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ORIGINAL: DesFIP

People who do work with their hands will still need a truck or van of their own though. Plumbers, electricians, construction companies. Table saws and such take up a lot of space and since no one knows what they'll need when they start a job, they carry full workshops in their work trucks.

And I'd miss not having all the creature comforts in the car. I keep a first aid kit, a couple of books, a cooler full of water, folding chairs and so on. I'm not sure a shared car would have space for all the stuff plus you'd have to pack and unpack it frequently. The idea of installing car seats for kids multiple times a day terrifies me. They're really hard to install correctly, most people put the base in and then go to the police station to have it checked. Then you leave it in untouched. When my stepson was still living here with the grandchild, we would switch cars with him if we were babysitting. It was a lot easier than installing the car seat in our car and then back into his later.

But the distances we drive here are a lot further than most countries deal with. Greta's 10K makes me laugh. We do a lot more than that on the spur of the moment; to go to the bowling alley, to the walking bridge over the Hudson, to the movie theater, to the grocery store.

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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
Another likelihood is that owning a car will become pointless, he reckons. What would be the advantage? You don't park a driverless car and let it wait for you to come back to it. You let it sod off to pick up someone else and take him/her on a journey instead. Another driverless car, that's nearer by, will come and pick you up after you've ordered it on your smartphone.

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ORIGINAL: DesFIP

And again, we have much longer commutes than you Peon. So how can multiple people alternate usage when they all have to be at work at the same time. But are coming from, and going to, different places.

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ORIGINAL: enslaver

Plenty of people want there own car for plenty of reasons, will not go for smaller cars, and as far as the insurance question goes if you think the car manufacturers lobbyists will let them, the dealers, or anybody other than you be liable(with your rates double what they are now), if you think that , then i have some swampland in Death Valley for you.

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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

FR

Interesting convo with a man who's a manager in the engineering dept of a car manufacturing firm today.

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ORIGINAL: tj444
Did this guy happen to tell you which manufacturers were leading this revolution and had the best prospects to produce the best, most forward vehicles?

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ORIGINAL: enslaver

Anybody buying such a car and entrusting his life to a microchip is a moron.

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ORIGINAL: Adorania

I highly doubt traffic jams are caused by jam brakes

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ORIGINAL: DesFIP

I can't wait.

When my son was a teen I ran around daily taking him hither and yon. I would have killed for a car I could have sent to pick him up from a friend's house or drop him off.

Now I can't drive at night, which means after 4:30 in winter. A car that could drive me home from the grocery store in the dark would be wonderful.

Hell, it's a big problem for the elderly who can still live on their own but can't drive. Driverless cars could allow them to stay in their homes longer.

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Which leads me to another of his points: that radical technological change happens much, much quicker now than it did even twenty years ago. Look at how quickly computer technology gets invented, gets snapped up ... then is redundant in just a decade. 'How many people thought that CDs would be here forever?', he says. 'Now you only pick up CD racks from junk shops'.

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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

FR

Well folks, my engineer friend is pretty damned emphatic. He honestly thinks that the advent of driverless cars will lead to as radical a change in society as the invention of the internal combustion engine.

And all within ten to fifteen years .... Which leads me to another of his points: that radical technological change happens much, much quicker now than it did even twenty years ago. Look at how quickly computer technology gets invented, gets snapped up ... then is redundant in just a decade. 'How many people thought that CDs would be here forever?', he says. 'Now you only pick up CD racks from junk shops'.

I should say that this pal of mine is no nutter. Or if he is, he's an extremely successful one. He lives in a house you only stop getting lost in after visiting more than a few times.