Meetup : Berkeley: How Robot Cars Are Near

Nisan

Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley: How Robot Cars Are Near

WHEN: 19 December 2012 07:30:00PM (-0500)

WHERE: Berkeley, CA

Location and time for this Wednesday's meetup are confirmed! It will be at 7:30pm (not 7pm) at Zendo. I will not be there, but Michael Keenan will be giving a talk about robot cars.

Michael Keenan is an entrepreneur, activist and futurist who works with The Seasteading Institute and the Center For Applied Rationality. His talk, How Robot Cars Are Near, describes how robot cars will save millions of lives, billions of hours and trillions of dollars.

Michael will also be speaking at the Extreme Futurist Fest on December 22.

For directions to Zendo, see the mailing list:

http://groups.google.com/group/bayarealesswrong

or call me at:

http://i.imgur.com/Vcafy.png

Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley: How Robot Cars Are Near

WHEN: 19 December 2012 07:30:00PM (-0500)

WHERE: Berkeley, CA

Location and time for this Wednesday's meetup are confirmed! It will be at 7:30pm (not 7pm) at Zendo. I will not be there, but Michael Keenan will be giving a talk about robot cars.

Michael will also be speaking at the Extreme Futurist Fest on December 22.

For directions to Zendo, see the mailing list:

http://groups.google.com/group/bayarealesswrong

or call me at:

http://i.imgur.com/Vcafy.png

Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley: How Robot Cars Are Near

Robot Cars Are Near

For those of us not in the area and unable to attend, this is an interesting topic to speculate on. Here is my take on how it might unfold:

Robot cars are permitted for test and demo purposes on public roads (already happening).
Autopilot becomes a high-end feature on some stock vehicles, marketed as a "designated driver".
Some models are shipped with no manual human interface beyond giving directions to the autopilot, for limited use by people who are incapable of driving, marketed as "accessibility".
These "accessible" cars displace human cab drivers, effectively eliminating the whole industry. Car-pooling services like ZipCar switch to the robot cars exclusively, to save members money on insurance and liability.
The price of a cab ride drops to a fraction of the original cost, pulling in more customers.
Owning a car slowly becomes a status issue, like keeping horses, rather than a necessity.
Select jurisdictions start prohibiting human drivers within city limits, in order to reduce accident rate.
City lots and parkades become redundant, as cars need not wait all day for the owners and can be summoned as cabs are now.
As human-caused accidents become increasingly rare, the safety features like airbags, crumple zones and seat belts fade away.
Limited range of electric propulsion becomes less of a problem (you can always summon another car if yours is out of juice), so gasoline engines become a rarity, and eventually outlawed by municipal clean air bylaws.
Public transit will not have any human drivers, either. This is already the case for light train in many areas. Eventually the distinction between private cars, cabs and public transit disappears, with various options in size, occupancy and speed available at the right price.
Traffic lights, except maybe for pedestrian-controlled ones, disappear, as robot cars negotiate between themselves the right of way.
Most pedestrian crossings are replaced with tunnels or overpasses, to avoid unnecessarily impeding traffic.
Speed limits? Gone.
Driving becomes something to be learned in history books.

What have I missed? Will those born in the next 10 years be the last generation to learn driving?

9 seems implausible due to bureaucratic inertia.

2drethelin14y

If you add the caveat that this probably does not apply to rural areas I think your claims are reasonably likely.

2knb14y

There is no reason to expect this to be true. Outside of densely populated urban centers, it is likely that most people would still have good reason to prefer ownership. Providers in less dense areas could not deliver cars as quickly to riders as they could in densely populated areas. The main benefit to consumers of cabs in big cities is that you don't have to worry about parking, which is expensive, rare and time-consuming. In suburban and rural areas parking is very easy. Bike-share programs have been noted for a tragedy of the commons, with people vandalizing, stealing, and just generally abusing their borrowed bikes, because they don't own them and security is hard. Robo-cabs will have similar problems, which will increase costs and reduce desirability at the margins.