fleet of vehicles will suddenly get enormous cost savings in terms of fuel,
salaries, and insurance premiums.

The biggest changes are that we will suddenly have a lot of old box trucks and
taxis to deal with disposing of, and an entire workforce of drivers left
unemployed.

~~~
elchief
I don't think you need any infrastructure changes for robo-taxis. You don't
_need_ to eliminate traffic lights, they understand them. You don't _need_ to
do anything with parking spots, the car can find its own, or pick up someone
else.

------
ctdonath
_parking tickets could become a rarity since cars would be smart enough to
know where they are not supposed to be._

Unintended consequences spew from: "then what?"

How much traffic (and energy waste) will come from parked cars deciding "I'm
not supposed to be here any more, the 0.5 hour max parking time has expired,
now I must leave and find another parking spot until Master summons me"? What
"strange attractors" may arise from the chaos of dozens/hundreds/thousands of
cars programmatically cycling thru "go park yourself" scenarios? Will parking
spaces likewise be self-managing, negotiating with driverless cars over "first
come first served" vs "reservations" vs "highest bidder" pricing &
availability? How well will a self-parking car deal with grocery carts left in
otherwise available spots? How will people game/abuse the system? People
regularly leave cars illegally parked because they know the odds of being
ticketed in the couple minutes overage costs less than completing what they're
doing; how annoyed will you be when returning to your parked car, only to find
it left 30 seconds ago to find another parking spot (location as yet unknown),
and summoning it will require another 5-10 minutes for it to get back to you?
What of "can't get there from here" scenarios: the car reserves a parking
spot, and along the way gets trapped in a one-lane road behind a stopped
(breakdown, double parked, unloading) vehicle...now what?

Sure, the problems will be solved. Getting to the point where they need
solving will enjoy much schadenfreude, and solving them will be interesting -
and profitable. Eventually it will all sort out, akin to us living today what
Clifford Stoll decried as inane to expect from 1995. In the meantime, I'll be
looking for a manual-transmission manual-drive Jeep to get around the strange
attractors of flocks of low-IQ vehicles.

~~~
danielweber
Honestly, they'll just drive 10 minutes out of the city to where land is cheap
and parking plentiful.

------
gbadman
[ROM][LineSkipper v3.0.1][Now fixes crash bug when joining line behind Audi's]

Although perhaps ridiculous at face value, I wonder how automobile
manufacturers and legislators will prevent modders from tweaking driving
algorithms to win the prisoner's dilemma of traffic.

Food for thought!

~~~
anemic
This is the thing that scares me the most. If the self driving cars need to
cooperate for maximum efficiency what if there are some cars that don't do it
and exploit that?

~~~
valleyer
Then at worst it’s just literally like the status quo?

------
trout
I'm just hoping I'll be able to drink in a driverless car before I can use
electronics in an airplane. If the same safety-at-all-costs model applies to
driving these cars, they won't be nearly as fun as we dream.

------
arbuge
I can certainly see driverless cars leading to longer commutes all else being
equal. If you can workout, read a book, work on your laptop, watch tv, etc.
while your car drives you to work, you probably will care a bit less about the
time involved. All else will not be equal however. Nothing in this scenario
alleviates concerns relating to gas prices, which are likely to be the
dominant consideration for most people. Your driverless car might be better at
sipping gas than you, but not by much.

------
cbhl
I don't understand why anyone thinks that driverless cars will reshape
existing cities -- it seems to me much more likely that they'll just shape how
cities are built in the future. (Judging by the way modern-day suburbs are
built, I suspect that it won't be for the better -- at least, not at first.)

------
cj
_Traffic lights could be less common because hidden sensors in cars and
streets coordinate traffic._

I wonder how motorcycles would fare.

I'd hate to give mine up, unless driverless cars were faster and cheaper than
motorcycles. Perhaps cheaper by means of a partial ownership model, a la
netjets.

~~~
toomuchtodo
You'd move the signaling to the vehicle. I too own a motorcycle, and could see
a day when the bike warns me at intersection approaches that I have to give
way to an automated vehicle.

------
Tloewald
Driverless cars will increase miles driven, so let's hope they're efficient.
Reduce the cost of something and people will use it more and find new uses of
it -- and by far the largest cost of driving is the driver's attention.

------
Flenser
Reshaped by driverless car bombs...

"Oh, yeah. Oooh, ahhh, that's how it always starts. Then later there's running
and screaming."

------
pscheufele
> or have an exercise bike in the back of the car to work out on the way to
> work

the future!

------
everyone
pls ignore!!<br/> noob<br/> testing<br/> whether html is allowed in HN
comments

~~~
everyone
well damn your eyes! this is not relevant but how the dickens doesnt one
insert a line break here??

~~~
harpastum
You just have to add multiple returns.

Just put two hard returns, and the text will appear on the next line.

However, you are limited to one break at a time (e.g. you can't put 20 returns
in a row to move 10" down the page)

~~~
everyone
tx!

------
lifeisstillgood
Uuurrghh - we have no idea the real practicality of driver-less cars, small
technical / political issues such as needing own lanes for the first ten or
more years, processing power and cost, all make this kind of stuff guesswork.

Add to that the combination of other shifts - a move away from everyone into
the office at the same time, distributed remote working, shifts in employment
vs freelancing - and it all adds up to massive change, but not predicatable
change _at this level of detail_

Fasten your seatbelts, its going to be a bumpy ride, but no-one can tell which
bumps we will hit first.

------
Dewie
There is nothing I dislike more about big cities then the cars they are home
to. Walking in the busy parts of town, waiting every 100 meters for my signal
to pass, sometimes eight lanes wide roads, the never ending noise... I think
_how can people live right in the middle of this_?

I welcome the day that driver-less cars make a mainstream entrance into my
society, but it seems like this will just make the urban car drivers more
indulgent in their car habits. "why take the subway, we can just drive right
up to the avenue because parking is not a problem! We rule this land!" A very,
very good taxi-like system, or very flexible car sharing might alleviate this.

