5 ways that self-driving cars will change our lives
Google's self-driving car on a closed course. (Image from Wikipedia.) If you haven't been living under a rock, you've seen the impressive progress in self-driving cars, with a lineage tracing from CMU , to Stanford , and now Google, whose self-driving cars have logged 300,000 miles without an accident . Far better than, e.g., the author of this post has managed. It's obvious that self-driving cars can help reduce accidents, improve commute times, and let us get back to texting while on our way to work without killing people. But I think the implications are far, far deeper, particularly for the car-centric US. I had fun brainstorming about it last weekend - can you add to this list? [Update: Kent Lewin pointed out that I've unwittingly overlapped a few of these items, particularly the first, with a recent "this week in google" podcast. Doh. Oh well - I had fun with the brainstorming anyway! :-) ] They will enable the car-sharing economy