I love – and hate – the idea of self driving cars. I hate it because I love driving, and I can see a time in the future where I won’t physically be allowed to drive on public roads – or at the very least won’t be able to get the insurance that allows me to self-drive.
I love it because it’s going to make driving so much safer. The cost to individuals and society of car crashes is huge, financially, physically, and emotionally.
But there is also going to be another cost – that’s to taxi drivers and the people who drive for Uber. That industry, given a little more time, will simply cease to exist. It won’t be a gradual decline. Once the technology is mature, Uber itself will transform from a company that pays people to do ride sharing to a company that provides cars (it may rent your self-driving one from you perhaps), but ultimately the notion of YOU having a car isn’t going to endure.
So everyone who drives a taxi, or for Uber is going to lose their job, because you can bet that the day taxi companies can put a car on the road without a driver, then they will. In any business the people involved are always the most expensive and troublesome part. It’s the old IT cliche: “The systems would be perfect if it weren’t for the users”.
Self-driving cars mean no more “users”. Once you do away with the drivers, the entire eco-system of car ownership and use changes. Transport as a service is the future. And the future is officially here:
This is the other shoe dropping. Singapore have done it – they have self-driving taxis. This will open the flood gates. Give it a little time for everyone else to see what happens, and if it works without major drama, then governments the world over will be besieged by lobbyists wanting access.
It will be a whole new industry ready to be born, with lots of money to be made.
And all the cabbies out there, what of them? They will have to hang up their caps and their ID cards and move on to something else. What? I have no idea. Which is sad, because self-driving cars are only the beginning.