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Focusing On Tech Alone, You Miss How Autonomous Driving Will Change Society

Posted by samzenpus on from the whole-new-ballgame dept.

Hallie Siegel writes The way that consumers interact with and operate cars will transform most functions in commuting, travel, communications, car ownership, and many other as-yet unknown ways. Dieter Zetsche, chairman of Daimler and head of Mercedes-Benz Cars, said at this year's CES in Las Vegas: "Anyone who focuses solely on the technology has not yet grasped how autonomous driving will change our society." Robotics watcher Frank Tobe writes about how imagination is overtaking the ethics debate around autonomous cars."

7 of 477 comments (clear)

  1. What an Embarrassingly Vapid Article by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Bottom line: we probably cannot imagine all the implications and collateral effects driverless cars will cause beginning early in 2020 for top-end and early adopters and progressively more widespread year after year until mid 2030 when these cars will be our major form of transportation.

    That's it? That's your substance? Hell, why not try? Here are my own guesses:

    • Insurance companies will struggle to adjust. You know all those annoying GEICO commercials? Prepare to watch a lot less of them and if you're in the auto insurance business, now would be a good time to diversify. And if you're not in that business, prepare to enjoy not having to pay monthly on auto insurance. Huge plus for the economy.
    • Real Estate prices will fluctuate away from metropolises. Oh, 1,000 sq ft in a downtown townhouse is $1.5 million dollars? Or a nice house on 100 acres of land is $125,000 but it's one hour away from downtown? Yeah, I think I'll just take that hour drive twice a day and just watch netflix on my phone or read on my kindle or code on my laptop or even just sleep it.
    • Drunk driving/texting while driving/distracted driving will become ailments of the past. Lose your license? Afraid of going home from happy hour "buzzed"? Just buy an autonomous car. A lot less accidents too -- huge plus for society.
    • Organ sources will dry up. A lot of organs come from car & motorcycle accidents. Morbid but true. Need to up our game on printing organs in order to prepare for this.
    • If idiots connect their cars or the underlying system to the internet, people will end up at hacked destinations.
    • Parking will become a bigger business -- especially garages that work hand in hand with autonomous vehicles.

    These are all, of course, many years off. But it is starting to look more and more inevitable.

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    My work here is dung.
    1. Re: What an Embarrassingly Vapid Article by dargaud · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Particularly since there will be empty cars driving around to reach their next 'driver' instead of being parked. Either by being full on autonomous taxis, or shared between a number of individuals (like one car per family, once the father has reached work he sends the car back home so that the mother can take the kid to kindergarden, etc). Also, instead of paying 40$/hour to park the car download, tell it to drive around slowly until your meeting/dinner is over; that's not going to be a good thing for traffic.

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      Non-Linux Penguins ?
    2. Re: What an Embarrassingly Vapid Article by xaxa · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I wonder about uber driverless. Without a person, what prevents people from trashing the car?

      The same thing that prevents people trashing buses, or train carriages. Most people simply don't.

      More than the train/bus, there's probably a record of exactly who hired the car, and before/during/after CCTV pictures can be recorded.

  2. The real missed question by gatkinso · · Score: 5, Informative

    Why do we *need* to travel at all? Autonomous transportation in many cases is simply very inefficient teleconferencing. At least this is true in business.

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    1. Re:The real missed question by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why do we *need* to travel at all? Autonomous transportation in many cases is simply very inefficient teleconferencing. At least this is true in business.

      Because sometimes there's real value in being there. Sure, most of the information you get from a conference or meeting could be found online, or you could watch a seminar remotely, but you don't necessarily get the same experience and make the same contacts that you would from a face-to-face meeting. Often times, you end up learning things at a conference that you didn't even know you were looking for.

      --
      Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
    2. Re:The real missed question by Discgolferusa · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Mostly because of idiot bosses that think they need to be able to walk up to you and poke you with a stick to make sure you are working.

      A large number of jobs can be done at home over the network. Maybe someday we will start getting Executives and managers at businesses that have IQ's over 80 that will start allowing it or even require it.

      While true a large number of jobs can be done over the network with little to no problem, that isn't the concern. Many people do not possess the self discipline necessary to work in an environment with that many distractions. The temptation to not actually work is too great. So the easiest solution for companies is to force people to come into the office.

  3. Mass unemployment by xtal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The #1 job for men in the United States is.. driving a truck.

    It pays well.

    Those two things make it ripe for disruption as there is a clear economic incentive; autonomous trucks don't need to stop. It's not clear even if you'd ever have to turn them off, save for regular maintenance. That is a huge economic motivator.

    Trucks also follow well defined routes that are easier for the autonomous systems to deal with right now.

    The Teamsters will of course freak out; but change, it is a comin'.

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    ..don't panic