
The Unintended Effects of Driverless Cars - mbrubeck
https://plus.google.com/103583939320326217147/posts/TpN1g1oSVbN
======
orijing
Guys, some of you who are criticizing the precise "assumptions" are missing
the point! He's not saying that utilization will go up to 96% precisely, or
that there will be 20x fewer cars. He is challenging us to imagine the
possibilities ourselves, seeding it with some immediate (potential)
implications. On first sight his assumptions seem reasonable, and it's up to
us individually to determine what the ramifications are.

Indeed the potential is enormous for freeing up a lot of human time/etc. We
will need less parking certainly, cars will be running newer models (since
they're used more, they'll likely last less time) with better technologies,
and potentially there will be more efficient routing algorithms to save
energy, time, etc.

I like how HN is often first to criticize, but sometimes you're just missing
the point. The point is to imagine for yourself the possibilities. For me,
it's enormous.

~~~
Lagged2Death
Here's the problem I see.

The potential for car-sharing and an attendant rise in utilization rate has
existed for a long time. (There's little reason something like Zipcar couldn't
have been organized by telephone years ago.) Yet it has only caught on in a
small way, and only in places where there are other overwhelming advantages to
that scheme, in cities where car ownership (parking) is terribly expensive.

I think he's overlooking something regrettable but true: the low utilization
rate, great expense, wastefulness and general economic insanity of private
cars _are critical parts of their appeal_ to consumers. Many people who could
commute by train or bus choose to take a car instead, even though it's hugely
more expensive, more stressful, and often not much faster. They'd rather feel
like they had some control than no control. They'd rather sit in a seat no
strangers have been sitting in. They like knowing the glove compartment is
crammed with their own crap and not someone else's. They like the fact that
their car will be waiting _for them and for them alone_ in the parking space
where they left it, with no need for waiting or a call-ahead reservation.

And of course there's the fact that parking an enormous, expensive, gas-
guzzling monstrosity in the office lot or the driveway has a genuine (shallow,
materialistic, emotional, and pitiably simian - yet still genuine) effect on
your friends, neighbors, minions, and yes, on yourself.

He's supposing that _driverless_ cars will somehow finally yield to economic
pressures that have been present (and irrationally resisted) all these
decades.

~~~
JoshTriplett
I don't see the points you mentioned as the primary benefits of a car over a
bus or train. A car requires no waiting, and takes you directly to where you
want to go, with no stops or detours. A bus or train requires waiting, makes
various stops, does not take a direct route to your destination, and drops you
some distance away from where you want, perhaps with a couple of transfers
required for long distances.

Car sharing programs eliminate some of the drawbacks (no detours or stops),
but several still apply (no guarantee of timely availability, one or both
endpoints does not coincide perfectly with your destination). On top of those,
you also pay more than mass transit, and you still have to do the driving.

Give me a transit mechanism which picks me up from my house at the time I want
to leave, and takes me directly to my destination with no stops, and I see no
reason to ever drive a car again.

I certainly believe that some car enthusiasts exist who actually driving,
rather than just doing it to get to a destination. However, I don't believe
those people make up the majority of drivers, or even a significant fraction;
I think most people just want to get from point A to point B, and driving
sucks the least for them.

~~~
Lagged2Death
_A car requires no waiting, and takes you directly to where you want to go,
with no stops or detours._

I think that after a moment's thought about this you'll have to agree that
this is completely wrong. _The roads_ don't even _go_ directly where you want
to go, most of the time; there are stop lights and stop signs and police
checkpoints and emergency vehicles and slowdowns and gridlock and accidents
and construction detours and traffic detours and "stops on the way" that
aren't, really, for your spouse and on and on.

Which I think is really telling. The feeling of being in control that a
private vehicle gives one changes one's perceptions and evaluations _a lot_. A
driver-less car will probably not offer that illusion, and we collectively
love that illusion.

Interestingly enough, the article attached to this other current HN post
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3329676>) points out how much we humans
hate passive, helpless waiting, and how we tend to exaggerate its severity.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Mass transit mostly fails to avoid all the same things you mentioned; to the
extent it doesn't (trains) it exaggerates the other problems (drops you off
far from your destination). Also, half the problems you mentioned go away with
driverless cars.

So, no, I disagree entirely.

~~~
Lagged2Death
_Mass transit mostly fails to avoid all the same things you mentioned..._

But... so what? This isn't about private cars vs. mass transit. This is about
unthinkingly exaggerating the virtues of private cars. We all do it, all the
time.

 _...half the problems you mentioned go away with driverless cars._

That's what was claimed about parkways, thruways, expressways, and later about
the interstate freeways, and none of those problems have in fact gone away at
all.

------
ccc3
A couple of comments:

 _And if cars are receiving 20 times more actual use, that would imply that
there would be 20 times less cars sold_

Actually, no it wouldn't. If cars are getting 20 times more use they will wear
out much more quickly than they do now. That means cars will have to be
replaced much more frequently. There would be fewer cars sold than there are
now, but it wouldn't be 20x fewer.

 _The operating percent of a car will go from 4% to that 96%_

This seems wildly optimistic to me. The driverless cars may be capable of
driving around 96% of the time, but that doesn't mean they can be carrying
people 96% of the time. No matter how efficient the system, if there are
enough cars to handle peak traffic during the day, then a lot of those cars
will be sitting around doing nothing at night.

~~~
frankus
_If cars are getting 20 times more use they will wear out much more quickly
than they do now._

Existing cars, if driven 20 times as much, would wear out 20 times more
quickly, like taxicabs do now.

But it's also possible that cars would simply be built with more reliable
components and more durable materials, like current aircraft and public
transit vehicles are.

It's not cost-effective to build an ultra-reliable car that's sitting idle 96%
of the time, but the economics would surely change if the utilization rate is
much higher.

~~~
snowwindwaves
cars wear out from two things 1) age 2) use A car, left sitting in the
driveway for 30 years, unused and unmaintained, is unlikely to work very well
or for very long. Rubber components like hoses, wire insulation, weather
stripping etc become brittle and break.

As some other posters mention, cabs with 650,000 miles are not unheard of. I
had a Toyota Landcruiser with 450,000km on the second engine, over 900,000km
on the body.

A car that got 20x use would not wear out 20x as fast because a large part of
a car wearing out is just age, not miles.

~~~
arundelo
Here's a story about a guy (a friend of my brother) who put a million miles on
a Honda accord:

[http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2199&dat=20021117&...](http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2199&dat=20021117&id=mJwyAAAAIBAJ&sjid=D-kFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3412,4194471)

He took extremely good care of it.

