For part five of my series on Robocars, it’s time to understand how this is not simply a utopian future. Consider now:
Every good technology has unintended consequences and downsides. Here I outline a few, but there will be more than nobody sees today. I still judge the immense upsides to be worth it, but you can judge yourself.
What about weaponization?
A downside that you fail to mention is that self-navigating vehicles are a necessary component of robotic cavalry. Strapping weapons and targeting systems onto these vehicles creates a robotic war machine with little risk of military personnel casualties, and a large possibility for abuse by unscrupulous dictators and other tyrants. Imagine if you didn't need to convince your soldiers of anything, including who the enemies of the state are. These cold-calculating warbots would kill anyone they were ordered to, even the citizens of their own country and unarmed civilians.
Also, imagine a car-bomb that delivered itself. I can imagine it would be a while before any of these are allowed in the West Bank or Gaza Strip.
No mention?
Actually, I do have a section on that, also blogged it years ago. It might be in the roadblocks section, in that the government will fear robocars because they can be weaponized (while building bomb-bots for the military at the same time.)
Fear of privacy invasion....
I think your overall approach to categorizing the future possibilities is excellent. However, I think you have underestimated a couple of downsides. First, the fear of loss of privacy and increased govt control will be massive, and there will be plenty of people who will play upon that fear for their own ends.
At present, there are many areas of the country where the majority (in some cases the vast majority) of drivers are breaking the law on a regular basis (see LA freeways whenever they aren't a parking lot). This is usually, but not only, the speed limit. The idea that a car will not go faster than the speed limit will irritate a large portion of the population, especially given the arbitrary and often ignorant way speed limits are set today (far too low, often with revenue generation in mind, or in the false belief that it will significantly alter safety statistics). Without a vastly more realistic regulation policy for the roadways, law abiding robocars will be shunned by many.
The idea of being tracked precisely by your car's communications with the road network will also scare those curious enough to look into it. One only need look at OBD3 and GM's work on car to car networking to see the near term direction of this path. I agree that people are already traced and observed far more than they realize (credit cards, cell phones, cameras, etc.), but many are not conscious of it. I think it will be much more difficult to minimize that concern with the road network and vehicles you envision.
In the end, I think a significant proportion of the population will eventually adopt such vehicles for convenience, cost reasons (such as higher legislated fees for non-robo vehicles - I'm sure that many govts will use that as a "nudge" to get people into more easily controlled transport), and other factors. Let's face it, most consumers are very herd oriented (sheep?). But barring the legislation out of existence of human driven vehicles, a significant portion of the population will want to continue driving themselves without outside inteference.
I agree I am understating
And thus today I released an expanded sidebar article on privacy issues to outline some ideas here.
Realize that cars which communicate with the road network, directly or indirectly, are going to be coming with or without robotic driving. The robocars I advocate are autonomous, and receive information mostly, only transmitting requests to the city for reservations to take space in congested areas or get stopping space. With congestion pricing, we’re already seeing cities track all cars and where they go in city cores. And sadly, we are all carrying mobile phones that track our every move, now to GPS accuracy in many cases.
I am also of mixed opinion on the traffic law questions. Part of me hopes that there simply won’t be the need for as many silly traffic laws — if vehicles are super-safe, you don’t need to limit their speed — but of course due to liability designers will be conservative. And that’s only after humans are off the road which is a long way away.
RoboCar as babysitter
Not only will parents be willing to consider schools that are far away from home, robocars would enable people to choose schools that are in the opposite direction of their commute.
Consider this hypothetical situation: Single mom has job requiring her presence from 8 am to 4:30 pm. Child's school starts at 8:30 (and opens its gates at 8:00,) and ends classes at 3:30 (and closes the gates at 4:00). If mom takes the child with her in her robocar to her office, and then sends the robocar back to the suburbs with the child in it, she eliminates the need for before school child care. If she sends the robocar to pick up the child at 3:45 or so, and drive in circles for a while before picking her up at the office, she eliminates the need for after school childcare.
If robocars come to pass in the same era as statewide school vouchers, many people with school-aged children will buy a robocar just for the children, and send them to a school on the opposite end of town in order to have reliable low-cost child care. The more children you have, the bigger the savings. My children attended public school for two years, and the school had no after-school care. I had to pay a fortune to have the children picked up in a special bus and taken to the YMCA. And it was a nightmare when one or both children missed the bus. There could be robobuses to drive whole neighborhoods full of kids around in circles.
Also, many people choose a home based on the home being within walking distance of the local junior high, the community swimming pool, tennis courts, public library and ice rink, so that they won't be enslaved by the child's schedule, or so that the child can be involved in lots of activities despite the fact that both parents work. With the robocar system, every chubby kid in America will be chauffered everywhere.
When will the robocars be available?
How long can you leave a child?
Obviously there will be limits on how long you can leave a child unattended in a robocar, even one configured just for carrying a child, which has nothing to break, a TV for them to watch, and won’t obey most of their commands. Unlike leaving them locked alone in a room in a house (which would presumably be illegal) they are being delivered at a set time to responsible adults.
It is also unknown whether the scenario I described — where the robocar has a videoconferencing link to a responsible adult, who can supervise the child, and redirect the car to a nearby responsible adult in the event of problems — would alter parental and social attitudes about this. It also depends a lot on the age of the child. Certainly in the “fairly responsible” zone, where they are allowed on their own for modest periods this should be OK. For children of day-care age it may be a different matter.
I find this one hard to predict, and society could respond in a lot of ways. Indeed, some parents will crave it, though I don’t know if they would go so far as to make the child’s trip deliberately longer like that. The child of course would be watching TV, playing computer games and videoconferencing with parents and friends during the trip, so they might be reasonably happy with it. If it’s the main part of a fairly limited TV/internet budget, they might be very happy for the long trip.
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