Originally Posted By ecdc <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2013/01/22/fasten-your-seatbelts-googles-driverless-car-is-worth-trillions/" target="_blank">http://www.forbes.com/sites/ch...illions/</a> This is huge, with incredible potential. It seems like exactly the kind of thing government could help subsidize, given the vast benefits it could reap.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer I think it's great. Not only would it make the roads safer, it would greatly help traffic flow and increase traffic capacity on the roadways.
Originally Posted By DDMAN26 Just think of the number of people who could get ripped and hop in their driverless car.
Originally Posted By ecdc Yup, it really is fascinating. No more DUIs. No more traffic tickets. No more need for car insurance. Cars become less expensive as the materials needed to build them go down. No accidents means no airbags, no need for reinforced steel. And why have an expensive car stereo when you'll just be listening to high quality lossless audio on your iPhone or other player? Mind, I recognize most of the real benefits and real leaps in change probably won't take place while I'm still around. But then...twenty years ago I suppose I never imagined how upended newspapers and books would be, too. It's hard to wrap my head around the real long term changes. As the article points out, a car is usually someone's second most expensive purchase, after their home, yet it sits unused 95% of the time in a garage or parking lot. Imagine some kind of car sharing program, with 80-90% fewer cars always moving, taking people to and from where they want to go. Perhaps that's harder to envision because Americans in particular are so attached to their vehicles, and often so unwilling to walk even the shortest distances to destinations. But it's quite a mind trip.
Originally Posted By DDMAN26 And just think you type in a destination and it takes you to a strip club in error.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan I think the biggest change in this is in getting people to turn over the control of the vehicle. Definitely this would require a new way of viewing transportation -- people have emotional attachments to their cars and the freedom it provides to just drive off anywhere (even if the road to everywhere is clogged with bumper-to-bumper traffic.) But anyone who has seen bad drivers in action -- lane changes without signaling, driving too fast/too slow, distracted drivers.... it's kind of amazing that there aren't even more traffic deaths.
Originally Posted By hopemax It would probably be weird the first time you rode in one. I think it's great! We've only ever been a one car household. Usually, I have it since my DH commutes by bus. But on Fridays, like today, he drives to the park&ride where he can get an express bus, instead of using the neighborhood bus and having to transfer. But I'd really like to run out to get some lunch, instead of eating what I have here. But I can't. This type of car could return home for me to get lunch, and go back to the park & ride when it's time to pick up DH. Plus, I love to explore and drive places, but DH isn't really a fan of all the driving. I could really expand my circle of how far we can go for a day trip. And it would make the traditional road trip more of an option. I'm used to "driving straight through the night" and rotating drivers, but DH, again is not. Although, I wonder how it would work with pit stops. I'd guess you'd have to program them in, but a lot of times we don't know until we're driving by. But I guess with GPS you could look up rest areas, and your favorite fast food place. Now, here's the Disney connection. Wouldn't WDW be a perfect testing ground for these things. Have a fleet service the resorts instead of buses and no needing to expand monorail lines. Door-to-door personal service, and a technological show piece.
Originally Posted By mawnck Not sure why this is better than a well-designed public transportation system. It seems like a very inefficient, expensive way to get the exact same result. Plus, you KNOW that anyone who can afford to will use their driverless car as a messenger drone - so it will also be a passengerless car. The gridlock and wasted fuel will be spectacular.
Originally Posted By hopemax > Not sure why this is better than a well-designed public transportation system. It seems like a very inefficient, expensive way to get the exact same result. > There are many small communities where it would make no sense to even have bus routes, that would benefit from having something like this, wouldn't you think. Maybe it's not the greatest solution for the big cities that do have buses, trains, subways. But even in big cities, sometimes it's hard to get people from their house/neighborhood to the transportation centers.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <Imagine some kind of car sharing program, with 80-90% fewer cars always moving> This is the one thing from the article I have a hard time wrapping my head around. How does that get us 80-90% fewer cars? If x-number of people need to get from the suburbs to the city by 9:00, and traditional public transportation hasn't expanded, then I don't get it, unless the cars hold 8-9 people.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer >>Not sure why this is better than a well-designed public transportation system. It seems like a very inefficient, expensive way to get the exact same result.<< It isn't the same result. Mass transit shunts everybody into a limited number of pipelines and takes them to pre-determined locations. Cars, driverless or not, go from point to point, not from station to station. There is infinite flexibility in this system. It goes on the owner's schedule, not the transit schedule. There's no lost time waiting at stops or stations. A person could travel from their door step to a doctor's appointment, a pharmacy, the grocery store, and to a restaurant to meet a friend for lunch without the inefficiency of waiting at several bus stops. Mass transit is efficient in moving people between set locations, but it is extremely inefficient for combining errands. It is also extremely expensive, requiring a large subsidy to operate in most cases. (Here in Seattle, for example, bus fares only cover about 15% of the total cost of operations. The rest is paid for with tax subsidies.) There is still a place for transit systems, moving people from park and rides to employment centers, but for the day to day errands that most people do you can't beat an individual car in most places except the densest urban environments.
