Ten years ago, my daughter was born and I joined Google, who were working on self-driving cars. I was hoping that my daughter would not have to need to learn to drive a car (but that if she wanted, she may). Since, I lost confidence in that hope.
Yesterday, thanks to my wife organizing it, we took our first ride with a self-driving car, driving about ten minutes through San Francisco. And I guess a world-wide roll out will take time, maybe a lot of time, but what can I say: it drove very well.
@vrandecic There have been many, many people who have "not [had] to need to learn to drive a car".
In fact you only really "need" to learn to drive a car if for some external reasons (which I can't immediately imagine) your choice of career is constrained to being a taxi driver.
@TimWardCam agreed, for many people it is not. But in many places the public transport system is not as comprehensive to make driving your own car feel like an unnecessary indulgence.
@vrandecic I'm sure that's true. However almost everybody other than children and prisoners does have *some* degree of choice as to where they live, so to that extent it's a lifestyle choice rather than a "need".
@TimWardCam @vrandecic I would argue that if uncomprehensive public transport is the problem then the solution should be more comprehensive public transport, not self driving cars. With them you simply use too much urban real estate and energy per passenger-km travelled.
To make it very clear, I am for more comprehensive public transport, and will support it.
@vrandecic @TimWardCam same here for autonomous cars- if you can make them safer than human drivers on real roads, and speed up traffic flow by making them talk to each other I'm all for it. But as I see it for a modern city public transport should be a much higher priority.
