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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday December 16 2015, @01:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the who's-gonna-drive-miss-daisy? dept.

The race to bring driverless cars to the masses is only just beginning, but already it is a fight for the ages. The competition is fierce, secretive, and elite. It pits Apple against Google against Tesla against Uber: all titans of Silicon Valley, in many ways as enigmatic as they are revered.

As these technology giants zero in on the car industry, global automakers are being forced to dramatically rethink what it means to build a vehicle for the first time in a century. Aspects of this race evoke several pivotal moments in technological history: the construction of railroads, the dawn of electric light, the birth of the automobile, the beginning of aviation. There's no precedent for what engineers are trying to build now, and no single blueprint for how to build it.

Self-driving cars promise to create a new kind of leisure, offering passengers additional time for reading books, writing email, knitting, practicing an instrument, cracking open a beer, taking a catnap, and any number of other diversions. Peope who are unable to drive themselves could experience a new kind of independence. And self-driving cars could re-contextualize land-use on massive scales. In this imagined mobility utopia, drone trucks would haul packages across the country and no human would have to circle a city block in search of a parking spot.

If self-driving vehicles deliver on their promises, they will save millions of lives over the course of a few decades, destroy and create entire industries, and fundamentally change the human relationship with space and time. All of which is why some of the planet's most valuable companies are pouring billions of dollars into the effort to build driverless cars.

After automation puts everyone out of work, will anyone need to drive anywhere anymore?


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Vanderhoth on Wednesday December 16 2015, @06:44PM

    by Vanderhoth (61) on Wednesday December 16 2015, @06:44PM (#277242)

    Practical to walk is a bit subjective here. Walking several blocks is nothing for me, but him just making to the driveway was a challenge. It happens when you get old and have all kinds of medical issues. There are also other factors like climate to consider. I'm Canadian and we do get quite a bit of snow which makes cycling in the winter difficult. There's also terrain. My city was built on what's basically a series of giant hills with a harbor smack in the middle, so the terrain makes cycling difficult as well.

    We, the family, had actually bought him a scooter the year he passed away. He lived in a pretty small town quite a ways from the city, so there's no taxis or public transport, but as long as the roads were plowed he could have driven his scooter around. Still would have been a pretty long trip to the coffee club for him though, 20-30 minute walk from his house and I don't think the scooter would have been much faster.

    A lot of your suggestions MIGHT work in a larger city, but not for smaller rural areas that are a lot more spread out. Also there are still A LOT of issues with public transport like not going all the way to a destination or being overly expensive. My city blows at transport planning. They tax everyone with in a half a kilometer of a bus stop so what they did was stick a bunch of stops on the outskirts of the city to tax people, but there's only two buses a day there that don't even come at convenient times to be using the buses and no service on weekends. If you live in the city you'd have to walk a couple blocks to get to a stop then there's like ten buses that all go down the same street stopping every half block. They have it planned out so the bus is just SLIGHTLY faster than walking. I can walk from my office to my house in 2 hours, it's a 15 minute drive using the highway, it's 1.5 hours using the bus (IF I make all the connections). If I miss the bus and don't have a car I might as well just walk it because the next bus is 45 minutes to an hour.

    What we really need is an artery system where you could take a car to a main stop, then a bus close to where you need to go, with fewer in between stops, then a car from there to your end point. Driverless cars could make that a reality. You'd just call, they'd come right to your house picking up others along the way, take you all to the nearest stop. Then you'd get off and get a car to your destination. People might not even own individual cars it'll be a community asset for smaller towns or part of the public transport system for larger cities.

    --
    "Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
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