[peatmoss]

30,000+ deaths annually in the U.S. alone is an awfully high price. Even marginal safety improvements would save many, many people. And that's not even counting the many more people who are mamed and left debilitated.

Then, there's the economics of car ownership. Cars are the second most expensive capital asset most people have after their house. They sit idle, depreciating, taking up valuable land 95% of the time on average. A self-driving car is very complementary to services like Uber. If self-driving cars could be shared, increasing vehicle utilization past 5%, then we could repurpose vast swaths of unproductive urban land.

Once fewer people are owning cars, and instead paying a la carte, it also restructures the choice architecture of driving. Without a default option sitting in the driveway, I suspect that people may opt to walk, bike, or take transit with more regularity as well.

As a planner, I'm slightly more bullish on the potential of self-driving cars to remake transportation than my peers are. It was only a couple of years ago that I attended a demand management conference keynote in which the well-known (in planning circles) speaker was cracking jokes about how self-driving cars wouldn't change anything. I disagree--I just hope the future gets here soon.

[fillskills]

And dont forget the > 15% space occupied on average in cities by parking. If utilization of cars increase with Uber/self-driving etc, we could see a lot of space cleared up too

[mikepurvis]

This is enormous— both the massive parking lots often consuming choice real estate and negatively impacting walkability, as well as the street-side parking which could be repurposed as improved infrastructure for cycling.

I'm 29, married with two young kids. We're excited to ditch our vehicle and never look back.

[ma2rten]

And don't forget the economic impact. Think about all those people whos job it is to drive: truck drivers, bus drivers, taxi drivers.

[peatmoss]

This is a real problem that society is going to need to solve. But the safety and environmental upsides of replacing human drivers are going to be huge too. I certainly hope the market creates new opportunities for displaced blue-collar workers, but I'm not optimistic on that point.

Short of utopian sounding solutions like the basic wage, I'm really not sure how our economy will take care of people as we automate more and more formerly manual tasks.

[Kalium]

What of them?

[toomuchtodo]

You'll still need parking, but you can put it underground in lights out parking facilities.

[ceejayoz]

Or you can have it do useful tasks. Have a car fleet that's passenger-only during peak times, but couriers packages/freight during its downtime.

[peatmoss]

This is an excellent point. 95% idle rate of vehicle fleet is a huge opportunity frontier for businesses. Whoever figures out how to capitalize most on this is going to win big. I don't think it's an accident that Uber has been experimenting with hauling other kinds of things in its cars.

I think it's possible we may see a time when most vehicles stay in the network, and rarely need to sit idle. That would be ideal certainly!

[fillskills]

Yep. The goal being to reduce that 15% to something like 2-3%.

I wouldn't be surprised if car ownership becomes 0% by the time my kids grow up. Cars will essentially become like trains - owned and operated by companies trying to make a profit. You just pay for the ride or get a monthly pass.

[toomuchtodo]

> I wouldn't be surprised if car ownership becomes 0% by the time my kids grow up. Cars will essentially become like trains - owned and operated by companies trying to make a profit. You just pay for the ride or get a monthly pass.

We can only hope so. Think how much people work for a resource that sits idle 95% of the time. New vehicle sales this year are at ~17 million units a year, with the average price being ~$35K/USD/year. That's $595 billion/year being spent on something sitting around most of the time. Just think about how much less work people would have to do if they didn't need to own a car.

[Lawtonfogle]

The down side is that not only is all of your data on your movements tracked, but it is also being sold to others, including the government. Another nail in privacy's coffin.

[peatmoss]

Anonymous vehicular travel is dead or soon-to-be-dead anyway. Police are routinely using license plate scanners for parking enforcement and for checking vehicle alert status. Toll facilities are using license plate scanning to bill you for congestion fees. Smart phone apps report your whereabouts sometimes by choice, sometimes not.

This isn't to say that pervasive tracking of individuals' whereabouts isn't a problem. I just think that self-driving cars aren't going to make the situation any worse than it is / will already be (exact timing is modulo your present jurisdiction).

[tomtang0514]

As someone who came from other country, I'm shocked in how easy it is to get a driver license in US. I know a lot of people getting a driver license with less than 20 hours behind the wheel. FYI, I got a US driver license in Illinois, which is considered relatively hard compare to other states. And some traffic rules are just ridiculous. I can't believe there're still states out there allow hand hold devices when driving, even text and drive.

[pcurve]

I agree 30,000+ deaths is a high price.

A NTHSA study states it has direct economic cost of $277 billion / year. Indirect cost of another $600 billion+.

Put it another way, car crashes is also a big business.

It's big business for hospitals, insurance, body shops, and lawyers.

As for the economics of car ownership, if almost everybody had to own a car or two, then people's average salaries would simply rise. If nobody owned a car, then salaries would job. The savings don't go into pockets of employees.

[ams6110]

I think you underestimate how much people (at least 30 and older, but a good number under 30 also) like owning their own cars and driving them.

There is definitely some tunnel vision here. Not everyone lives in densely populated urban areas where owning a car is already almost not worth the cost and hassle.

I can't see myself ever owning or time-sharing a self-driving car.

[toddmorey]

That's why I think this new generation of transportation will be the first realistic challenge to car ownership. Think about it: virtually instant transportation, available on demand, and you can vary the vehicle based on your needs. Take a small car to Ikea and a truck back home. Take a large car out that evening with a group of friends. Shuttle systems that aggregate passengers (but still make custom stops) will drive the prices down further.

You don't have to drive (leaving you free to do other activities), and you don't have to park / store the vehicle. (Our last hotel charged $65 PER DAY for parking.) Under this new model, parking can quickly become the least productive land use and will start to get much more scarce.

Finally, you likely won't ever own or time-share a self-driving car. They'll be provided by the likes of Google or Uber or Tesla as a utility model.

Will people still drive for the joy of it? Absolutely, but it will become more of a hobby / specialty market, just like private piloting.

[robotresearcher]

> Not everyone lives in densely populated urban areas

But record numbers do, increasing every year particularly in Asia, where most people live.

Some people will always have personal cars, just like some people will always have personal horses. They are both sometimes practical and often fun, if expensive.

[thrownaway2424]

In America, nobody is going to stop you from doing whatever you want. But we'll probably stop subsidizing it pretty soon. Drivers will have to pay their own way, with all the current negative externalities internalized.

[Futurebot]

Sure, not everyone, but an ever-increasing number:

"In 1950, one-third of the world’s people lived in cities. Just 50 years later, this proportion has risen to one-half and will continue to grow to two-thirds, or 6 billion people, by 2050. Cities are now home to half of humankind."

http://www.un.org/en/globalissues/briefingpapers/cities/vita...

[dmd]

For the United States:

The urban areas of the United States for the 2010 Census contain 249,253,271 people, representing 80.7% of the population, and rural areas contain 59,492,276 people, or 19.3% of the population.

[mastre_]

> I think you underestimate how much people (at least 30 and older, but a good number under 30 also) like owning their own cars and driving them.

Do people like other things as well? Assuming you don't eat, use your laptop, watch a movie, read a book, or play video games currently while you drive, not having to drive so you can do these other things can be appealing. Especially when it's the same braindead commute to/from work every day, day after day.

[munificent]

I think you overestimate it:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2014/10/14/th...

[anirul]

Insurances are probably going to go up if you want to drive your own car. It is probably going to be unaffordable for almost everyone to own a car because of this!