~~~
GFischer
There's a Volkswagen Gol here in Uruguay with a million kilometers, and it's
not an unheard-of amount

Cars are the most expensive in the world here, so we tend to keep then way
long past their expiration date - as an example, I own a 1994 Maruti with
200.000 km, they aren't designed to last that long ! Japanese cars are the
most coveted because they do last a million kilometers if cared for properly.

Sadly, there's a ban on used car imports (The vice-president's campaign was
funded by the new cars importer association).

~~~
quanticle
A million kilometers is considerably less than a million miles. A million
kilometers is about 621 thousand miles. That's a lot, but it's much less than
a million miles.

~~~
sambeau
Do you seriously believe there is any regular reader of Hacker News that
doesn't know that a kilometre is less than a mile?

~~~
GFischer
With my comment, I just wanted to add one more anecdotal point :)

I'm aware of the difference between miles and km (though I instinctively tend
to minimize it and believe the difference is less than it really is)

I know of that Volkswagen because a million km is headline-grabbing here (on
the "anecdotes" section), there are probably cars with a million miles but
1,609,344 km is not a headline-significant number, much like 621,371 miles
isn't for the US.

------
moultano
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox>

As the efficiency with which a resource is used increases, the tendency is to
use more of it rather than less.

Concretely, if I don't have to drive the car myself, I wouldn't hesitate to
drive anywhere. I'd go to the city every day if I could read on the way, and
sleep on the way home.

~~~
nostromo
With shared resources, this might not be the case.

Today, car owners have already spent $x on their cars -- so they have an
incentive to use their investment to the fullest.

Compare that with a shared-car system like ZipCar. ZipCar is generally much
more efficient than owning a vehicle (if you don't use it to commute) --
however, since you pay per hour, you have an incentive to skip the car when
it's not necessary.

By removing the sunk-costs of ownership, you could incentivize conservation
rather than consumption.

~~~
EGreg
With ZipCar, you have to first get to the car, and then also get back from the
car. For most people, the car they own is in their driveway or parking spot.

~~~
erikpukinskis
With a model more like Car2Go (pick up the car wherever you can find one,
leave it wherever you want to) this isn't as much of an issue. In Austin
there's pretty much always a car within a few blocks... almost "driveway-
level" accessibility.

And if even 10% of drivers switch to using this model, then there's always
going to be a car on your block. That's pretty competitive.

With driverless cars it's even less of an issue, because the car will
literally drive from the end of the block (where it's waiting) to your door.

~~~
FrojoS
Thanks, I wasn't aware of Car2Go. Their price rates
<http://www.car2go.com/sandiego/en/affordable-rates/> might give a good idea
about how expensive using a driverless car would be if it existed today.

Assuming, that the San Diego prices can be applied to Francisco, it seems like
taking such a car from downtown to the airport would be about the same as the
BART subway. I assume, that would be too expensive for a daily commute.

------
modeless
There's another unintended effect I haven't seen talked about anywhere: when
cars no longer require human drivers, the cost of driving in human terms
(time, frustration, danger) will be drastically reduced, but the energy cost
will only be reduced by a small amount. The logical consequence of this is
that cars will be doing a lot more driving and as a society we will spend a
lot more energy on transportation overall.

~~~
mbell
While this concept sounds amazing to me, lets not forget that we are not the
majority. I just got off the phone with a relative who hates taking a plane,
they would rather drive 24 hours to their destination. I consider this concept
to be pure insanity, but i don't think this is limited to a small portion of
the populous. There is much more at play in the mind of the 'average
American(in this case)' than efficiency and 'the car will drive for me'. The
lack of a feeling of person control is not among the lesser of these issues.

~~~
bdunbar
_i don't think this is limited to a small portion of the populous._

I do that.

But it's not because I hate planes but I've got three kids. Airfare for five
to visit grandma in Virginia is prohibitive compared to the cost of driving.

I'm not a nut about it: if it's just my wife and I, we fly.

But on those long drives especially, I'd love a car to do the driving.

------
nl
I'm not sure if anyone else has realized it yet, but driverless cars will have
to be taxed on a time-on-road basis, rather than at a flat rate.

The reason? The economics of electric cars and parking.

Initially it seems that they will fix the parking problem - driverless cars
can be sent to park outside the CBD, reducing traffic and freeing up space.

But the problem is that people/software will optimize for _price_ , and for
electric cars the cheapest scenario is for them to be stuck in a traffic jam
on a public road.

Instead of going to a parking bay, the software will route them to the nearest
traffic jam, where the car can sit with the electric motors off for a large
amount of time. Inevitably, some software will misjudge how long their charge
will last, their batteries will run flat and the traffic jam will get worse.

As far as I can see the only way around this is to increase the cost of being
on the road.

~~~
wcarss
Maybe not.

If you made it a flat fee, then it's kind of like runs-batted-in. The car has
to get more people delivered to make money, so once it gets you to where you
need to go as efficiently and quickly as possible, you get out and it speeds
off to complete another fare.

Increasing road-cost would have the opposite effect, I think. If the cars make
money just by being on the road and not by completing tasks, they lose the
incentive to finish and jam-sitting becomes optimal.

~~~
nl
Yes, I agree this could be an option.

But I'm not optimistic about the share-car thing, at least in cities without a
strong existing public transport system. In most cities too many people travel
at rush-hour, with unique route requirements (dropping kids at school etc).

------
9999
Unfortunately there are a few assumptions being made here that don't really
jive with car usage in practice. 96% usage? People's schedules aren't that
flexible, my spouse and I commute at the same time to different places, and a
large chunk of the people in my apartment do as well. This is known as rush
hour.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
Not to mention that driving places, without actually driving people places
(ie, back home to drive the wife) effectively doubles the mileage, and thus my
gas (or the energy source du jour's) consumption.

edit: Also, to build on the above comment, the benefit of having a car is
having the freedom to use it when you want, it's always there. Driverless cars
always in motion are basically public transit. Just take the bus/taxi/subway
already.

~~~
learc83
>Driverless cars always in motion are basically public transit

Minus the cost of the driver.

The point of ubiquitous driverless cars, is that one could get to you so
quickly that for all intents and purposes it _would_ always be there.

Also they don't always have to be in motion. Just give people a discount on
service if they let cars park in their driveways while waiting for
instructions.

------
Natsu
Driverless cars are a great idea and I really want to see them succeed.

