I Can’t Wait for Self-Driving Cars
Self-driving or autonomous cars are my favorite, futuristic fantasy. I can see how replacing our need to drive with technology will have far reaching implications on all areas of our lives.
Adoption of self-driving cars will depend a great deal on convenience, trust and more than anything — cost. I think the beauty of self-driving cars is the cost for transportation could be considerably reduced. Now, our means of transportation is inefficient in that 90% of vehicles ride around with at least 3 empty seats all the time, and cars remain parked for 90% of their functional lives.
Right now my car is parked and I have driven it 3 times in 2 months. I could have used another means to get where I was going, since I live in Atlanta. There are trains, buses, Zipcars, ride sharing by city or through apps like Uber and Lyft. There is so many options that driving seems like I wasted my time and energy when I drove to those places. I racked up parking expenses and struggled to find my car when I was ready to leave. Self-driving cars solve for all of this.
I am setting my car up on Turo, where others can rent my car for a day, or for several days for a very affordable rate. If my car is unavailable, I could use one of the other options that I mentioned and my car would be making me more money than it would cost me to use another form of transportation. I imagine a world where I schedule my car for specific trips, and all the time it is not taking me on those trips it is used by others and earning me money instead of sitting parked. The sharing economy has enabled us to gain a new source of funds and efficiency from our possessions like going back to hunter-gatherer times. What is yours could be mine, for a fee.
If I am sharing a car with you, I don’t need to own a car and neither do you. I imagine a future where a city owns all the cars, and we all hail cars and share rides with maximum efficiency. Most of the trips I take are routine -to and from work. To and from my favorite shopping district. Perhaps in the future I will schedule these in advance and ride with others heading to the same place. The reliability and speed of a train in Atlanta is questionable, but a car would be convenient. The fees from all of this ride sharing would pay for the upkeep of the roads and infrastructure of the city. Right now, the city budgets barely keep up or lag behind infrastructure costs. This is apparent in Atlanta, which has the worst potholes and patch jobs that I have ever seen.
Much of the work we do to roads might become obsolete with self-driving cars. I can envision a world where the car’s sensors evolve beyond needing lanes, lights, or speed limit signs. Sure, the cars are scanning those things now, but we have seen many errors and issues with this approach. Perhaps the cars should move more fluidly. I once saw a video that I have yet to find again. It was a simulation of a self-driving car merging on the highway. None of the cars on the highway slowed down. The car merging onto the highway was timed perfect to slide in between the cars in motion that were already on the highway. It was beautiful. I also saw a video of cars that did not stop at street lights. They communicated so well that all the cars could move in all directions at once without crashing. Think how much faster city communing would be if we didn’t have to pause at street lights.
Changes like this will demand a massive change in human behavior. The way we cross streets in a world like this would have to change. I think transportation will become so efficient, that we will need far less vehicles on the road overall. We can give cities back to people, and have many more areas where we can walk freely without worrying about getting hit by a car. I think much of the road infrastructure will become obsolete, like: signs, curbs, pained lines, jagged lines to wake people who fall asleep at the wheel. Most of the parking becomes obsolete if cars do not stay parked much anymore. Can we give back some land to the wild?
I live right beside a train and a fire station. I have learned from years of living this way to tune out the noice of the constant sirens, dinging or chugging of the train. In an autonomous world, I can imagine that we would no longer need to signal with sound because these vehicles could communicate autonomously. A car would never drive where a train is. A car would avoid the route of a fire truck or ambulance. First responders would never be delayed by someone slow to get out of the way. Perhaps these precious seconds will save lives.
Most people that I discuss self-driving technology with are full of fear about the concept. No way could we let robots drive us — that would be crazy! I think it it crazy that we let people drive. People get distracted. People drive tired and drunk. People take chances that robots would not. We have the method to communicate, the blinker, yet it is used inconsistently. There are daily accidents in the same intersections, with the same mistakes made over and over. Computers are consistent and smarter. If we streamline our transportation system, we will have some accidents and deaths. Yet after the bugs are worked out, I think it will be far safer. Right now, I can be the best driver in the world, and yet still killed by a reckless, drunk driver.
For self-driving cars to realize this level of safety, I think we would all have to stop driving. I also think all of our current cars would become obsolete. The technology to communicate will all other vehicles would have to be in every vehicle. This transition to not driving would be easy for me, but many will resist. There is a growing and thriving car culture. Right out of my window I see an old red convertible corvette. There is a guy who drives for pleasure. I recall my cousin who saved for nearly 15 years to get the car of his dreams. He would be outraged to find he could no longer drive his prized car in the city. This resistance to a ban in driving is the biggest barrier to an autonomous world that I can see.
All of this is speculation, since the technology is still very early in development. I watch eagerly for every industry report, every breakthrough in technology and each dispute in legislation. I am hungry for the day when a car can pick me up with food already prepared, take me to a salon for my appointment. Give a few other people rides, and then take me for a night out on the town. I can walk from bar to bar with friends, the arrive safely in bed where my car drove me home even though I was too drunk to remember where my home was. I can’t wait for all the time I can spend reading, watching TV, engaging in debates with my boyfriend, or doing anything else besides driving in a car. It is time I will get back. I am so optimistic about this future, that sometimes it feels less than five years away. I can’t wait for self-driving cars.
