Self driving cars

[thewalrus]

In any case - to the general topic - I was actually just having a beer with a friend of mine last night. He's in the property development field, and the subject turned to self driving cars.

He's seeing a major switch happening in 10 years. Maybe a little longer. Apparently propertly developers are already turning some preliminary thoughts to what community design might look like in a world where most of the vehicles on the road drive themselves (some initial conclusions trend towards car ownership becoming less important, public transit being less required, electric vehicles vehicles becoming more prevalent). He also pointed to Uber as being the first step in the journey - one company that owns thousands of these self driving cars. You order one up. It shows up at your door step minutes later, you program your destination, and you're off. You essentially rent it for a day, a week, a month... for whatever price. And apparently that's already starting to happen in Pittsburgh (of all places) ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomo ... 2d6b7b6472 )

I came away pretty pessimistic about how much longer it'll be feasible to have driven cars on the road. I was thinking 20 years. At least. From what I'm hearing from him - and he pays a lot of attention to this kind of stuff, for work and personal interest reasons - I think it'll be quite a bit quicker than that.

[sombrio]

After talking with my wife and reviewing the statistics, it looks like fatalities, at least, are far more common in rural areas. So, I believe you. Maybe the city traffic keeps people on their toes. I still don't get it but I'm trying to wrap my mind around you being right.

Your last post is especially depressing and the lack of theology and geometry in modern automotive life has caused my valve to slam shut in protest.

[thewalrus]

[sombrio]

Yeah, I think you're right on all those points. I was also wondering if possibly an urban environment skews things toward more, non-fatal crashes. With a ton of cars around you're more likely to hit something, but (a) less likely to be traveling at life-threatening speed in the first place and (b) more likely to have a more "harmless" crash (with other vehicles, scraping along a wall, etc.) than in rural areas where you're more likely to just go skidding out of control into a tree or over a cliff or something. I don't know if that's a real factor but it seems like it'd be logical. Cities have idiots turning into each other at 30 mph. Rural areas have idiots going 70 mph, losing control and hitting something head-on.

In your area of course you've also got a lot more weather, which has to play some role even when adjusting for drivers being used to it...

[the_edge]

Self driving cars may bring a new great depression, I feel.

A couple years ago I read an article regarding the destruction of jobs and the creation of new ones. Kodak had just filed for bankruptcy back then (I believe the did come out of it later though?) and at the same time instagram had done something big (IPO? Something like that). They article detailed how Kodak had 2000 employees when it was about to close, while instragram (some sort of "spiritual successor" that represents technology associated with pictures, as opposed to old school kodak which was about regular pictures) only had 200.

Basically the point of the article was how some naive, or hyper-optimistic or plain dishonest people argue that it's ok for certain technological advancements to wipe out existing jobs, since they're creating new ones, but in reality the newer jobs are less numerous and way more technical.

But back to self driving cars, I read somewhere else that each truck driver job supported around 7 other jobs. It makes sense to me, if you think about it, these guys use gas stations, truck stop restaurants, road side hotels, bars, etc, that nobody else uses, since they're driving across the country. That means people who pump gas, waitresses, cooks, hotel keepers, etc all depend on truck drivers stopping by. To that I'd add the fact that taxi drivers, limo drivers, personal drivers, etc, all make a living out of driving too. What's going to happen when all these millions of truck, cab, limo and black car drivers are out of a job?

That alarming thought may only be scratching the surface. A second degree or revenue loss is the fact thar regular gas stations, smaller mechanic shops (and maybe even places like Pep Boys and Jiffy Lube), car wash places, etc, all may be out of business once nobody truly owns a car and all we have is a fleet of land drones that act like Johnny Cab.

And a 3rd degree of revenue loss is the fact that DMV's would close (jobs! fees!). Traffic ticket revenue would disappear. Car personal property tax? Gone! Vehicle decal fee? Gone!

Sure, a couple jobs will be created, the kind of job some kid offshore will be doing while he programs an iPhone game on the side. That will not offset all of the above.... yeah I'm worried.

[thewalrus]

[the_edge]