But I can see more than a few problems. As they say, there are entrenched
interests that won't like that. For example, if you can rent cars that way, I
don't see the people with those very expensive taxi medallions being any too
happy about that. Yes, getting rid of that would be a good thing, but the
people who own them won't be any too happy about the value of their investment
vanishing.

Also, there's what happens with accidents. For example, look at that story we
have right now about the autopilot flaking out for what? A minute? Only to
have the pilots get confused and crash the plane. People underrate intentional
risks because they feel that they have control. Conversely, they overrate
risks where they do not have that feeling. Driverless cars are firmly in the
"don't have control" pile. Sure, the computer is likely to be a much safer
driver than most people, but that also means being a nicer driver (which will
_really_ piss off some people, passengers and other drivers alike), and people
with low skill overrate their abilities. Throw in any actual programming
errors into the mix and I just have to hope you have good insurance and a good
PR department.

------
skizm
My first thought about driverless cars is that stock in alcohol companies
would skyrocket. I know a good many people who would go to the bar on a more
regular basis and now that they have a driver for the ride home. Also on a
week day after work, why not have another beer? No risk of hurting someone or
a DUI, right?

~~~
rubashov
America needs to get back to its roots as the premier boozing nation. We were
long known for this. Hell, there was practically a civil war over the whole
whiskey rebellion thing.

------
frankus
When I was young and naive I used to dream about how a Personal Rapid Transit
system that would whisk people around in private little pods along elevated
monorail tracks could work. Clearly the answer is "it couldn't", not so much
technically but economically and politically.

But it turns out we already have a really comprehensive network of ground-
level "tracks" that lead up to nearly every residence and business on the
planet. The missing ingredient thus far has been the ability for a vehicle to
stay on this "track" without a driver, but it looks like Google and friends
might have cracked that nut.

A second impediment might be powering these cars in an efficient manner, but
batteries have vastly improved over the last decade, and as they are
standardized, battery swapping and even third-rail-type power (at least on
limited-access roads) become possible.

The land use implications alone are going to be huge, but I'm not entirely
sure which way they'll flip.

On the one hand, we will no longer need vast parking lots adjacent to activity
centers like malls, stadiums, office complexes, big-box stores, and airports.
That means that stuff could be built in those parking lots, which could
potentially greatly increase the density of current cities and suburbs.

On the other hand (h/t Karl Smith at Modeled Behavior) driverless cars would
dramatically lower the cost of living in exurban areas, so people interested
in peace and quiet would no longer have to compromise as much as they do now.

------
piinbinary
I expect that at peak use (rush hour), the total number of cars needed would
not be so substantially lower than the current number of cars owned. Perhaps a
factor of 2 or 3.

Of course, with driverless cars, people may begin to stagger the starting /
ending hours of the work day to allow for owning fewer cars.

~~~
kkowalczyk
That's true but consider that most of those people go to/from the same place.

If entity that provides those cars is big enough, they can match up the
destination and optimize the traffic so that people going to the (roughly)
same place share a car. When I was commuting from SF to MV for work, I had to
use the whole car. There were plenty of other people who were commuting at the
same time from/to very similar destination and used the whole car. It's not
hard to algorithmically put several such people into the same car.

Today cars are 4/5 seaters so you get at 3x reduction compared to current
levels (taking into account that not everyone drives by himself today) but you
could easily redesign the cars to not be much larger and taking 8-10 people.
Or make them straight up buses. Google already does that with their shuttles
where they pick e.g. people from SF and drive them in big buses to MV, except
it would be much more efficient because the potential pool of people
transfered would not be just "people who work at Google and live in SF" but
"every person who lives in SF and works somewhere in MV", which is a much
bigger number.

~~~
danking00
Although I agree with your argument, I think it actually _is_ algorithmically
hard to do this.

Isn't this the travelling salesman problem?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem>

Of course, a non-optimal, but good enough routing is probably fine.

EDIT: Added last sentence.

~~~
kkowalczyk
As hard as it might be, it's a solved problem. FedEx is doing it. Uber is
doing it. And I'm sure there are plenty of others out there, I just don't know
about other industries.

~~~
Dinoguy1000
If I'm understanding the relevant WP articles correctly, the travelling
salesman problem is not solved, since a solution for it would also imply a
solution for all NP-complete problems. What these companies have therefore
cannot be an absolute solution, but rather an optimal approximation which may
or may not (but probably isn't, and probably can't be proved to be in
polynomial time) equal to the absolute solution.

Of course, I don't have much firsthand knowledge of computational complexity
myself, so someone else who know better should call me on any nonsense above.
=D

~~~
kkowalczyk
Since you decided to nitpick: travelling salesman problem (i.e. finding an
minimal route) is a solved problem as in "for decades we have known algorithms
to find a minimal path and we teach them to CS grads".

What you refer to is the fact that the computational complexity (i.e. time to
finish it) of known algorithms rises exponentially with the size of the
problem and exponentially is a code word for "really, really quickly". It just
takes too much time to find the minimal path if your graph is big.

What I meant, however, is that the problem has been solved in practice. When
you ask Google how to drive from SF to NY, it'll give pretty good answer in
milliseconds. Is it an optimal answer? It might be, it might be not, but it's
a very good answer. Getting slightly better answer is not worth the
computational time because it won't make a difference in practice in your
trip.

Similarly, a car rental company doesn't have to schedule things optimally,
they just have to schedule things really good, and that's possible with much
less computationally expensive algorithms. The big win is when you go from "no
optimization" to "good optimization", not from "good optimization" to "perfect
optimization".

~~~
swolchok
> What I meant, however, is that the problem has been solved in practice. When
> you ask Google how to drive from SF to NY, it'll give pretty good answer in
> milliseconds. Is it an optimal answer? It might be, it might be not, but
> it's a very good answer. Getting slightly better answer is not worth the
> computational time because it won't make a difference in practice in your
> trip.

That's not the traveling salesman problem, it's the shortest path problem, for
which polynomial-time algorithms are well-known and taught to first-year
computer-science students. (To be fair, driving directions do require coming
up with good edge weights on the graph composed of the American highway
system, but once you've got weights, you can run Dijkstra's algorithm and
you're done. That's probably not how GMaps driving directions work, but the
point is that driving directions are not TSP.)

------
joe_the_user
I don't think the article's argument justifies the idea that fewer cars will
be sold.

Cars wear out primarily through driving. If you simply switched to automatic
driving, what you would have is fewer cars being driven more often and so
being worn more quickly. If car-mile consumption stays the same, new-car
production would stay the same. On the other hand, if the auto-drive cars
increased carpooling, then you'd see a decrease in car-miles consumed and so a
decrease in production. But if auto-drive cars drove around empty more, you
might have even more car-miles being consumed.

Moreover, you'd have a "big bang" where people decide to mostly stop driving
the old, non-automatically-driving cars and so there'd a huge spike in
consumption at that point.

The space saved by avoiding parking could be really large, still.

A nice thing would be that at the start, a person might be able to finance
their self-driving car by renting in out when they didn't need it. Those
economies might make the phenomena spread really quickly.

