At this point, most driverless vehicles advocates (and even opponents) are well aware of the key (positive) consequences of driverless vehicles: improved safety, better mobility – especially for the elderly and disabled, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, etc, etc. Over the years, I’ve seen some fun articles and heard some great concepts about the less-discussed (and, of course, less serious) implications of driverless vehicles. Please note that most of these are associated with Level 5 autonomous vehicles, so don’t hold your breath for these to happen in the next decade…
- More drinking (and less drinking and driving) (see this article)
- More sex (“Experts Warn” in this article)
- Better or worse health (depending on how cities respond, based on this article)
- More scrap/junk cars due to obsolete manual cars and shorter life cycles for driverless cars
- Less organs available for transplants due to less accidents (see this article)
- Less vehicle theft
- Less roadkill (see this article)
- Growing garage remodel industry (due to less car ownership and/or remote AV parking)
- Less hotel demand on road trips (people can just sleep in their cars!)
- Less short-distance airplane trips
- Less missed doctors’ appointments (due to better transportation options)
- No more waiting rooms needed at auto maintenance shops
- No more speeding tickets (or City revenues associated with them)
- No more car chases (or at least the nature of them will be quite different)
I could go on and on! Please comment and add more to this list. It’s a fun mental exercise, even if it is far in the future!
