> "Parking? Solved! Once we arrive at our destination, the car can self-park while we go on with our day."<p>Doesn't solve the worst part of parking: reserving that much space for car storage.<p>The author's vision seems to be one in which everyone owns a self-driving car. Why own the car? Just pay for use, Uber et al. can handle logistics. Only the reserve portion of the fleet should be parked, like buses.
The notion that we don't "pay atrociously high fees" to own and operate cars is a pet peeve of mine. People look at bus fare, for example, and think it's a lot, but compared to the <i>actual</i> cost per mile of driving (payments, insurance, fuel, maintenance, &c), it's often cheaper, even for short trips.<p>And this doesn't even get into the costs of pollution (including noise pollution), deaths, injuries, and poor health associated with sedentary lifestyles.
The optimism surrounding self-driving cars is just mind-boggling to me. Decided to drive to work this morning (usually take the train). Siri totally shit the bed and took me on a 45-minute scenic tour through DC. Took me off the highway too early onto busy local streets, kept trying to take me onto a road that was closed for construction, and tried to get me to turn left at a T intersection of two 2-way roads where only right turns were allowed. Just an utter disaster.<p>And it's not unusual. Siri loves to take my mother in law on harrowing trips through the ghettos of Baltimore.
> But traffic jams won’t even be a problem anymore: freed from the wheel, we’ll be able to make phone calls, work on a computer, or have a business meeting from inside our car (and maybe a doctor appointment, cf cosmopolis).<p>This just seems foolish. If i'm on my way home to my daughters birthday party, then traffic is traffic. If I"m on the way to the airport, then traffic is still a problem.<p>I can already make a call when driving and I can already take Uber or a taxi allowing me to do the things the author mentions any time I wish.<p>Self driving cars don't solve any of those problems. Self driving cars have many uses, but the author's use cases aren't any of them.<p>Traffic is still a problem regardless of whether or not i'm driving.
This is a fun analogy to think of, but it stops at the comparison of the ubiquity and resistance to change for the things.<p>Replacing cars with driverless cars is fundamentally different because it also involves a massive replacement of infrastructure and safety regulation at a level that humankind has never before seen.<p>Wrapping email protocols in innovative clients doesn't seem like the same thing at all.
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8535919" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8535919</a><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8536014" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8536014</a><p>Both deleted. It appears this was submitted, then deleted, then submitted again, until finally it got traction. So the item is of interest, obviously, but is this a god thing to be doing?
There's also a bit of pleasure in driving for many, sports cars, convertible's, that pleasure doesn't correlate to emails, there's no sports car email client. maybe not? =/<p>I've got a feeling that as cars start driving themselves, us motorheads/car-fanatics will be like horse owners, relegated to car farms (tracks with much larger garages and warehouses attached).
"Driving in Circles:
The autonomous Google car may never actually happen."<p><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/10/google_self_driving_car_it_may_never_actually_happen.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/10/...</a>