~~~
kkowalczyk
The article might not but I think that it would totally happen.

My assumption here is that there would emerge a big car provider who would
provide those cars, similar to how there's only few major car rentals, or how
ZipCar is leading in its category or even how Uber emerges as a single taxi-
like provider. The economies of scale are very big here.

Given that, some things you have not accounted for:

Higher average utilization per car. I don't know how much commute traffic
accounts for total traffic, but by judging rush traffic on 580, it's quite a
lot. Most of those people go from the same location (e.g. SF) to the same
location (e.g. Mountain View) and today most of them drive alone. Today 4 or 5
of them would be scheduled by an algorithm to use the same car.

Because of that the cars would get re-designed for a higher capacity (at least
8-10 people) or even straight up buses. A big provider would have so much data
that they could optimize the hell out of sharing cars.

Similarly, the cars would utilized, on average, much better. Again, a company
with enough data could really optimize for a lifetime of a car and they would
have economic incentives to do so (unlike a single customer for whom even
gathering the necessary data would be cost prohibitive).

Our cars are, without a question, utilized very inefficiently. Someone
operating a fleet of tens of thousands of cars would have not only economic
incentive but also necessary data and necessary transaction volume to optimize
per-car utilization, because for them it would translate directly into large
savings.

~~~
learc83
I can't upvote this enough, people seem stuck in their concept of what a car
is. Without a driver we are free to redesign cars in so many ways.

We no longer need to worry about designing it so that the driver can see every
angle, so we can design more efficient seating layouts. We can even add
partitions so the 10 passengers don't have to see each other.

Long distance deliver vehicles can operate at lower fuel efficient speeds.

We can combine delivery and passenger vehicles.

The list is endless.

~~~
joe_the_user
Now wait a minute...

While I'm all for your point that drivelessness will allow an incredible re-
imagining of the automobile, considering the gp responded my original post, I
just want to bring things back to the question of resource utilization.

The automobile today is half efficient transport and half personal
expression/personal entertainment. And the personal expression/personal
entertainment part is where the massive resource utilization comes in. So,
sure, you could reimagine the automobile for super-efficiency with four-people
per car whenever you're driving and the resource utilization goes away - so
does the personal entertainment/personal expression stuff. So you could go
multiple ways. Towards a super-efficient taxi and towards an office/living
room on wheels. The first way would involve less resources consumed, the
second would involve less resources consumed. It is hard to be certain what
the net outcome will be.

~~~
learc83
I think the natural progression of driverless cars is away from individual
ownership. Why own a car when you can have near instant availability of a much
cheaper rental.

To many people, a car becomes part of their identity, or like you said

>expression/personal entertainment

I'm sure that there will still be people for whom this is true, but for most
of us it won't matter b/c the efficient always there taxi will be _so_ much
cheaper.

For most middle to lower-middle class Americans I think current cars are
really out of their comfortable price range, they own them b/c they view them
as a requirement.

If you give them an alternative that is just as convient, but cheaper, and
without the maintenance hassles, it's no contest.

------
eftpotrm
What this seems to ignore for me is the car-as-status / car-as-identity case.
Speaking personally when I had to trade from a rather nice executive saloon to
an MPV / minivan, much as I knew it was sensible I hated it because of the
self-image connotations. Which is possibly why I've now got a 350Z ;-)

Why does anyone buy a BMW or a Mercedes when a Ford is substantially cheaper
for the same space and performance? Image. That's a sector which is always
going to buy their own cars rather than leasing one from a pool, because even
a shared 'prestige' car (a rather meaningless tag given current BMW sales
figures, but I digress...) starts rapidly losing its lustre.

Which then may well mean that we gain a new social stratification - prestige
car, own car, driverless pool car. Which could well see older used cars and
taxis dropping out of the market, but I doubt it'd have an effect on the
general car market on quite the same scale that the writer envisages.

~~~
frobozz
Maybe, but I suspect that the order of adoption might change that. I agree
that there will probably always be a segment of personal cars, but that
segment will be small and shrinking. Speaking from the other side of the
fence: if I still lived in a zipcar city, I'd be rid of my car in a heartbeat.
I always considered my lack of car ownership as a positive status symbol.

One sort of person who buys prestige cars* would be the same sort of person to
be an early adopter of personally owned driverless cars, after all, being
equipped with the latest magical technology is one of the things that confers
prestige. Once that has happened, membership of an exclusive car-sharing club
might become desirable, offering the opportunity to network and do business on
the move. After all, people do buy first-class tickets on trains, despite the
massive expense, regardless of the fact that it gets you there at the same
time as standard class.

I could also envisage a future in which personal car ownership is often seen
in the same light as the ownership of certain models of car (e.g. porsche
boxster) are today - i.e. a gauche attempt at a status-symbol by a nouveau
riche oik.

*(The other kind, who wouldn't go driverless, are the kind of petrolhead who relishes the man-machine hybrid that they become when they get behind the wheel, but they will eventually be restricted to racetracks)

------
Aissen
Hacker News side note: it's time to show plus.google.com instead of google.com
in the domain preview.

Apparently it's already done with appspot.com, wordpress.com and others, so it
shouldn't be too hard.

------
jsvaughan
One unintended effect is that accidents are going to be quite different.
Although driverless cars are bound to be safer, I wonder what people's
reaction will be to computer error causing death. The style of computer error
is not likely to correspond to reasonable human factors (like bad conditions,
icy roads etc - all that can be programmed in), but bugs / bad radar echo
zones / new roads not yet mapped etc - there are going to be deaths caused by
circumstances that a human would have easily, safely dealt with.

------
codelion
The post is misleading, people do not have multiple cars because they cannot
drive, it is because they have to use it for multiple things at the same time.
Morning going to work, dropping kids etc. will happen all at the same time.
Peak car usage will not be affected by self driving cars.

~~~
dantheman
That is true, but the times can be shifted if the car can drive back after
dropping you off.

For example: 1\. Drive to work 2\. Drive home 3\. Drive to school 4\. Drive
home 5\. Drive to store ...

Many parents already drop their kids off @ school and thus are adjusting their
schedules appropriately.

