AIBU to think we don’t want driverless taxis?

I am SO looking forward to driverless taxis and cars for everyone, humans are horribly unsafe on the roads and utterly unpredictable, driverless cars get better every month and will only continue to improve. Never having to make chit chat with a stranger, no woman terrified of being raped by an Uber driver, and when its your own car, you can have a few drinks and make it home safely or get in the car with a broken leg knowing you don't have to drive.

There are no negatives to driverless cars. Can't wait.

There are hundreds of sex attack on female passengers by taxi drivers each year. I would much rather my DD used a driver-less taxi.

Well since all the uBers I've used have internal cameras and microphones (and it's a selling point on the app) then if we join all the pieces, anyone damaging teh inside of the car will be known via their card details needed to hail a ride, and just find themselves relieved of the cost via the T&Cs.

And then they can wonder why they can't get a ride next time with their no-star rating.

It's really sweet of so many folk on this thread to worry about the future employment prospects of the drivers. However anyone who can cross 3 oceans in a dingy and put up with the British is made of hardy stuff.

I am sure a lot of people had reasons why these "automobile" things would never take off either.

We managed to put a man on the moon, for fucks sake. Nearly sixty years ago. Why does anyone struggle to imagine a self driving car. Surely not everyone can be that dim ?

I don't see the actual point of them to be honest. If I'm correct,you need to have a full driver's license to travel in a driverless car,so straight away that rules out anyone who doesn't have one. Considering that people who can't/won't drive are the ones most likely to be wanting a cab,it seems a bit bizarre.

It’s my idea of a nightmare. I’d rather walk then get in one of those

Then don't get in. We'll enjoy them.

I think where I live a driverless taxi might be safer as at least it'll obey the road rules.

I think I've only been in a taxi once since being hurtled down the m5 at 90mph with a driver who was using his phone and was consistently refusing to go to the correct train station meaning 2 of us would have been stranded in the early hours miles from where we needed to be. If I'd wanted to be on the m5 I would have drove myself. I had a train ticket. He eventually decided to go to the correct station when I threatened to report him but I was an awful experience.

What was the point of having a car ? They needed a man with a red flag to walk in front of them not really.

I'm not saying they won't take off, just that they will be controlled ultimately by a minority of people, like the tech bros, which restricts choice and competition. In a decade they may well sell of old stock to jobless taxi drivers but you won't be able to hold them accountable if you can't properly update it without giving them thousands upon thousands for the latest road safety uploads.

For women I think they’d be safer than getting into an uber.

That's mainly because Ubers are very badly regulated. I don't think driverless cabs would be the great revolution in women's safety it's being sold as.

How long might she have to wait, possibly on her own, before one arrives to pick her up? How many will there have to be driving around in order for one to arrive quickly? Thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions? What would happen if someone was lying in wait and forced their way into the taxi with a lone woman? I think I would feel more secure on a bus TBH

I think you are still imagining a future where people "own" personal transport.

Which I am not. For all sorts of reasons, but mainly because for well over 99% of recorded history it has been the exception rather than the rule.

If 100% of the population owned cars, there might be a case to be made. But notice how - ever since the idea of the automobile was developed, no nation on earth has been able to abandon public transport. Not even the US.

A fleet of driverless cars - mainly taxis - could well be the saviour of the High Street, if all the whinges about parking are honest.

I can recall a very similar debate about 15 years ago when "apps" were starting to be a thing. Apparently nobody wanted them. They would never take off. People would always feel more comfortable doing things over the phone, or in person.

The of course about 40 years ago, nobody wanted a computer at home.

Before that, this "television" thing was never going to catch on.

Before that, "wireless" ?

How about those lunatics building locomotives when we had a perfectly good canal network.

Canals ? What's wrong with roads, you idiots.

I mean in terms of moving towards a society where people own fewer things - the idea is generally that if you have self driving cars, rather than everyone owning a car that is sitting parked 80%+ of the time, everyone pays to use cars as a service.

This argument rests on everyone staying in the same city all the time. People who have cars in London don't often drive them in London, they have them so they can visit friends/relatives outside London or for work if they need to travel. It's quite possible that it wouldn't reduce car ownership as much as people think.

In terms of safety a poll of people working in A.I. in 2023 found that half of them thought there was about a 10% chance that A.I. would make the human race extinct, but I'm absolutely not sure if that's a plus or minus for driverless cabs.

In Brum, I haven't had to wait more than 3 minutes for a regular uber.

Granted that's mainly 9-5.

Again, I am saying it will catch on, but I don't think people have seen the pattern in that everything comes along for nothing, to "save us" time/money/learning skills, whatever, then before we know it we are completely reliant on it as all other options are obsolete. By design.

How did people get city to city before cars ?

Max Planck can be leveraged here. (I remember hearing this when my dads friend was saying that no one would wear a digital watch ....)

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with"

You may as well ask how people called each other before mobiles, we were allowed landlines back then, they don't exist now.

Ditto walking; soon our summers will be exceeding the 35 degree heat we saw this year, regularly and for longer. In winter we will be flooded and snowed under with power cuts. Just as we all give up our personal transport. I wonder, who will profit from all of this? It won't be the old taxi driver waiting for the tech to become obsolete so that he can finally buy one and turn it into a deathtrap.

You can see who else is in before you go in. The waymo is definitely going to know if someone has forced their way in

You may as well ask how people called each other before mobiles, we were allowed landlines back then, they don't exist now.

You've rather made the point for me

I definitely want it. Think how many lives could be saved if all cars were self-driving.

I understand the employment concerns, but don’t think I could choose to sacrifice that many people just to keep drivers in jobs.

I just hope I have the luxury to choose not to get in. Hopefully you won’t get stuck in one! Like that DJ - was it Scott Mills? Got locked in his electric car and missed his flight 🥴

It wasn't a self driving car. It was his personal EV.

He could have gotten out. There is always a manual override, he just didn't know where it was

That’s the point, he couldn’t even get out of his own vehicle due to not knowing how to override it, so I don’t imagine the average Jo would know how to manually override an unmanned car they were unfamiliar with if it was locked!!!

There'd be a support system. Waymo works wells in the usa