MM: East Lake Pulled, Smith’s Saved, and Unprepared For the Driverless Car
Decatur Metro | December 9, 2015 | 11:35 am
- Decatur School Board pulls East Lake lease agreement from meeting agenda [Decaturish]
- SAVED! Smith’s Olde Bar gets chance at second life [11Alive]
- Better Together Update [Patti Garrett]
- Decatur bills 900 businesses [Decatur Tax Blog]
- The end is nigh for PARKatlanta—now what? [Atlanta Magazine]
- Why Aren’t Urban Planners Ready for Driverless Cars? [City Lab]
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia
Re driverless cars, it seems to me a starting point for urban planners and others would be to study the impact Uber has had. I think there are some parallels, and in big urban areas I think driverless Uber would catch on before individually owned Level 4 autonomous cars do (personally, if I could hail an autonomous car at roughly half the cost of current Uber fares, I would see no need to own a car at all). At a minimum, planners could extrapolate from current Uber usage a decrease in the amount of parking required for restaurants and other retail.
Also, a possibility not mentioned in the article about planning for driverless cars is the reduced need for police to enforce traffic laws (and the loss in revenue from citations) and respond to collisions (there has already been much talk in the business world about the likely steep decline in revenues for auto insurers).
I’m anticipating they’ll transition from auto insurance to insurance against enslavement by our new robotic overlords. Either way it goes, there’s money to be made.
Why Aren’t Urban Planners Ready for Driverless Cars?
Is ANYONE ready for an ugly-as-sin glorified golf cart in place of the beauty and thrill of an Audi, BMW, Corvette, Porsche, etc?
I’m definitely ready, and couldn’t care less what they look like. As great as cars are now compared to the past, the driving experience, for the most part, is far worse, thanks to overloaded roads, distracted drivers, etc. Traffic may still be a problem, but taking as many humans as possible away from the steering wheel (so to speak) will dramatically improve safety, if nothing else.
To a long, safe, and joyless existence!
Ha! Driving brings me no joy, but I get that it does for some, like yourself. Here’s to one day you being part of the “niche market”–people who want to drive their own car.
Maybe, who knows. And I am glad you took that in the spirit in which it was intended, I was worried it was too flip.
Include me in that niche market. And in the submarket that will always drive a manny tranny.
Having recently skimmed the city’s super-deluxe all-inclusive diversity directive, I have to consider your use of “manny tranny” a micro-aggression. Maybe six micro-aggressions.
I feel othered.
Just imagine how marginalized continuously variable transmissions feel.
Your question is a great one and I feel ambivalent about it. I have given it a lot of thought, usually while taking my frequent trips from here to south Florida. Ten hellish hours. If I could be strapped into a barca-lounger, plug in my destination coordinates, get a morphine drip, and wake up safely in Fort Lauderdale, that would be a great improvement over the current situation. Why do the self-driving models look so cramped and miserable? Why not do it right? On the other hand, for zipping around Decatur, or for a trip to the mountains, I love my little sports car. Different cars and different destinations require different solutions, I guess.
Coincidently, I saw a study last week that showed that people were much more open to “technology” taking over long distance driving than short term. So it seems you’re not alone!
Along those lines, it seems obvious that long distance shipping would be a natural for driverless vehicles. It’s a grueling job that few qualified people want to do and, because of that, there are a lot of unsafe practices going on with big rigs. Consumer approval will be less of an issue than with passenger vehicles, though regulation may be more of a hurdle. Here’s a good article about it:
http://www.wired.com/2015/05/worlds-first-self-driving-semi-truck-hits-road/
I guess it goes without saying DEM, that it was an Audi that helped keep Will Smith safe (in manual mode) from V.I.K.I. and the NS-5s in I, Robot.
At some point you’re going to need to run over the robots sent to kill you, and what do you want to be driving, a Chrysler or an Audi?
-Abraham Lincoln
“…and what do you want to be driving, a Chrysler or an Audi?”
That depends. Does the Audi have the TDI? I wouldn’t want to try running over robots with an engine that spews higher-than-expected nitrogen oxide levels. That would be environmentally irresponsible.