~~~
MichaelApproved
You're going to increase your fuel bills dramatically driving ack and forth
like that.

------
joshsharp
Ars Technica did a good series on self-driving cars where they came to many of
these conclusions already.

[http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/10/future-of-
driving...](http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/10/future-of-driving-
part-2.ars)

------
stevecooperorg
I think I've missed an important part of this discussion -- if driverless cars
would be revolutionary, what do they provide that an existing taxi service
doesn't?

A taxi has many of the listed benefits;

\- you don't need to buy the car \- you don't need to drive the car \- it's
available on demand through your phone \- the utilisation of cars is very high

So what is the functional difference between a shared-ownership, driverless
car, and a standard human-driven taxi?

~~~
jomohke
You don't have to pay the driver. Currently it's more expensive for me to take
a taxi (in Australia) because the wage of the driver outweighs the extra costs
(and inefficiency) associated with running my own car.

You see a lot more taxis in cities with lower human labour costs (such as
Lima), or where the cost of parking outweighs the cost of the driver (such as
Manhattan).

------
iandanforth
How has no one mentioned EC2 in this whole thread?

Automation, centralization, capacity planning, many of the problems are the
same.

Now IF that analogy is correct I propose:

1\. A few large entities will dominate the automated car business while
enthusiasts and finicky users will happily continue to buy their own.

2\. Manufacturers will see demand explode for a small set of highly efficient
commodity vehicles.

3\. Excess capacity will be resold for new businesses.

\- Package delivery \- Mobile Advertising \- Portable infrastructure. (Need
wifi coverage at an outdoor event? I'll send over a half dozen networked cars)
\- Portable storage (Think of those delivered storage pods, but that only were
there when you called) \- Entertainment (Rent a dozen cars and have them do
some sweet driving)

Also, though this doesn't fit into the Amazon analogy, talk about a captive
audience! Imagine, you're puttering along on a family trip to Yellowstone in
your rental, it's around lunchtime, and the car suggests stopping at Burger
King .. out loud ... with your kids listening. Can you imagine what BK would
pay for that privilege?

------
b1daly
While this is a fascinating thought experiment are there really so many people
who think there will be mass adoption of driverless cars in the near to mid
term?

The technical, political, socialogical, and psychological barriers to the OP
vision seem huge. Just to mention one that I haven't seen mentioned: winter
driving. In snowy climates the driving conditions are very unpredict able.
Cars get stuck and require all sorts of creative driving techniques. If the
sort of seamless automatic driving doesn't work in such an environment then
human driven vehicles will still be on the road in large numbers. Being on the
road means they can be driven to the dense, warm urban areas where automated
driving might work better.

You could outlaw human driven vehicles in certain places, but it highlights
the need for the creation of parallel infrastructure to be created in areas
where land is scarce. The transition period would be stretched out and chicken
vs egg type problems could be insurmountable for the foreseeable future.

------
nickthorn
I can't believe this has so many upvotes! This is based on a silly assumption;
aircraft are relatively more expensive than cars to buy, maintain, and use. So
it is cheaper and affordable for more people if we time share them.

Cars are much cheaper, so we don't - the value of having a personal car ready
_right now_ is worth more to people than taking public transport. If aircraft
were as cheap/convenient as cars to use/maintain/store/etc, then I'd have an
aircraft parked up outside my house!

Driverless cars will have an enormous effect on society in lots of ways, but I
highly doubt reducing the number of cars on the road will be one of them. In
fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there are more cars on the roads, given that
people who currently can't drive (because they're elderly/too young/disabled)
will be enabled to.

------
mousa
How about employment? It will make millions of jobs disappear. Truckers/taxi
drivers/bus drivers/etc. make up a pretty huge group of people.

~~~
melling
Aren't you making a Luddite argument?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite>

Different jobs will take their place. There are a lot fewer farmers these
days, for example. The real trick is to find effective ways for people to get
the training.

~~~
throwaway64
if somebody has worked most/all of their life in a low-education unskilled
labor job (the kind that are most likely to be disrupted by computers), who
says they even have the ability to become a robotologist or something very
intensively knowledge based? In the future these will really be the only kinds
of jobs computers cant do. The problems here are much more complex than the
Luddite issues of yesteryear, and its disingenuous to write somebody off as a
dumb Luddite.

~~~
philwelch
While technology makes easy jobs disappear, it also makes hard jobs easier.
The advent of calculators means grocery clerks can be completely innumerate.

------
supar
I'm all for driverless transportation, but let's face some important facts.

Why didn't we _already_ remove the drivers on trains? The train/metro system
is basically a closed system which is _much_ easier to control than a car in
traffic. This is a genuine question: why? It looks like a much easier to solve
problem.

Second problem will be certainly be fuel. A 20x increase in utilization means
at least a 20x increase in fuel, unless the car is _transporting_ something at
all times (which basically means car sharing). Sending your car home empty is
crazy in terms of fuel.

Legislation is also going to be a hell of a problem, at least in EU.

------
dmnd
I don't agree these effects are unintended rather than highly desirable
benefits.

------
JulianMorrison
I have said before, driverless cars will end the private car.

First you get your car doing taxi work for money while it would otherwise be
parked in your workplace. Then you get a social stratum of people who only
ever use other people's cars, because it's simpler than buying one. Then you
get commercial fleets of driverless taxis out-competing the per-individual car
in the taxi role, until it's not economic to run one. Then you get the
collapse of the economic/logistic infrastructure for per-individual cars.

And yeah, driverless taxi fleets will only park to fuel, be serviced, or wait
on a fare.

------
namank
This is a far down the road vision. It calls for a huge shift in the mindset
of the consumer AND the manufacturer, to say nothing of the society. Then
there is the infrastructure and error handling - what happens when it gets a
flat tire on its way to pick up the kids after dropping you off?

Lets give it 15 years. 15 years is a long time for technology but not so much
for societal evolution.

I can see the driverless car being on the road in 5 years and I see it being
used for carpools. But the vision as painted in the post? Yes, I'm a skeptic.

Very interesting stuff though...I can't wait till they hit the road.

~~~
apike
I think the legal issues are underestimated here.

Who is liable if your driverless Civic drives you into a tree? What if it runs
over a pedestrian? Honda? Google? You?

Driverless cars could dramatically reduce the dangers of driving, but it's a
lot more complicated if a machine learning algorithm kills somebody than if a
mistaken human being does.

~~~
blrgeek
That's a poor argument.

