The Year of the Riderless Car
Why do you drive alone?
Three months ago at CES 2014 the world’s press declared 2014 the Year of the Driverless Car.
How many driverless cars have you seen on the roads so far?
While the leading tech and automative media outlets described the advent of autonomous vehicles as a defining moment of the decade, it’s time to reflect on what is really defining society.
So far this year, there have been less than 100 driverless cars on the road. Compare that to the 192,710,065 riderless cars traveling in the US alone.
We choose to plan our cities around the riderless car, spending $80 billion per year on new highway and street construction.
And then we each spend an average of one week per year just sitting alone in traffic on those roads.
We pay attention to gas prices, but do we know that AAA says our riderless cars really cost us more than $9000 each per year?
We love to drive riderless cars so much that it’s never even news when the American Lung Association reports each year that almost half of us breathe air dirty enough to cause health problems.
We know that climate change is almost irreversible, but we ignore the fact that the riderless car is one of the leading causes of climate change, with each one contributing about 5.1 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.
We’re starting to learn that face-to-face social interactions (social-tie density) amongst citizens leads to greater GDP in cities, but 77% of us prefer to commute in riderless cars for 32 miles and 51 minutes every day.
So which is really having a greater impact on society in 2014, the driverless car or the riderless car?
Here at Carma we believe that the popularity of the riderless car is one of the greatest problems facing the world today.
And one of the most ignored.
And every day we see how carpooling is the best solution.
We see it in our Bergen, Norway, community where 1,500 Carmapoolers to the Airport Business Park have shared more than 18,000 real-time trips and about 135,000 miles. That’s equivalent to about 5.5 trips around the world.
“People used to think of the freedom of owning a car. Now young people think of the freedom of not owning a car.” — Sean O’Sullivan
We see it in Austin, TX, where Carmapoolers are getting to know their neighbours better and avail of reduced toll rates thanks to the world’s first toll discount program for verified carpools.
We see it in Contra Costa County, CA, where Carmapoolers get to spend an hour extra every day with their families by availing of access to the HOV lanes.
We see it in the new connections people make when they Carmapool with different people every day — new friendships with colleagues and neighbours, introductions to new communities and new opportunities.
And we see it in our daily Carmapool statistics which remind us of the impact we can make by reducing the number of riderless cars on our roads.
It’s only April now, but I think we can safely declare that 2014 will be another Year of the Riderless Car.
Yet, little by little, in some communities around the world, the most important, impactful and democratizing movement in the world of transportation is already gaining momentum.
Want to help be part of the solution?
- Press the Recommend button below
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- Download Carma for iPhone or Android
- Carmapool to work one day
- Follow @TeamCarma on Twitter
- Visit CarmaCarpool.com
