Autonomous Vehicles Won't Give Us Any More Free Time, Says Study (dailymail.co.uk)

An anonymous reader writes: People hoping that the driverless cars of the future will give them more free time while travelling may be in for a disappointment. Increased productivity is one of the expected benefits of self-driving cars, but a new study claims that they will have little impact. The study showed that nearly 36 percent of Americans say they would be so apprehensive using a driverless vehicle that they would only watch the road. Meanwhile, UK drivers were even more cautious at 44 per cent. "Currently, in the US, the average occupant of a light-duty vehicle spends about an hour a day traveling -- time that could potentially be put to more productive use," said Michael Sivak, research professor at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute. "Indeed, increased productivity is one of the expected benefits of self-driving vehicles."

Comments

I expect to be *entertained* not productive

[unfortunateson]

Working while traveling isn't high on my list of priorities. Watching an episode on Netflix, playing a VR racing game (admittedly slower on the highway than on the track), whatever.

And the comfort level will get there. The first generation will only be a little bit better than human reactions. The next version (hopefully a free software upgrade - funded by an auto-manufacturer/insurance alliance) twice as safe, the next version four times as safe, etc.

If it can't just be software upgrades, it's going to be a long, slow adoption: cars get replaced every 2-10 years - but then they get resold, so the average age of cars on the road is over 11 years.
(REF: http://www.usatoday.com/story/...)

Eventually, insurance lobbies will get the government to require autonomous driving: first on certain highways and city centers, then eventually everywhere. Just like seat belts, air bags, rear-view cameras.

Re:Motion Sickness

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

Motion sickness can be caused by the dissonance between the what you see (fast movement) and what you feel (no rushing wind, your legs aren't doing any work, etc).

Autonomous vehicles could eventually allow us to darken the windows, which could prevent motion sickness.