All it needs is for _someone_ to take liability. If you own the driverless
car, then you buy the insurance. If it's leased from a pool, then they buy the
insurance.

The software vendor for their part take an over-arching insurance on software
errors across thousands of cars. Done deal.

Today if you have a 20 year old your premium is higher. Tomorrow if you have a
driverless car, your premium might be low even if you have a 16 yr old.
Parents buying a first car might just buy a driverless car for a lower
insurance premium & the safety of not having the kid drive!

------
politician
Speaking of unintended effects, what happens when the government begins to
abuse its new capability to geo-fence areas that driverless smart cars aren't
allowed to drive into?

Like protest meeting areas.

------
VladRussian
like any progressive technological development it will bring only
improvements, including refusing to go to specific places specified by a
transmission from central traffic control or automated blocking of doors and
delievering you to court/jail/administrative hearing ...

------
naa42
All these economic points can be applied to public transportatipon (i.e.
trams, trolleys, subway). They also have much higher utilisation of equipment
and number of drivers is negligible comparing with the number of passengers.
So the problem is the same as
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy)
Well, maybe Google can introduce public transportation once again.

------
redthrowaway
The biggest opportunity I can see here is Cars as a Service. Basically an
automated taxi service you pay $50/month for to use a car whenever you want.
You fire up the caas app,order a car, and the nearest one comes and grabs you.
The best part: not location dependent. Your membership is good in any city
(heck, even any _country_ ). It would be the end of taxis and even public
transportation.

~~~
majmun
I imagine this is already possible but with people as drivers instead of
machines, you just need some badass coordination in your cellphone app
service.

~~~
redthrowaway
Possible, yes, but you have to both buy the cars and pay the drivers, one of
the reasons taxis are so expensive (the other being licenses running in the
hundreds of thousands of dollars). If we project 5 years down the road to a
time when gas prices are even higher, electric vehicles are cheaper and more
reliable, and the technology is ready for prime time, I could easily see cars
as a service working.

------
wtvanhest
Airplanes are not utilized 96% of the time. Most are sitting on tarmacs all
night long.

Just like cars will be sitting when it isn't rush hour. There may be a few
less cars sold on the margin, but this will not impact things as much as you
think.

I could possibly see more rental/share programs, but those exist in big cities
and are called cabs.

Which, brings me to a bigger problem which is cabs, those guys are definitely
not going to have jobs.

------
ajuc
It's not about average throughtput, it's about peak throughtput (during rush
hours). Big percentage of families will want their cars at 8-9 and 16-17.

So utilisation of cars will never be 90%, more like 45%, which is still big
change, I agree.

It's also possible that companies will do the sensible thing and adopt
adjustable working hours (many software companies do this already here).

------
luigi
I brought this up in Matt Maroon's post about the topic back in January, and
he brought up a good point: People like to own their car because it's a moving
storage locker.

[http://mattmaroon.com/2011/01/03/google-will-become-an-ai-
co...](http://mattmaroon.com/2011/01/03/google-will-become-an-ai-
company/#comment-20313)

~~~
eurleif
The use case I'm imagining is people going shopping, and wanting to put bags
from one store away in their car before going into another. So what if you
could summon up a self-driving car, put your stuff in its trunk for a fee, and
then call back the same car later with your stuff still in its trunk? It could
go be a taxi while you're busy shopping, and not allow other customers to
unlock its trunk.

~~~
shasta
Or we'll get a car design with a removable trunk.

~~~
frankus
I think you're spot on.

But I think the removable trunk will be combined with a passenger-less unit
that carries the trunk back to your house and drops it off. Sort of a tiny
version of container shipping.

~~~
eurleif
That sounds like something that might happen in the farther future, but I
expect there will be a lot of general-purpose auto-driving cars made before
companies start making super-specialized models like that.

------
danssig
Once we have automated cars why would anyone own one? Cars are the biggest
waste of money we have right now. On a house you spend more but you have the
potential to get it back or even make a profit. Not so with a car, it's just
loss and a lot of that.

The sensible thing to do would be to have cars as a service. Why tie yourself
to one type of car when you can just order what ever you need for that
specific trip? Why does every family need 2 cars when nearly all our time is
spent in one place (e.g. home, the office, the golf course).

Cars as a service can enjoy the same kinds of economies you have with e.g. the
phone network. You don't have to have enough for everyone because everyone
won't be using them at the same time. You need only worry about peak time,
which you even have some control over since you're making the driving
schedules.

------
johngalt
Decouple the drivetrain from the cabin. The drivetrain is automated, and has
standard connection types for the personal cabin. So you can have a mobile
space that is "yours". Still has all the benefits listed in the article, and
handles a few of the problems that "community car sharing" would create.

If a bunch of people are all going the same direction you can pack them into a
10 cabin bus, or a 100 cabin train. When their paths diverge you can have
single cabin drivesets routed in advance to the destination. Tailor the
drivesets for their intended use/range; short range electrics for small
commutes, long range diesels, catenary powered on high traffic areas, perhaps
a large multicabin driveset with wings?

------
ldng
Ford is kind of already aware of this, see Bill Ford's TED talk :
[http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_ford_a_future_beyond_traffic_g...](http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_ford_a_future_beyond_traffic_gridlock.html)

------
idspispopd
I like the idea. If only we had a system of cars, that for a small fee could
drive us anywhere we wanted. That fee could be based on the number of
kilometres travelled and the time spent in the car. We could call that fare a
"taximeter", based on the latin "taxa" and the Greek "metron" meaning measure,
together as "taxed metre", as that's a bit long - in time we could shorten it
to "taxi".

Then we could have certain cities where only these "taxis" (and other kinds of
public-transport) were allowed entry. Normal cars could enter, but would need
to pay a special "congestion" fee.

Maybe London could try this out as they have a problem with congestion.

------
UrbanPat
Here's a related question: What will cities look like with driverless cars
being shared by groups of people? Parking needs will diminish significantly,
allowing cities to become more dense, yet because the cost of driving will be
reduced (by splitting the ownership costs of cars, by increasing the rate of
shared commuting, and by allowing commuters to spend their transit time being
productive), demand for urban land for residential areas may decrease overall.
So my best guess is that in many cities commercial areas will become more
dense, but residential areas could enter a decline. Any other ideas?

