Google’s Self-Driving Cars Are Going to Change Everything

Re:Google’s Self-Driving Cars Are Going to Change Everything by DividesByZero on Wednesday August 15, 2012 @12:32AM (#4384598)

The changes the author proposes will not occur for the vast majority of the population of the earth - not in China, or in India, or anywhere in Africa and not in many places in south east Asia or south/central America. He has the first world, US-centric view of most futurists. In places where people don't have reliable access to electricity, or even safe drinking water, absolutely no one would be interested in self-driving cars.

He also raises a disturbing point, but masks it as an advantage - "People said it would take years to get these things on the road. It took Google a few months of lobbying Nevada for it to happen. The US states and cities are broke, and Google has $43 billion in cash." In other words, he implies that this will happen quickly because corporations are able to strongarm broke government institutions into policies favouring them, a trend that is dangerous for the average citizen.

He also misses that self-driving cars becoming a norm leads to more car-centered infrastructure over public transportation, leading to a continuation of the vicious circle of over-reliance on cars.

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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Cars Are Going to Change Everything by achal on Wednesday August 15, 2012 @02:13AM (#4384834)

> self-driving cars becoming a norm leads to more car-centered infrastructure over public transportation

Out of curiosity, why would this be? I can see that commuters who despise driving may switch to cars from public transport, but at least from personal experience, I don't see this as a major reason for people using public transport in the first place.

Is there another reason I'm missing? I'd imagine it would be more likely that self driving vehicles end up improving public transport (both in quality of service and popular usage).

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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Cars Are Going to Change Everything by DividesByZero on Wednesday August 15, 2012 @02:31AM (#4384874)

I think there would be a feedback loop in place where self-driving cars demand better infrastructure to support them, and as this infrastructure improves, self-driving cars become more convenient to use, leading more people to want to use them, leading to more such infrastructure. Since this infrastructure gets funded, it's not much of a stretch to think that most transport money would go there.

Some of the technology might make public transport more efficient (self driving buses seem like a good idea), but cars would probably dominate.

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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Cars Are Going to Change Everything by philwelch on Wednesday August 15, 2012 @03:27AM (#4385005)

But the developing world is developing fast. Some developing countries never bothered laying down landline telephone networks because it was cheaper and easier to just put up cell towers--in other words, they leapfrog old technologies. Why is it hard to suppose that developing countries might leapfrog regular cars and adopt autocars straightaway?

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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Cars Are Going to Change Everything by DividesByZero on Wednesday August 15, 2012 @04:42AM (#4385144)

Because unlike wireless communication, autocars don't fundamentally change anything about the way cars use roads - they certainly don't make it cheaper or easier to implement the infrastructure.

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Re:Google’s Self-Driving Cars Are Going to Change Everything by philwelch on Wednesday August 15, 2012 @02:58PM (#4387559)

You could certainly build smaller roads and smaller autocars, since you wouldn't have the margin of error involved with human drivers and larger vehicles.

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