Plus driving is way too fun. Driving != commuting... go find yourself a nice deserted mountain road, roll down the windows, and feel the breeze.
I imagine we'll still have recreational tracks and courses for driving, but "the joy of driving" doesn't justify the megadeaths caused by automobile accidents.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter what you will do, but what majority of people will do and his article is about those big-picture changes. Cars replaced horses as mode of transportation, with many consequences to society. Very rich people can still ride horses as a hobby, but that doesn't nullify the magnitude of changes brought by replacing horses by cars.
Which leaves me with one question for you: do people still drive the Ford Model T on the road? My point should be obvious. Time changes things drastically. Either adopt the future or become obsolete. I can't stand people who can't stand change.
How does it feel to be considered old?
The ones that love it do. They even restore them and have meets where hundreds of them get together in the same place.
My car has a strong enthusiast community around it now and I hope that will continue long into the future.
You'll always be able to drive. But I would guess most 'fun' driving cars will be a hobby, like a boat or a horse. Not something you use every day.
But a change like that is 20+ years away.
Granted they will fight the shrinking of that market tooth and nail (and probably lobby to mandate insurance for all cars regardless of who or what is driving them), but it's not as though their cost structure stays the same once most of the population stops having accidents.
But I see another scenario: traditional insurance business will not be willing to insure self-driving cars rationally (i.e. at much lower cost due to much lower incident rates) and robo-taxi companies will self-insure. That will deprive traditional insurers from a lot of revenue and since they are publicly traded companies, they won't just accept that and scale down to match smaller market. Instead, they'll try to prop up revenues in short term by rising prices which will make self-driving cars even more attractive to more people, fueling their own decline.
If an insurance company is paying out more in claims than they are taking in in premium, that is when they will increase the premiums. If they are taking in more premium than they are paying in claims, they will generally identify areas where this is the case, and lower premiums to attract more customers.
There is a lot of ignorance about insurance companies on this thread. There is also a lot of ignorance that self-driving cars will require no insurance. Not all of the cost of insurance goes to insuring the driver hitting something. There are fire, theft and third party property + injury components. None of these will be removed, though some may be reduced over time in line with claims being lower.
Most of the extra cost of insurance in a large city has to do with the theft component (especially if not garaged). People who live in rural areas pay much less insurance than those in city areas, principally due to decreased theft rates. Autonomous cars will be stolen just like regular cars.
I would bet current insurance companies are more likely to fight any legal distinction between traditional and self-driving cars as it would require a change to their (lucrative) business model.
Patent troll Intellectual Ventures reportedly created hundreds of shell companies. Amazon creates tens of subsidiaries (e.g. Kindle is technically created by lab126, owned by Amazon but a separate company) etc. Whatever the legal roadblocks insurance companies might try to throw, I don't see how they can stop new insurance companies from being created and that's a simple loophole against any anti-self-insurance laws.
The interesting part to me is that the pervasiveness of this general sentiment in America is the reason I think self-driving cars will win out in the near-to-medium term over other options that are probably more efficient and cost effective. America is married to the car, and that's what makes the self-driving car the most likely to succeed new form of transport in my opinion.