------
yuxt
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, Americans spend more than
500 million 'commuter hours' per week in their automobiles. Once driverless
cars take over this time can be spent on browsing web (clicking ads)

~~~
philwelch
That's the most backwards-ass business model I've seen. Google could probably
make more money by selling the damn technology.

------
ajays
Being nerds and geeks, we automatically focus on the numbers: is 96%
utilization too high? Will there really be 20x fewer cars sold?

Those exact numbers are beyond the point. But a more realistic number for
utilization may be close to 50%: half the time, the car would be on the way
back to the next pick up point (or home or office or ....).

One of the main reasons planes have such high utilization is to recoup the
high cost of the initial investment. You don't see _every_ plane being
utilized 96%; heck, drive by any small airfield and you'll see lots of planes
parked under a canvas, seemingly not going anywhere.

------
nostromo
Another unintended (or maybe intended) effect: cheap cabs.

Without cab drivers, there's no reason for the antiquated medallion system.
That would lead to more cabs. Without medallion costs, drivers, tips,
presumably cheaper insurance, and more efficient route-finding -- it should
also be much cheaper.

With cab-bots, you could also do some awesome things like model the areas and
times of greatest demand and make sure they are there immediately. Or, similar
to UPS, route to avoid left turns to increase fuel performance.

------
tryitnow
The value proposition here is basically replacing cab drivers.

This offers some really interesting challenges because there should be some
sort of optimal routing algorithms that would allow a car to carry more than
one passenger at a time.

I am sure Google is already working on something amazing in this regard.

The most exciting thing is the potential to radically reduce transportation
costs. The cost reduction won't be an order of magnitude but it would probably
be at least half the total cost of transportation we incur now.

------
maigret
Two unrelated comments:

\- The most massive impact of driverless cab will be to send all taxi and
truck driver to unemployment all of a sudden. Many post workers and pizza guys
also nearly after.

\- Google is not the only one working on that. Audi has some very nice
driverless tech going on, as do a few other universities.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car>

Edit: formatting

------
majmun
I love driving car. Only problem that I have and this could solve is parking
in zone where it is expensive and somehow park car somewhere else. But I could
possibly solve this problem NOW by paying students or someone to park, and get
your car for you. The prize has to only be cheaper than parking expanses.

driverless car cost will be higher than this I imagine.

------
herval
It's funny to note that in the FlashForward novel, the author presents the
exact opposite view of the "future world": people buy more and more cars, and
since they're auto-piloted, they don't even bother about parking anymore:
"drive around the block and pick me up in 30 minutes" Entire traffic jams made
of "parked" cars. Amazing!

------
niccl
There's an aspect of this that I haven't seen mentioned. It seems trivial but
I think it's got to be solved before pooled vehicles like this can work:
cleaning the vehicles.

There's no incentive for the individual user to keep a shared vehicle clean.
So what happens: squalor, or perhaps a new service industry of grooming self-
driving vehicles?

------
rythie
You have to wonder if people would even learn to drive manually in a world of
driverless cars, maybe only a minority of enthusiasts would want to (cost/time
concerns).

Also, if some enthusiasts were perceived to be driving dangerously compared to
the computer controlled cars, that all manually controlled cars might be
banned.

------
switz
A [nice] motorhome that's driverless would be awesome. Have to be in New York
at 9, but live in Philadelphia? Fall asleep in your motorhome the night before
and wake up at 8 a.m. already in the city. Not to mention the
gas/electricity/emissions benefits from a machine controlling the acceleration
and motor.

------
joshu
Cars aren't engineered for high use. We'd have to radically redesign the car
itself to go 250k miles/year.

~~~
wtallis
Are you sure about that? If it's the norm to pay for a share in a fleet of
cars, then those cars will probably be owned and managed by a company that
will ensure that they get timely preventive maintenance. Yes, there will be
changes in how much is reasonable to pay for added durability, but do you have
any evidence that cars need to be _radically_ redesigned?

~~~
joshu
Ever been in a taxi with 300k miles on it?

~~~
wtallis
What's that got to do with anything? Why should driverless cars be expected to
last as many years as current cars? If you're only paying for 20% of the car's
lifetime cost, then you're not going to mind if it has to be replaced five
times more often. In fact, you'll probably _like_ it - that's why anybody ever
leases cars.

It's quite reasonable to expect that it will be economical to pay something
like 20% more for the drivetrain to make it more durable, but that's not a
radical re-design.

------
michaelfeathers
Driverless cars seem like a great idea, but I've never seen anyone address the
legal/insurance issues.

------
EGreg
I agree with everything except the last part. Cars will still wear out after
the same number of miles.

------
ondrae
The effects of 20x fewer vehicles in our cities will have enormous impact on
urban design and planning. The very shape of our metropolises will be
realigned away from the auto-dominated patterns of the last 60 years.

Walkable, livable, green urban cores will become the new standard.

------
ednc
Seeing this and the MythBuster's cannonball debacle next to each other gave me
a scary chill.

------
cellis
[3] - Is all that matters. The industry and their constituents could easily
push back driverless cars 20 years, and this is without any catastrophic
accidents happening. So I'd say about 35 years before we see driverless cars
disrupting anything.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Insurance companies matter a lot, too, though they don't get much coverage in
the article. Like others, I don't find the arguments for lower overall usage
very persuasive, but I could buy them being significantly safer.

If enough statistical evidence accumulates to demonstrate that these are safer
than manually controlled cars, look for the insurance companies to impose a
severe cash penalty on driving the car yourself. If the difference is large
enough, you might find yourself unable to purchase insurance for a manually
controlled vehicle at any price.

~~~
tobtoh
The movie iRobot was an interesting take on such a future.

In a few scenes in the movie, the female lead (the robot psychologist?) reacts
in horror to Will Smith manually driving his petrol driven motobike because it
has not auto-pilot and 'you realise petrol is explosive don't you?!?'

And after Will Smith has the forced accident in the tunnel (when attacked by
the robots), his boss accuses him of unsafe driving because the blackbox
reported that he had disengaged the auto-pilot.

So quite conceivably we'll end up in a future where manual car driving is seen
in the same light as drink driving or speeding is seen today.

------
emehrkay
"Yeah, because cars aren't a personal item? why don't we just make it public
transportation? oh wait, they already have that. It's called a bus, train,
subway, taxi. Sorry I like my gas car, because I can modify it and make it go
fast."

What is wrong with people?

------
dman
What happens to people who want to drive the car themselves by choice. How
long before the idea of a mere human driving the car is seen as too reckless
because automated cars are doing lane merges at surgical precision at 120mph.

------
ccourteau
I wonder what the potential would be for vehicles to be hacked and their
destinations rerouted by third parties. Would there be a centralized
automation system or would the cars be independently smart and networked?

------
MichaelApproved
_"And if cars are receiving 20 times more actual use, that would imply that
there would be 20 times less cars sold."_

Incorrect conclusion. Cars being used 20 times more will break down 20 times
faster. Less might be needed on the road at the same time but they'll break
down and need to be replaced at a much faster rate. Over a serval year
timeframe the amount of cars turned over will remain roughly the same.

I also wouldn't send my car home to pick up my wife and drive her to work
because my fuel bills will skyrocket through all the extra driving around.

The shared resource makes sense. It'll be similar to taxi services that exist
now. You call for a driver and the closest shared car will come to pick you
up.

