I can already imagine intense debates about whether to outlaw human-driven cars in a (perhaps not so) distant future.
Lānaʻi might be a good candidate: absolute isolation from other road systems, a small population (3000 people), and a single owner (Larry Ellison) who's just the sort of filthy rich technophile who might be willing to replace an entire island's cars.
Singapore could be the first major city to make the move, due to its authoritarian government (hey, I don't like it, but it might make this easier), strict rules to keep the stock of vehicles relatively new, and relative isolation from other road systems (only two bridges to Malaysia).
Hawaii in general seems like a great place to start a lot of "infrastructure 2.0" (if I may carelessly make up a term) projects geographically, but the logistics are tough because so much of the population is desperately poor, there's already a lot of class/ethnic tension and to top it all off, local government is a mess.
In 2025 automakers simply won't be allowed to make a "manual control" car, and by 2050 there will be basically none left on the roads.
To be entirely honest, I don't expect to see the elimination of occupant driven motor vehicles in my lifetime.
The model I see that will remove individually-owned, occupant driven vehicles will some variation of:
My company will purchase your auto and credit you some amount of haulage on my autocar network, and perhaps some cash. For the low income people using sub-$1,000 cars a token amount of credit will be sufficient. The real value for them will be the convenience and reliability of transport they get from my system. Imagine not losing your hard-won job because your "beater" car failed at an inopportune time. Imagine not having unexpected car expenses that make you choose between, say, food and transportation.
The higher-end market will be a tougher sell, but there are likely productivity, personal time, and environmental impact arguments that can be made there.
I'll sell your car (likely at a loss) in some area when I haven't achieved market penetration yet (or for salvage). Once you're bought-in to my network you might leave me for a competitor, but ideally I'll use regulation, contractual lock-in, and other tools to attempt to keep Customers tied to my product until I've recouped my initial investment.
I think it could work. I don't particularly like it, but I think it has at least a non-zero possibility of happening.
I'd tend agree with your comment in the short term. Moving my daughter's child safety car seat would be a pain, for sure. Longer-term I would expect to see modular standards emerge for child safety car seats. You lock your child's seat into the standardized base that's hiding under a seat cushion in the back of the car. There are already stroller / pram systems that incorporate the child safety car seat, so I could expect that market to boom, too.
Moving things besides yourself is something a lot of people in urban areas already do with public transit. With a private autocar service it's more likely that you'd get more space than on a subway or bus, so I'd think it would be even easier to move more than just yourself. I would expect a rental option to let you keep the car with you, as opposed to it returning to the fleet when you reach your destination.
- Most traffic problems are a result of human (over)caution and poor merging technique. A centrally coordinated system of self-driving cars are perfectly aware of each other's intentions and could run much smaller safety margins, as well as make lane/exit access perfectly equitable. The effective carrying capacity of highways would increase immensely, and traffic jams would be a thing of the past.
- 100% of cars on the same coordination system would also allow us to do away with most stoplights, as it could simply modulate speed so that intersections are always running in both directions, but cars never collide. (This could be overridden for pedestrian crossings, and wouldn't be much of a benefit in the city, but in places that are already pedestrian-hostile - i.e. most of Real America - it wouldn't make things much worse and pedestrians would be pretty rare.)
To boil my position down: I want to see an Internet-style architecture rather than a "Bell System" style architecture. I'd rather have "smarter cars" with "dumber roads" and as little mandated centralized control as possible.
In a decentralized system attestation of identity (likely tied to one or more existing civil methods) and attribution of actions observed to individual vehicles would definitely have to be a component. Any identity system cannot approach 100% reliability, but if every car is able to report to law enforcement (or private driver reputation-tracking networks) the observations it makes of the behavior of other drivers I would expect that "cheaters" would be visible as statistical outliers.
"The car to my left doesn't answer as a known transponder challenge/response in the vehicle reputation database I am querying. I am going to assign a lower priority to any non-emergency events it is reporting to me."
"Hey-- that car just started broadcasting a different transponder response. Something is really, really funny where. I'm going to alert cars in my proximity that something is up so that they can physically identify the car with their LIDAR / imaging / etc. and treat it cautiously. If enough funny-business occurs eventually law enforcement will be alerted and physical interdiction can occur."
"According to the vehicle database I'm subscribed to this car always traverses statistically similar routes 15% more quickly than other cars. Other cars in its proximity on these routes have their traversal slowed as compared to their traversal of the same routes when this care is not present. It sounds like funny business is at-play. I'm going to cast a vote for this car to be more likely to be subject to an inspection."
etc.
I'd prefer such a world to not involve the ability for totalitarian (or-- ahem-- certain republics who purport to be democratic in nature and are filled with power-mad bureaucrats conducting dragnet surveillance) to use these tools for public surveillance, but I'm resigned to that fate. Self-driving cars themselves aren't a threat to freedom, but the infrastructures of surveillance and control that will grow up around them almost certainly will be.
Freedom aside, whatever happens is going to end up being an information security nightmare. Too many disciplines who have never had any exposure to information security are going to intersect with this technology, and each of those intersections is going to be ripe with all kinds of interesting threats and failure modes. People will be inconvenienced. People will be robbed, physically assaulted, and violated. People will die. I have no illusions that criminals are unsophisticated and that these systems won't be attacked in every possible way.
> If we can require all self-driving cars to take orders
> from a central authority, we can do some pretty amazing
> things
Self driving cars won't always be new though. The price of the technology will drop rapidly as they become mass produced. And there will always an economic advantage to renting vs owning. The cost of the car is effectively divided over several people instead of one.
I suspect that will not be the case. While public transportation may catch up on price (if the political will exists to push it there), I do think there will be a period of time where hailing a self driving car will be cheaper than some or most public transit options.
A robotaxi can take you to the local robobus hub, which drives you to the local robotrain point, whereupon a Just In Time (un)scheduled train will leave, as all journeys can be coordinated.
The issues with public transports are the same as with biking in the US: It works better when cities are really dense. Suburbs destroy the efficiency of public transport, biking, walking, inline skating, and any other non-car transportation.
See, that's the thing with Hacker News. A lot of people here think Silicon Valley is the center of the world and everywhere is just like us, when the fact, we are living in a little bubble and a lot of the US operates very differently.
You really mean "It's a myth that poor people drive in heavily populated cities.", in that case, you would be correct lol.