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Felix Salmon writes about the possible implications of driverless cars.









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  1. Joel says:

    can you connect the dots for me, kuff? i am missing how more miles logged by busier (driverless) cars means less need for roads.

  2. Joel,

    I encourage you to read the Salmon and Drum articles, but the reasoning boils down to a couple of things:

    1. Driverless cars can react more quickly and safely to road conditions, so a high volume of traffic can move at a higher speed, thus reducing the need to add capacity.

    2. Driverless cars will make car pooling more attractive since you will be able to schedule pickup more precisely and won’t need to find others to share the ride with.

    The point that both Salmon and Drum make is that our own cars are idle the vast majority of the time. Driverless cars don’t need to sit in a parking lot waiting for you to use them – they can be deployed to others who need them when they need them. That will make car sharing much more attractive – why own when you can pay a much smaller amount to have a car at your service when you need it? – and car pooling follows from there.

    Does that help? The bottom line is that driverless cars, once they are in wide use, will change the way people use cars. The effects could be profound.

  3. […] also declines. If so, then we may be seeing a long-term shift that might have implications for our road capacity needs of the future, among other things. If not, it’s probably no big deal. See The Highwayman and EoW for more […]