I suppose so, but I doubt it. Progress marches forward.
The Telegraph tries to envision how this nightmare would occur and isn’t very convincing.
I walk everywhere in the city now because traffic is worse than ever. Who needs parking spaces when you can send your driverless car around the block while you do your shopping? And commuting distances have doubled, with vehicle occupants happy to zone out in their pleasure booths, watching movies or working themselves to death, seemingly losing track of time.
The upshot here seems to be that getting more flexibility in parking and commuting is actually a bad thing.
I suppose if the “drive in circles instead of park” problem became bad enough, it could be a real drag. But driving in circles is not free (whether the car is gasoline or electric). And this assumes we all have our own driverless cars that need to idle while we run our errands — a future that seems increasingly unlikely in the age of Uber.
I imagine there are some potential driverless dystopias out there, but let’s get a little more creative. And plausible.
Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on October 25, 2015.
David Silver 