I do believe that human drivers are a huge problem on the road, and that self-driving cars are the future.<p>However - Something needs to be done about thet fact that generally people who are poorer have to commute further with less [0] and that if they can afford to move to a neighborhood that fixes their commute problem, they are more likely to come out of poverty [1].<p>We need this to not be the next tesla, but the next bus.<p>[0]: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/upshot/transportation-emerges-as-crucial-to-escaping-poverty.html?abt=0002&abg=0" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/upshot/transportation-emer...</a><p>[1]: <a href="http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/images/nbhds_exec_summary.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/images/nbhds_exec_sum...</a>
I think it's worth noting that this is not a poll, and has nothing to do with a government action. It is entirely the opinion of one person about other people's opinions, from the perspective of Mountain View, CA.<p>It also doesn't really speak to the banning part at all.<p>I'm very optimistic about the technology and the social change required to enable its spread, but the claim made by the title of this link is not supported by the evidence presented. Nice read, at least.
I am a car nut, love driving, drive a powerful car, and can't wait for more of the autonomous cars to hit the streets. Like the article says, they operate predictably and safely. Sometimes it feels like everyone around me is acting like they are a teenager on their first day of being licensed.<p>I live in the USA, and feel that I am a more skilled driver and more mindful than most people who I share the road with. I do not want to be banned from driving. I operate the vehicle safely, strive to obey traffic regulations, give my full attention to driving, and despite having a powerful car almost always drive in a manner that minimizes fuel consumption.<p>Maybe rather than banning human drivers, the standard for obtaining a driving license should be raised. When I have driven in countries with higher standards, like Germany, it's seemed to me that there's much less chaos on the road and drivers are more responsible. There are definitely less of the metro California style shenanigans the author is talking about.
Google needs to make the cars overly cautious though, because everyone is watching them. One accident, and the whole idea of a self-driving car will be called into question by many people.
Self-driving cars will be the future, as long as they're all rock-solid on cooperation. Imagine normal intersections, with inefficient stop lights where half the cycle is idle (all the cars on the green side went through already) due to a change in traffic patterns from when they were programmed. Instead, cars that all cooperate can move through the intersection pretty well by taking turns.<p>About thirty percent of traffic in SF is due to people cruising around the block, looking for parking. [1]. Imagine if you could just tell your car, "go park somewhere, I don't care where", and have it come back when you need it. Heck, someone else could use it to get from A to B instead of letting it idle parked.<p>There's a lot of potential awesome here, but it all springs from rock-solid cooperation routines. If people manage to write aggressive / betraying self-driving algorithms, a lot of those traffic light scenarios could easily get a lot worse. Trust issues are a thing: should the car's driving routines be black-boxed? If there were FOSS car brains, would we trust people to not mod their cars to do illegal stuff? I guess traditional traffic cops could handle a lot of the same things they do now, we'd just need the standard autodrive package to account for and expect other cars to be driven in poor, uncooperative fashions.<p>[1]: <a href="http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/CruisingForParkingAccess.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/CruisingForParkingAccess.pdf</a>
Google self-driving cars are better than Californian drivers.They don't accelerate quickly, they don't speed, they leave plenty of space and are very polite to pedestrians.
There is no data here -- it's just some guy's observations of some interactions with self-driving cars in Mountain View. There's nothing to indicate that "Californians are OK with self-driving cars" (although I would guess they are), and nothing to indicate they're OK with banning manually-operated vehicles (no way, no how). The link behind "I think that, inevitably, non-self driving cars will eventually be banned" just goes to a short blog post on the same site from a couple of weeks ago about a newer version of the Google self-driving car. There's not even a word in there about anything being banned.<p>There is an awful lot of California outside of Mountain View (surprising, I know). I'm pretty sure California has the highest number of active vehicle registrations of any state (13 million in 2014, vs. 10 million in 2013 for New York, the most recent data I could find) -- and along with that comes an awful lot of car clubs and driving enthusiasts who would raise an unholy ruckus over the merest whisper of banning their beloved vehicles.<p>So the title's misleading.
As more SD cars hit the road, there is less need for a car license. Think about what this can do for tourism in california and other industries that need drivers. For example, Someone who doesn't know driving can comfortably rent a car from SFO and go to Yosemite. UPS/Fedex can do 24 hr deliveries. Overall this is really good.
Would commuter buses (public transit) be a good target to make self-driven? They go on the same route multiple times a day, and since the technology relies on mapping out the route in great detail, wouldn't buses be a good target?
My other opinion about SD cars is that their analysis of the road can be used to assess the state of the infrastructures, imagine a SD car refusing to enter your street to pick you up until the pot holes are fixed