Quote:
Originally Posted by milomilo
Right. It could well be that something as boring as insurance is what truly seals autonomous vehicles' dominance. When it comes to it, would people be willing to spend a few thousand for the privilege of driving less safely? The insurance differential would probably widen further between self driven and non, as human drivers would be causing 100% of accidents on the road, and 100% responsible for the cost of repairing all the very pricy sensors on the computer driven car they damaged.
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That's another good point that I hadn't considered yet - there's just a ton of little things making the rise of AVs prove to be more difficult than (some) expected. I'm sure insurance will find a way though!
One interesting aspect is that if we went full, or even mostly AV, I think car ownership would go down considerably. One of the big pluses to system optimization that it offers is to have constantly operating vehicles that could function in a rideshare type of scenario. Not to say people wouldn't still own their own vehicles as there's an obvious advantage, but it may make a 2 car household reconsider and go to 1. Similarly I don't think it would invalidate public transit as capacity issues come into play in any urban setting.
On a personal level I hate being a passenger on long car trips - I find it incredibly boring if I'm not driving.