Originally Posted by
Ekdog
Why are you scared?
The last few paragraphs of the article couldn't be more upbeat:
A view of the future
Morgan Stanley estimates that a 90% reduction in crashes would save nearly 30,000 lives and prevent 2.12 million injuries annually. Driverless cars do not need to park—vehicles cruising the street looking for parking spots account for an astounding 30% of city traffic, not to mention that eliminating curbside parking adds two extra lanes of capacity to many city streets. Traffic will become nonexistent, saving each US commuter 38 hours every year—nearly a full work week. As parking lots and garages, car dealerships, and bus stations become obsolete, tens of millions of square feet of available prime real estate will spur explosive metropolitan development.
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The environmental impact of autonomous cars has the potential to reverse the trend of global warming and drastically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. As most autonomous cars are likely to be electric, we would eliminate most of the 134 billion gallons of gasoline used each year in the US alone. And while recycling 242 million vehicles will certainly require substantial resources, the surplus of raw materials will decrease the need for mining.
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But perhaps most exciting for me are the coming inventions, discoveries, and creation of entire new industries that we cannot yet imagine.
It is exciting to be alive, isn’t it?
Sorry, I don't believe all the
PR stuff about the rosy future of this technology, most of which I think could be traced back to corporations like Tesla and Uber. People who know me, on this forum or in real life, know me as a basically optimistic person who is fascinated by new ideas and new things. But I'm not rushing willy-nilly into this one. My primary concern is for the environment, and I have never known of a corporation to give a crap about the environment. Corporations are only businesses, so all they really care about is business--not what is good for the earth or for mankind. History tells us that all major innovation brings both good and bad effects. Rushing into the future half-cocked is not the best way to go, IMO. This driverless stuff is a corporate scheme to sell more cars...not fewer cars, as they claim. They're not going to make any money by selling fewer cars!
From a more selfish perspective, the driverless thing scares me because I live in Michigan. Our economy and jobs are very dependent on cars even after 15 years of shrinkage in that sector. It scares me to see the auto industry threatened, even at the same time that I want to see it die eventually. So now you know my dirty little secret as a carfree/carlight person!
Basically, I see driverless cars as a way to perpetuat eand extend car culture--even while transferring the profit center from the "rust belt" to other locations. BTW, those "other locations" will probably not be within 1000 miles of the good ol' USA. Why do you think the trade treaty is all of a sudden so damn important?