~~~
rsheridan6
>Cars being used 20 times more will break down 20 times faster.

Not true if they're owned by big players who professionally maintain them.
Want to buy a used LLV (postal truck from the eighties/nineties)? You can't,
because they haven't been surplused yet.

Also, cold engines wear much faster than hot engines, so an engine that runs
all day does not wear out as quickly per mile as one that's driven a few times
daily.

~~~
MichaelApproved
Sure, they haven't been surprised but they surely have had enough parts
replaced that we can consider then new cars several times over.

You make a good point that a fleets maintained better than the average citizen
but they will still break down and still need to be replaced faster that the
author is stating. We will still have roughly the same amount of turnover over
the course of a decade.

------
there
sending your car home for your spouse to use and then back again to pick you
up at the end of your day means it's using twice as much fuel on wasted trips
with no occupants.

~~~
dr_rezzy
You arent seeing the bigger picture here. If you choose this level of
efficiency, after getting dropped off at work, 'your car' will simply locate
the next closest customer. If you want to spend the resources on your own
private car or a more available one, more power to you.

~~~
drewcrawford
But people tend to live in the suburbs and work downtown; so the net traffic
in one direction is much greater than the net traffic in the other direction.

~~~
thoerin
This would force people to carpool :)

~~~
dr_rezzy
or live in locations with better access to these resources

------
drblast
Cars will be designed so as not to run over children. Children will stand in
front of cars as a prank to cause massive traffic jams and make the evening
news.

People will use cars as advertising. You will receive free cars as "samples"
and this will cause problems because it will happen too often.

Automotive spam and script kiddies would not be pretty. I'm pretty sure a
driver will always have to be behind the wheel.

~~~
matthiasl
If kids causing traffic jams was a real problem, why doesn't it already happen
all the time on pedestrian crossings?

~~~
rafcavallaro
Because human drivers have the ability to exit the vehicle and "dissuade" the
obstructionist child. In fact, the mere threat of exiting the vehicle has been
known to send children running.

------
izend
The largest unintended effect will be the massive loss of employment in the
transportation industry.

------
Tichy
Unintended? For me, those were always the main motivation for driverless cars.

------
lasonrisa
Nah, people will sell their houses and buy a truck with their home which would
follow them around. What we will actually rent is the parking space.

------
johnwall
he forget to mention the ability to drink and drive legally.

------
Papirola
read some sci-fi: last chapter of flashforward (the book)

------
zohebv
Interesting post. However, I think the primary consequence of driverless cars
could be more mundane - everyone will end up using cabs/taxis far more often.
This is the life I lived in Bombay a decade ago. The parking, cost overhead of
a car is so high and rickshaws/cabs are so cheaply and plentifully available,
that walking out of your home and hailing a cab to go wherever you want is the
best option.

Cabs in the West are expensive because drivers need to be paid more and
cartels are at work. If both these costs are eliminated then what works in a
country like India is, suddenly, the best option for commuters in the West.
Realtime pooling of cab passengers is a possibility, a traveler could be
offered a choice of picking a co-traveler for a reduction in fare(or even cash
back!) when already travelling in the car.

Families could still own cars, but they will probably pay for insurance on a
per-mile basis, rather than a per-month basis, so that the incremental cost of
owning a car is minimal. Effectively, you end up owning a cab that only you
use and pay cab fare to the insurance company :-) The ratio of cabs to private
cars would then be an interplay of insurance costs/parking costs and ride
sharing benefits, with cities leaning towards cabs to escape parking costs.
So, things wouldn't be too different :-)

One unfortunate consequence could be the increase in suburban sprawl and
traffic congestion with driverless cars as people start caring lesser about
longer commute times. Automated cars will probably be better behaved in
traffic, but the road capacity will be pushed to its limits.

~~~
learc83
Most traffic is caused by the delay in human reaction times, and driverless
cars can operate safely at much higher speeds and at much higher densities.
Roads could handle _massively_ more traffic if they were only packed with
driverless cars.

~~~
maximusprime
Where the hell do you get that idea?

Most traffic in the US is caused by the lack of roundabouts.

~~~
praptak
Even if this is so, a computer-driven cars can certainly use normal junctions
much more effectively than humans. Robots could do this:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vnba7Y86jC4> [lucky driver goes full speed
through dense traffic] on routine basis.

~~~
maximusprime
Seriously doubt it, and I don't want to live in that world...

In any event, it's as likely as seeing people riding segways all over the
place.

------
georgieporgie
_Why would a family need an entire car to themselves?_

Because sitting on your own child's vomit is less horrifying than sitting on
your neighbor's child's vomit.

I'm similarly excited for the arrival of automated cars (I'll be able to ride
my motorcycle with a higher percentage of predictable drivers around me), but
there's a point where personal property has a unique advantage.

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wavephorm
If you can just network the driverless cars up to the existing public
transportation systems then we'd have a truly useful device.

Just walk outside your house and a car drives on up, opens its doors, and
takes you to the most convenient location to transfer to a public bus, or if
economical to pick up other passengers going near your destination.

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maximusprime
Driverless cars will never go mainstream. It's not something the masses want
or need. Just a project for techies to have fun doing for the sake of doing
it.

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benihana
It seems that to most Americans, the draw of the driverless car won't be "hey,
this is more efficient and is costing me less overall." Rather, I think it
will be, "hey I don't have to pay attention in the car anymore, I'll be on my
phone playing on the internet the entire way home!!!!!!!" Followed shortly
thereafter by, "hey why doesn't this car have the internet in the front seat?"

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napierzaza
So the effect of a driverless car is going to be a driverless taxi. Why
doesn't everyone use a taxi now? I'm sure it would cost less than cars do. But
nobody really does the cost-benefit analysis of these sorts of things.

~~~
UrbanPat
Eh, that's doubtful actually. In most US cities (other than, say NYC, SF, and
a handful of others), taxi service is expensive and slow to arrive. Parking is
free, and cars can be obtained relatively cheaply.

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choxi
post is so good, read it 3 times

