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When they put the tech in a black, 3rd-generation Trans Am so that I can say to my watch "KITT, get me outta here!" and have it come and get me wherever I am, then and
only then will I be interested in self-driving cars
Michael
'95 968 Sport
'73 VW GT Beetle
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I recently heard an interview with the Chairman of Nest, which was purchased by Google. Among other comments he told a story about visiting Google headquarters for the first time. Regardless cars are ubiquitous on the Google campus and his comment was that he never realized how bad human drivers were until he had that experience.
I believe that in the future, human driving will be a hobby limited to racetracks and removed from our daily tasks, just like horseback riding.
Jay
“Faster, Faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death.” - Hunter S. Thompson
"I couldn't find the sports car of my dreams, so I built it myself." ~Dr. Ferdinand Porsche
"968Forums, a quaint little drinking community with a serious horsepower problem"
"Life's journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn-out, shouting, 'Holy sh*t! What a ride!'"- Unknown
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There is actually a larger vision behind self-driving cars. Cars will become more of a shared utility and people will no longer own cars. Consider for a moment the utilization percentage of our cars. For example we drive them .... what .... perhaps 5 percent of the time, the remainder of the time they are unused, sit in the garage or in a parking lot. With self-driving cars, they become shared. When you need to go to the store, you order a car and it comes to your home, is available to you for the next hour or two while running errands, it brings you home, and then goes off and does other work. Most likely it will also give choices about sharing, so for example if a neighbor also needs to go to the store, it will provide to you a half-price choice to share the car. It will become a much more efficient method of transportation, we will need fewer cars manufactured, less use of resources. And some centralized depot will maintain them, we won't have to anymore, no more worry about tires, oil changes, smog test, etc.. Of course this is some time off, but trends always move to more efficient use of resources.
Roland
'93 Coupe Tip Silver on Grey, '02 911 C4S, '89 Vanagon Syncro -- (RIP: 944, 911SC, 931, MGB, VW Bug, GTO, Sprite.)
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And oh, let's also consider accidents. We still loose about 35,000 people a year in the US who die in car accidents. I think something like 90% is from human error. A utility of self-driving cars will be much much safer, think about all the parents who have gone through the most horrific experience of loosing a child. And then there are the people who are injured in car accidents, and the enormous medical expenses, and lost work, and the associated insurance company and legal expenses. Imagine how much medical expense we could save with self-driving cars.
Roland
'93 Coupe Tip Silver on Grey, '02 911 C4S, '89 Vanagon Syncro -- (RIP: 944, 911SC, 931, MGB, VW Bug, GTO, Sprite.)
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One "self-driving" fatality vs. a half dozen human driven car fatalities on the same day? And the industry guy claims this proves human controlled cars are the bigger problem? Talk about spin! That's one out of how many self-driving cars vs. six out of how many million human driven cars driven on that day? And what price will society pay for the population increase that will undoubtedly result from passengers looking for something else to do when they aren't responsible for driving? (Think about it).
'93 Horizon Blue Metallic Cab
'58 Triumph TR3A (sold)
'06 Lexus RX400h Hybrid
Lots of guitars
