Day 82/365: Friday's Unscientific Poll: Self-driving cars

[nanila]

Poll #19693 Self-driving cars

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 62

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When self-driving cars become available to the general public for use, my preferred option will be

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To purchase one for my own personal use
10 (16.9%)

To have shared ownership in a fleet of local cars
8 (13.6%)

To be a member of a self-driving car-providing service
17 (28.8%)

To use self-driving taxis
5 (8.5%)

Not to use them
19 (32.2%)

I will miss controlling my own vehicle.

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Yes.
18 (33.3%)

No.
36 (66.7%)

Public transport

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Is awesome.
61 (100.0%)

I loathe driving. I do it because I have to, mostly to get the kids to nursery and preschool in a timely fashion and still be able to work a full day. And to get the kids to their various activities, playdates and parties. I am going to absolutely love it when self-driving cars become the norm.

I will also probably want to own one myself, because I live in the countryside. I suspect shared use of fleets of self-driving cars will work well in cities, but in the countryside, it will probably be exactly like current taxi services: you have to be willing to wait an hour during busy times for a car to be available, in which case you're going to be late for school/work or miss your train. (This is often true even if you have allegedly booked in advance.) So we'll probably find rural ownership of self-driving cars is more common, just because people want the degree of freedom that affords.

I will miss controlling my own vehicle not at all. I'll feel a tiny pang of regret that a skill I worked very hard to acquire, driving a manual vehicle on English country roads, is rendered useless. But humans are terrible drivers. I will be pleased when our roads are full of silent, efficient, traffic-law-obeying fleets of self-driving vehicles. Bring on the robot revolution.

In closing, have a Dinosaur Comic that accurately sums up my feelings about driving.


Transcription below.
T-rex: I've heard of a cool new game! It's dull and repetitive and uninteresting, and each game can take HOURS to get through! I believe it's called..."DRIVING"??
T-rex: Driving is a cool game to play because it requires you to focus on it LITERALLY EVERY SECOND YOU'RE PLAYING, and even though a tiny mistake can kill you instantly, the game is so incredibly boring it can ACTUALLY LULL YOU INTO SLEEP.

Dromecimomimus: Do I have time to correct my mistakes?

T-rex: Oh sure! SOMETIMES??

Utahraptor: If I die in the game, do I die in real life?

T-rex: Hah! YOU WISH. That's just the start!
T-rex: If you're lucky, only you die in real life. But you can also kill your loved ones, complete strangers, rando dudes: the possibilities are endless!

Utahraptor: I don't want to play your game. It sounds monstrous.

T-rex: TOO LATE WE ALREADY DESIGNED MODERN CITIES AROUND IT
T-rex: You know how in scifi stroies they'll discover sinister time-travelling aliens have been manipulating Earth's events for centuries?

Utahraptor: Yeah?

T-rex: ...I wonder if we'll ever know who we cheesed off in 1886.

Comments

[davidgillon]

I can see advantages to self-driving cars, but a lot of the developers set my safety critical alarm bells off as not appropriate people for safety critical work. Uber are by far the worst, but a lot of the other projects are run by ex-Uber types. To a certain degree I'd love to be able to ditch my car, I don't use it enough to be economically efficient, but equally I can't leave the house without either it or a taxi, and about 1 in 2 taxis can't actually fit my chair in the boot.

But those concerns also apply to a self-drive vehicles, and I don't see a lot of signs of disability access being a priority. (The prototype self-driving air-taxi that flew this week showed precisely zero thought to disabled access).