My parents grew up in Bangladesh, my mom in a fairly large city and my dad in a village. When they moved to the suburbs of D.C., the biggest culture shock they encountered was the intense isolation of American suburban life. Even in rural Bangladesh, you'll encounter dozens of people in a typical day. But in the U.S., you have to go out of your way (i.e. drive) to see other people. You can go days without seeing anyone outside your immediate family unit.
Self-driving cars address certain problems with a car-based society, like congestion and safety, but they perpetuate the model of driving around in little steel bubbles where we don't interact with or even see other people. That's the biggest difference between a car-based lifestyle and a transit-based lifestyle.
And I totally agree - I think western suburban individualism/isolationism is a terrible idea, and horribly corrosive to peoples long term happiness and health.
You're certainly free to choose a high-density lifestyle for yourself if you prefer it.
Very little of our evolutionary history occured in high-density urban environments, so it seems extremely far-fetched (bordering on ridiculous) that it would somehow be "healthier" from a psychological perspective.
Oh wait.
That doesn't sound right at all does it?
No, it doesn't, but you're shifting the burden of proof. Antibiotics have been demonstrated to improve health. Someone who claims that some new stuff called an "antibiotic" improves health is expected to prove it, just as the burden of proof falls on the OP here to show that the "new stuff" of living in a city is actually healthier.
Urban life brings stress, high crime, bad education, pollution, traffic accidents, and many other factors that demonstrably either reduce the quality of life or endanger it outright. It's fun to live in the city if you're a young single, but not particularly "healthy". It's not at all good for children.
If you have some evidence that urban life is actually "healthy" in a psychological sense, let's see it. Do you have any?
Those people came there for jobs (i.e., survival). Now we don't have to do that, and the population is flowing the other way.
This is the main reason I am interested. I love taking the train to work because I can pull out a book, or my iPad. The experience is 100 times better than the stress of traffic.
The tube system in London, for example, is so quick and convenient I can't see the point of having a car there.
* alleviates parking issues because the car can be told to go park somewhere 1) less congested and 2) less expensive.
One of the problems in cities is the complete lack of temporary parking being consumed by all-day workers, especially those with handicap placards who are not handicapped. 95% of the time I see someone getting out of a car and hanging up the placard they are not disabled (ie, not in a wheelchair or seem to have any handicap at all).
The lack of parking around businesses is a huge problem. Around my office, where there are lots of restaurants and other businesses, most of the parking is taken all day by handicap placard using commuters. This means there are fewer parking spaces for people to park and shop. That decreases sales in the shops in this area. Bad for everyone.
Basically, I won't even shop in areas of restricted parking availability. It's not worth the 30+ minutes of hunting for parking.
Plus they could be connected to each other to effectively tailgate each other. The first car can tell the following cars to break at the same time.
Cars in congested areas can notify others coming up to lower their speed to ease congestion.
Where's the evidence for this?
perhaps if everyone on the road was in a driverless car, and they all communicated and prevented crashes. But that's not going to happen.
I hear this sentiment a lot. Having a higher percentage of cars following safe practices is safer even if those are cars aren't perfect and even if 100% of the cars aren't automated.
Can you tell me the logic (I've seen it many times in posts) that there won't be any safety benefits until all cars are automated (or until there aren't any manual drivers?).
I disagree that the benefit will be that discrete.
Why are Google and other companies trying to develop this technology if all it takes is a single fatal crash, and therefore a single lawsuit? It should be in their rational self-interest to avoid any contact with this technology. It would be lighting on money on fire.
This is not the strongest example, but automobile companies have ignored fatality inducing problems, yet the practice didn't end their business. There is likely enough profit in the pursuit to deal with such issues. These lawsuits are slow-moving enough that there would be room to maneuver.
The greatest threat, in my opinion, is over-reacting politicians passing laws due to a shock in public opinion on the safety of the cars. The shock could be legitimate, due to reckless implementation, or just due to an unpreventable accident.
There's also the vaccine industry. Some vaccinations result in severe adverse reactions in a handful of people. But the public health benefit is so vast that the government has stepped in to shield vaccine makers from the lawsuits.
The vaccine point suggests to me that it's not so black and white about if self-driving cars are doomed. If the public safety benefit of self-driving cars becomes so great, then maybe the government will be pressured to ensure they're here to stay. I think there will definitely need to be changes in the law to accommodate this tech, but it's not impossible.
In any case, I expect the incipient googlecars will have capacitive sensors on the steering wheel, requiring that your fingerprints are on the controls.
(that said, I don't think it makes the car itself physically safer, that is up to the manufacturer)
I'll take my chances thanks. Road deaths have been falling for years, despite the number of cars rising. More people die from accidental falls.
As a software developer, there's no way in hell I'd trust a car driven by software.
You're already trusting a car driven by software that could conceivably "be hacked" to hurt you. Algorithms already control things like antilock brakes, shifting, adjusting the suspension and deciding when to deploy the airbags. And assuming you have a cellphone, the NSA is already tracking your every move.
> More people die from accidental falls.
Source? The CDC appears to disagree with you. (my source: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/accidental-injury.htm )
Yes, the first driverless cars will have all sorts of blind spots, but they will gradually get better whereas human drivers won't. Software-based drivers can learn from accidents and near-accidents that almost any other software-based driver anywhere has had, whereas human drivers are largely limited to learning from their own vastly smaller range of experience. As a software developer you should be able to predict the eventual outcome: programs will eventually in most circumstances beat even the best human drivers just as they now beat even the best human chess players.
Yes, bugs are a real possibility, but compare the number of miles Google has driven and the number of accidents they've had with the general public, and it compares unbelievably well, especially for such a new technology.
Finally, the NSA doesn't need your car to track you. Between your phone, your license plate and your face, you would have a hard time going off grid.
However, regardless of how bad somebody is riding, when something goes wrong, the rider always loses. Also, something that may seem "dangerous and aggressive" to you may be the best way for a rider to get out of a dangerous situation. I use the acceleration and maneuverability of my bike to escape e.g. being boxed in by large trucks on the freeway. I'm just taking advantage of the escape hatch before something goes catastrophically wrong.
Is that confirmation bias as well?
Software glitches can be tested and fixed. Human errors cannot.
Also, as a cheeky sidenote, do you also refuse to use driverless trains, driverless elevators, driverless escalators and driverless theme park rides? :)
And even that is stretching the facts.
* Driverless cars means safer cars.
* Driverless cars means independence for people who otherwise are restricted (elderly, kids, blind, etc).
* Driverless cars are more fuel efficient. Sure, they aren't as efficient as not driving, but, just like driving with cruise control is better than not, complete automation will be better.
* Driverless cars will enable more productive use of the commute time.
There are probably many more benefits as well.
The one thing the author probably gets correct is that this will increase traffic load on the roads, and it is questionable whether it will increase efficiency of roadway usage more than it increases traffic load, but I'm guessing it won't. I can imagine a case where I have a single car, driving me to work, then going back to take my wife, then back to the house to pick up kids, then back to pick up my wife, and so on. In other words, a lot of empty drive time. This would be mitigated by a taxi-like "call the nearest car".