The ridesharing/fleet membership instead of owning a car is insane. If a disaster occurs and you need to get out now are you going to call up an uber? What about when the roads are blocked? An autonomous car isn't going to go off road and through ditches to escape. How many people wouldn't have escaped the Fort McMurray fires last year? I can tell you that I'd probably be mourning the death of several family members. Before anyone says there will be manual controls, if people only drive in emergency scenarios I'm not sure that's a good thing. People's driving skills would be pretty bad at that point.
I can't see how traffic wouldn't be way worse. If everyone is taking their own car or even sharing that would be be way more cars on the road wouldn't it? Why would anyone take a bus? There's obvious pros like safety but why can't we just make cars that make us safer drivers instead of ultimately trying to make them 100% autonomous?
I'm probably overly pessimistic but all I ever read about are these amazing pros and visions of utopia with autonomous tech, but I see it causing massive problems as well.. People seem very distracted by trivial conveniences..
Just because we can do things doesn't mean we always should.
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