Ready or Not, Here (Will Be How) We Go

(Illustration from Stanford Alumni Magazine)

Much like the automobile was in 1900, self-driving cars in 2018 are a curiosity. However, those who are involved in the research (major car companies, universities, and tech giants, not to mention Uber and Lyft) say that we are on the verge of a dramatic societal transformation:

Babies born today won’t ever need a driver’s license....

• Only 20 percent of Americans will own a car in 15 years.
• Passenger vehicles on American roads will drop from 247 million in 2020 to 44 million in 2030.
• Driverless technology will transform many, if not most, modes of transportation: trucks, tractors, ships, forklifts, trains, construction equipment.
• Transportation costs will drop to about 20 cents a mile, at which point everyone will have affordable access to road travel. (That’s about a threefold decline, according to a 2017 AAA report.)

Disruption may be too mild a descriptor for what is happening to our means of transportation. How we get from here to there is not merely a convenience, but rather has the potential to affect poverty levels, social standing, our daily human interactions, cultural norms and even life span, according to Stanford scientists and researchers.

On the one hand, self-driving cars could democratize transportation, making independent travel possible for many who lack it, including people who are blind, disabled, young, old or poor. Prognosticators also expect reductions in pollution, traffic, collisions and the cost of getting around, and an increase in green space as the demand for parking lots declines.

But skeptics worry that the adoption of driverless cars will eliminate too many jobs and give hackers a new way to attack, even possibly turning cars into lethal weapons. As the debate unfolds, autonomous vehicles are hitting the road in droves. Ready or not, say experts, here they come.

Autonomous vehicles, robots who are smarter, faster, and stronger than we, Mars colonies, and the elimination of disease and the ravages of age---we are rushing pell-mell into a future that is barely imaginable.