Autonomous vehicles and RVing in the future
Just a thoughts running through my mind about the integration of autonomous cars and how it could change our driving in the near future. It's coming, fast. Some say by 2020. Taxis, personal vehicles, ...
Forum Discussion
I suspect fully autonomous cars are a lot longer ways off than many are predicting, and certainly longer off than three years. Three years may be sufficient for good weather conditions and good, well-marked roads, but there are far more driving conditions than those that vehicles must operate in. Keeping track of things in a snowstorm or construction zone, etc. is a hard task.
Even when available, I suspect the transition to automated cars will be comparatively slow. One reason for my belief is that it has not happened for other kinds of vehicles very quickly, despite the technology being available and tested. Railroads in particular come to mind; automated train driving is a much simpler task than automated car driving (because you only have to worry about velocity, not trajectory), and there are some automatic driverless rail lines, but the vast majority still have human engineers.
Another reason for this suspicion is that, generally speaking, predictions of radical infrastructure change are almost always wildly overoptimistic (and predictions of the rate of social change often somewhat pessimistic and frequently in the wrong direction). Fifty or seventy-five years ago it was sometimes suggested that we would live in dome houses or domed cities, while in reality many of the houses built fifty or seventy-five years ago are being lived in more or less as they were constructed, with only incremental updates and upgrades. The idea that most of the vehicle fleet will be replaced in three years does not ring true.
I also very much doubt that private ownership of cars will go out of style in most areas outside of large cities. The economies of car sharing make much less sense when most everybody is going in the same general directions (to work) at the same general time, and the convenience and comfort of having one's stuff all set in one's car is not to be underestimated. For the same reason, most people would not like to move into a different hotel room every night (and deal with all the packing and unpacking it involves).
Even when available, I suspect the transition to automated cars will be comparatively slow. One reason for my belief is that it has not happened for other kinds of vehicles very quickly, despite the technology being available and tested. Railroads in particular come to mind; automated train driving is a much simpler task than automated car driving (because you only have to worry about velocity, not trajectory), and there are some automatic driverless rail lines, but the vast majority still have human engineers.
Another reason for this suspicion is that, generally speaking, predictions of radical infrastructure change are almost always wildly overoptimistic (and predictions of the rate of social change often somewhat pessimistic and frequently in the wrong direction). Fifty or seventy-five years ago it was sometimes suggested that we would live in dome houses or domed cities, while in reality many of the houses built fifty or seventy-five years ago are being lived in more or less as they were constructed, with only incremental updates and upgrades. The idea that most of the vehicle fleet will be replaced in three years does not ring true.
I also very much doubt that private ownership of cars will go out of style in most areas outside of large cities. The economies of car sharing make much less sense when most everybody is going in the same general directions (to work) at the same general time, and the convenience and comfort of having one's stuff all set in one's car is not to be underestimated. For the same reason, most people would not like to move into a different hotel room every night (and deal with all the packing and unpacking it involves).
