Ed Zitron takes to TechCrunch declares self-driving cars “a bloody good idea” that will save many lives.
But:
People like to drive. People crave control. People love banal tasks done for them, but the transfer to a computer of a task that can threaten lives with one wrong turn will take a long time.
I’m even cynical that we’re five years from seeing millions of totally autonomous vehicles legally swamping our cities. It’s an exciting idea, a realistic idea — but the scariest idea in the world to rush.
This reminds me of the debate over whether people like to buy vs. rent music. We had that debate a lot when I was in business school. Some people (notably Steve Jobs) insisted that the failure of Rhapsody proved that consumers want to own their music.
I always thought that debate missed the point.
People like to listen to music. They’re agnostic about buying vs. renting. They choose to buy or rent purely as a mechanism to get the benefit of listening.
And now that renting offers more benefit than buying, sure enough people are renting.
I see the same thing with cars.
People don’t crave control. Nobody I know refuses to fly planes because they can’t sit in the cockpit.
People crave getting to where they want to go. Once self-driving cars can do that as well or better than people-driven cars, the switch will come faster than most of us expect.
Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on November 9, 2015.
David Silver 