I can imagine that there will be a very bloody political fight over self-driving vehicles as they become more mainstream, particularly when it comes to taxis and trucks, because of the vested interests of professional drivers.
I worked at a company that does what you'd call today whitespace wireless technologies. I remember when I was young and naive, my reaction was: "why doesn't the FCC just get out of our way and let us put this stuff on the public airwaves?" And I distinctly remember when Microsoft did the test with their whitespace technology, where it couldn't handle, of all things, unlicensed wireless microphones (commonly used by churches and sporting events). And my thought was: "who the fuck cares about churches? They're standing in the way of progress!"
Then I worked for a summer at the FCC and realized: "shit, the world is really complicated." There are tons of stakeholders who use the public airwaves and it's imprudent do anything without first being sure what the impact will be (measure twice, cut once, as they say).
Self-driving cars will happen, and have to happen, the same way. The governments of the country spend $160 billion a year on the public roads, and the people of the country are absolutely dependent on them, and before they let a bunch of yahoos run computerized cars everywhere they are going to have to be convinced of what impact they will have on the system.
Because, while I fully agree with the rest of your post, it'd be equally as naive to think that those processes are NOT influenced by people with "vested interests".
Why do people on HN always make assumptions about other people's comments? I wasn't criticizing this particular NHTSA study, I was just saying that there will likely be a bloody political fight over allowing a technology that will take away a lot of blue collar jobs that can't be outsourced.
* Automated vehicles can save a lot of people a lot of money, save lives, and completely transform the way transportation operates (and perhaps even how cities and suburbs look. See, for example, the vast swaths of parking lots in much of the United States, and think how utterly unnecessary they'll be in a world of fully autonomous vehicles.). The NHTSA policy document says this in the first paragraph, in fact.
* Automated vehicles are untested and scary; would you trust your children's safety to a computer?
The entrenched interests like taxi drivers, truckers, etc. will push the second quite a bit, I imagine. As with a lot of new technology being introduced to the public, that argument will initially have a lot of traction (especially if there are big, public incidents when it starts being rolled out) regardless of what the statistics say regarding safety, but it will gradually be marginalized as people get used to it, based on the strength of the first argument. But it'll be an arduous journey there. People don't like change.
NHTSA press release, with link to the actual policy document (at the bottom): http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/U.S.+Departm...
I don't know that it would make that much difference. Most people want to drive at the same time to get to work and few people seem likely to want to have their car do an extra commute so that it can park up at home. Couple that with the fact that a car tends to be a personal space - and you'd be giving that up if you started having to share (even if you were the only person re-using a hired vehicle)....
I just picture people using self-driving cars in more or less the way they use their normal car.
For example, consider how many families today have 2 cars. Right now if the husband drives to work at 7AM and the wife at 9AM, this necessarily requires two cars. In an autonomous car world, the car would just drive back home to pick up the wife, instead of sitting in a parking lot for 9 hours. Now, extrapolate this to an apartment complex: What if part of the renters agreement is access to one of their 20 autonomous cars. Its very rare that at any given moment every single occupant of an apartment complex is using the car, so this would be totally feasible. In fact, it would be feasible today with normal cars except that when one person takes the car, they block access to that car for more time than they are actually using it. A 15 minute drive to the grocery store blocks usage of the car for up to 2 hours since it can't go back and service other members.
I'm not sure NYC is a good example for the personal space one - do the people there really have the practical option of doing otherwise?
Regarding NYC - I'm not sure what the point is. Most people don't have personal space on an airplane because there is no practical alternative there either (most people can't afford a private jet). So what? Would it be nice if everyone could? I don't know? Maybe. I honestly don't think about it. I value not paying millions of dollars over personal space on an airplane. Similarly, if you really care about personal space, then by all means buy your own car (autonomous or otherwise). I bet a lot of people would value not paying thousands of dollars (often going into debt and paying for gas etc etc) over personal space as well. In suburbia today, that option very much does not exist. For example, in Orange County where I used to live, you need a car to get around. And paying for a taxi to go to work every day is absurd there.
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If 90% of the car owners need a cars in overlapping time slots then carpooling isn't going to make a lot of sense - it's only going to benefit 10% of the people. It'd be like installing an apartment pool that everyone has to pay for for the woman in 3B. This is a case where the numbers matter. If people all tend to commute about the same time, then things aren't going to look much different - you might have people playing on their tablets before they get in to work, or a more efficient taxi service, but most people will still own cars.
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As for getting your boss to stager your time so that you can car pool more effectively. Well, maybe. But at the moment that seems like grasping at straws to me. These are the same people who can't even manage telecommuting successfully and haven't caught up with management books from 40 years ago. Trying to get people to do things together is difficult and companies are by and large incompetent.
And that's before you start introducing all the cultural things like wanting lots of people in the office at the same time. I don't think most people's bosses are likely to put themselves out for this. You need to assume that this is already in wide circulation before any real advantage for them in terms of not having to have a carpark comes into play.
I mean yeah yeah luddites retraining rising tide etc... but "I'd like to not starve" isn't exactly a sinister motivation.