Is anyone pondering the economic impact of driverless vehicles?

Have you had problems with auto share vehicles?

I can tell you that in the 18 or so years the programs have been running locally, I've rarely (if ever) heard anyone say that the autoshare or zipcar vehicles were dirty on pick-up.

I haven't participated in any. I just know that the rental cars I have used have often had problems. The last one I used had a wobbly wheel that was not evident until you hit about sixty. Didn't discover it until we were well on the way to Vegas. When I returned it, the person who received it brushed me off when I tried to inform her about it.

This raises an interesting point too - rental car companies.

If the idea of mobile driverless car fleets is to take off it kills them. But so much of the pain of rental cars is:
-booking
-travelling to pickup point
-insurance
-cost

The first two are easily overcome by our imaginary networked driverless fleet.

The last two though....

One service kills two industries (taxi and car rental) and disrupts an entire sector devoted to private vehicle ownership (from insurance to car wash stations, automechanics to homeless guys with squeegees, home car tuners to car accessory retail outlets, parking stations to parking cops)

I have decided that this is not going to happen. These would need to be under central data control, and we cant trust that the evil doers will not hack into the system and cause mass mayhem. We are going to reconsider having any important device connected to what is now known as the internet. The only way to make the internet safe comes after we establish a global government, which will be awhile.

Actually the whole point is that it isn't centrally controlled - like with the internet protocol 'packets' route themselves.

Like now cars will act independently - it's just that their decision making, unlike ours, will have a wealth of real time information and virtually no reaction time.

Ever wonder why there are no collisions in a flock of birds? The rules at individual level are pretty simple but at macro level it looks incredibly complex.

Specialist AI is terribly close to being mainstream and cheap.

Wont these driverless car fleets be rented out by rental car companies ? Book the car and it arrives on time by itself .

And didnt GM just last week claim that it always owns the engine computer coding that it licenses its use only? In in the last few years have we not seen banks fit cars that they lend for fitted with devices that track and can disable the car....that buyers " consented" for as condition of getting the loan. Car are becoming computer platforms, and we dont always own/control them.

The black boxes on most of the cars being built now is a slightly different situation, The state needs a court order to look to see what the car has been up to under our controls, and I believe that the automakers have agreed to not look without either owner consent or a court order.

It just occurred to me, what if a "air bag" situation develops ? That could be huge...but such could develop no matter what we are transported in .

this would be the same internet where the criminals and state war agencies have been steadily gaining on the forces of law and order? This is the same internet that increasing numbers of people dont think can be made safe enough to be allowed to live without giving every user an ID that can be instantly tracked through the computers, to include back to the current location of the user?

Has anyone else noticed how few blacksmiths there are these days? Or milkmen? Or telegraph operators? Or typists?

This economic impact of driverless vehicles is nothing new.

A lot of the measures that seem draconian are nothing new . Most people STILL live in a small village, and everyone knows what everyone else is doing, especially if the village is religious . Through all of history, people knew what everyone else was doing . Modern criminals love the new anonymity .

Yep. The same internet that gives me the joy of your mindless hyperbole, lets me teach myself angular.js, collaborate with a company based in Seattle, download the complete works of shakespeare, see Richard Dawkins present in universities in countries I'll never visit, see cartoons from my childhood, provide library services to remote communities that surpass what was available on an ivy league campus ten years ago.

To paraphrase douglas adams: forget climbing out of the trees - leaving the ocean was a mistake.

Or coopers. I'm guessing you didn't tead my opening post fully. I gave several similar changes and noted I thought the scale of this potentially surpasses it.

I am questioning your thesis, Hingehead. I don't think that the change that will be brought about by driverless cars will be that remarkable compared to other technological advances in history

Do you really think that driverless cars will be more important than these things?

- Transcontinental rail... which revolutionized trade, and made travel practical (by cutting a 50 day trip into a 3 day trip.

- Communication technology, from telegraphs to telephones to the internet.

- Antibiotics and modern medicine.

- Water treatment (which many of us believe is the most important technological improvement of all time).

- Plastics (which are now ubiquitous and replaced many many earlier trades).

The list goes on. Every technological advancement changes society and comes with economic winners and losers. Driverless cars are just another example of this.

Every one of the things you list created new industries and massively expanded the global economy without displacing a large number of jobs.

This on the other hand, upends a very large existing industry that employs huge numbers of people in every nation and employs loads of low skilled workers.

I remember reading (Lewis Mumford I think) that the key sectors for futurists to consider are transport, energy, communication and food production.

This isn't so much a thesis as amateur futurism and I'm interested in what others can imagine happening in this scenario. Call it crowd sourced speculative fiction if that makes you sleep better.

I also consider it a subset/harbinger of kurzweill's singularity due in 2027, so fascinating and fun to think about.

One comment is that during the change over drivers are going to hate driverless cars.

A large number of highways posted speed limits are too low and as a result there have come to be a defacto speed limit that can be ten MPH or so higher then the posted limit.

We are going to have rolling road blocks of driveless cars as a result with one hell of a lot of piss off drivers.

1. Driverless cars do create new industries and expand the global economy... the same way that trains did. With driverless cars we can transport things much more cheaply, and our urban areas will be more viable and our transportation infrastructure will be far more efficient. As with any new technology new industries will emerge to take advantage of it in ways we haven't thought of yet.

2. Many previous technological advancements displaced a large number of jobs. The horse economy is pretty much gone as is the trapping economy (which was key to the development of the US). The advent of plastics displaced hundreds of thousands of craftspeople. The steam engine ended a great number of jobs.

Speculation is all fine and good, but it should be met with skepticism and reality. If you don't open your musings to critical thought, than what's the point?

I hope you don't mind.

I dont mind at all, but you aren't being a sceptic. You're not arguing there won't be change you're just arguing there's been change before.
Thats a pretty unchallenging fact. I think that this will be seismic. You don't. Settled. Move on.

Your point 1 is what I'm interested in. Tell me what new industries. I'm not satisfied with 'We havent thought of yet'.

There's been a couple of ideas floated around already, why not apply your scepticism to them or extrapolate your own?

This isn't rocket surgery.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/amazon-tests-delivery-drones-at-a-secret-site-in-canada-here-s-why-1.3015425



http://time.com/3816902/amazon-faa-drone-testing/

the future. it is here.

(literally here - there is a drone-testing guy on the route I often walk the girldog - I've seen it twice now and chatted with him about it)