I know we'll have driverless cars within ten-years, and I know there will be benefits, but has any government yet started planning for the relatively near-instant transformation of the Trucker and Taxi industry once this "works"?
The fall-out is going to be intense:
* Fuel-stops are going to change completely, what's the point of half of the motels on long-haul drives when your car can drive all night and likely recharge automatically at a stop-point.
* Reduced downtime on goods movement will impact uptime in every other industry.
* Autonomous-vehicle-only lanes that line up with traffic timings creating a two-tier driving experience
* Huge influx of unemployed drivers who I guess might get "chauffeur" style jobs.
* Security issues, complex legal issues when there's accidents.
* Fake taxi's that drive a customer into a bad experience for "lols".
I know all this is extreme, but if history is studying the past to understand the present, science-fiction is studying the "future" to predict the problems of tomorrow.
The fall-out is going to be intense:
* Fuel-stops are going to change completely, what's the point of half of the motels on long-haul drives when your car can drive all night and likely recharge automatically at a stop-point.
* Reduced downtime on goods movement will impact uptime in every other industry.
* Autonomous-vehicle-only lanes that line up with traffic timings creating a two-tier driving experience
* Huge influx of unemployed drivers who I guess might get "chauffeur" style jobs.
* Security issues, complex legal issues when there's accidents.
* Fake taxi's that drive a customer into a bad experience for "lols".
I know all this is extreme, but if history is studying the past to understand the present, science-fiction is studying the "future" to predict the problems of tomorrow.