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Autonomous Cars - the future?

Re. the cartoon in the New Yorker magazine, do you think could this be a reality?
  • Deborah-Claire McKenzie‍ that is then another issue regarding ethics and the law?  How long before there will be a fully automated road network?  How will the system cope with a mix of autonomous and non-autonomous cars?  Wil street signs become a thing of the past as all the details will be programmed into the car.  


    Reminds me of the city scences and the flying cars in the film 'The Fifth Element'
  • I would love to see autonomous cars trigger a move away from individual car ownership, so you can simply call up or schedule a car to come & get you when you need to travel. It would be something like a huge taxi fleet, going away to recharge in some central complex when not required. Just imagine our cities with all the unused cars gone!
  • Good idea Alex.  Even better if whoever was controlling the requests for the cars, was able to co-ordinate car sharing.  I had to travel into Manchester city centre the other day and even at 7am I was surprised at how busy the roads were and most of the cars only had one person in them.
  • I'm assuming the use of some app to schedule a car to get me to the office at 9am most days, and generally pick me up at 5:30 every evening, for example. I guess car sharing is a social issue, we are happy to share a plane, train or bus but how often do we share a taxi? Of course if many of the autonomous cars were sometihng like little Smarts...
  • I appreciate that it may not always be convenient to taxi share, especailly if as you mention below they are the size of smart cars.  Leaving that aside I do wish more people would embrace car sharing.  At one time it seemed to be more popular than it is now, which is a pity and I wonder what the factors are that deter people from doing this nowadays?
  • One would have thought that modern social media would have facilitated the management of lift sharing. "I want to go from A to B at about this time". Nothing seems to have achieved critical mass.

    As to autonomous cars, I would envisage a range of vehicle sizes, from people carrier to the little Smart variety, and maybe a van when you are moving house. If you've a family of five, the appropriate size car turns up at the appointed time.

  • Lynsay Callaghan:

    Will street signs become a thing of the past as all the details will be programmed into the car.  


    Reminds me of the city scenes and the flying cars in the film 'The Fifth Element'




    One thing I notice when traveling in German towns is how they are less polluted by an excess of road signage and painted lines. How nice to see it all cleared away and replaced with the occasional milestone.

  • Just revisiting this discussion, I was surprised when I went to Hawaii for a holiday, just how many road signs there were on the Big Island and Oahu, even in the areas that weren't particularly populated there was still lots of signage which ruined some of the scenic shots I was trying to capture.
  • I noticed this in Germany, the picturesque villages are much prettier because there is less street hardware, road markings and signage.
  • I wonder where else in the world, the town planners have managed to keep road signage down to a minimum?