Can we find jobs for millions of unemployed former drivers? Cashier jobs are going away. Robots can replace a lot of stock workers for retail as well.

So what are they going to be retrained to do? How do they stay alive while being retrained? How much more will be needed in social services? Jails? How many suicides will there be?

We need to wake the fuck up NOW and look at the complete picture. Will auto autos make life overall better or worse? Will the lives saved outweigh the lives lost or sent into hopeless destitution?

Farmers thought tractors and combines were great inventions, but it put a lot of farm workers out of work. On the other hand, farmers became able to feed more people because of it. I admit I never do self checkout at any store because I know it's a way to put employees out of work.

Here's to a hundred years of missed trains and missed planes, being stranded late at night, scams of every description and customer service that makes the cable industry look like JetBlue.

Should these awful driver people that hurt your fee fees be rounded up into camps as well?

Why do you want people to be destitute?

You appear to believe that the steady march of progress, of science, or technology can be contained or even denied. By it's very nature, it cannot, regardless of the petulant irrelevancy of internment camps.

Science progresses, society adapts. Period. We have no choice in that... all we can do is attempt to perceive as many consequences as possible and from that, mitigate as many negative social and/or financial results as much as possible.

It seems that hardly anyone is attempting to "perceive as many consequences as possible and from that, mitigate as many negative social and/or financial results as much as possible". And if they

There is almost NO TRANSPARENCY with what is going on right now. There are almost no safety standards and laws. Almost no ethical vehicular behavior standards and laws. Infrastructure improvements And no consideration of the broader impact to society and the economy of the loss of SO MANY JOBS.

We need to have a national, an international conversation now about the full spectrum of issues, not just "It's the future. Shut up and accept it".

Where we can't just release the plans for cheap plentiful clean energy due to the fact that the World economies would collapse, people would be destitute, wars would happen? Huge changes in society have to be rolled out very very slowly...

But the taxi industry as we know it can't die fast enough.

I hate taxis because I travel, a lot and from right here in the US to countries without functioning governments they're universally awful and for the same reasons and they have only had the last hundred years to get it right. Not even the existential crisis that is Uber and thousands of idled has meaningfully changed anything. They still suck and would rather draw on political graft to oust the competition than trying something radical, like not sucking.

hand-scrawled on a piece of cardboard?

And a human driver would drive down the road anyhow, killing everyone.

All the cars have to do is drive slightly better than people in most road conditions, then insurance companies are going to demand they be part of preferred, low cost plans, making them, eventually, the default for most car owners.

My core point stands. We need to talk about this technology, and the MASSIVE ways it can and will change the core foundations of our modern existence.

Is there a reason society, the public at large, should NOT have the conversation? Is the point "It saves lives, rich people want it so they can get richer, shut up and don't bother them!" what we should be focused on?

talk of basic minimum incomes are slowly trickling away from just speculation.

But we are talking about a culture shift, from what it means to have a job or career to how it would be paid for. Tough ideas, but the solutions aren't to throw sabots at the cars, they are just one part of the issue after all.

94% of all automobile collisions are human error. In the million-plus miles of early, imperfect, prototype autonomous vehicles they had a questionable responsibility in just 5.6% of their collisions, the others being entirely the fault of human drivers. 5.6 is a lot less than 94, no? Only you and your FUD doomer ilk are tilting at the windmills of perfection for nascent technology (but not, hypocritically, for humans, since you have never suggested they be subject to a review of all possible ethical dilemmas and have an absolutely flawless level of control in all situations to be allowed to drive). The sensible would just like fewer than the 38,000 deaths, billions in damage and the millions of hours of delays caused by human drivers. Better is the only standard that matters, and that's a pretty low bar to clear.

Driverless 101.

The potential for traffic mitigation alone is enough reason to explore these options. Vehicles don't have to be fully automatic all the time, but to be able to communicate with other vehicles for hundreds of yards in order to detect, predict, and disburse traffic jams in systematic ways seems to be of enormous potential value to the economy as well as quality of life.

enable the traffic when we built more and bigger roads.

It's always interesting to see what consequences pop up after we do this or that. All this future automating of more daily tasks will result in some good things, and there will be some inevitable downsides as well.

we would implement good public transportation systems. And if we really cared about reducing traffic jams, we would not be driving the way we do. The reality is that Americans like to sit in traffic. If they didn't like it, they would have fixed it long ago, like the rest of the civilized world.

Truly autonomous self driving cars are probably 50+ years away still. Just another panic mongering article.

50 years from now, from the reactions I am seeing, it will be illegal for humans to drive.

It is 99% ready now. As we speak, test versions are rolling the public roads in Pittsburg, California, Michigan. In predictable road conditions, it is amazing how it can keep position in relation to other cars, providing appropriate braking almost every time. The tech can read traffic lights and road signs and lane markers and spot obstacles, potholes, etc.

Over the next 10 years, they will gain most of the rest towards being better than the best human drivers.

My personal existential crisis: I have skills to help that happen. To help it be better and safer. And I can make a lot more money than I currently am. But I also see the problems it can and will cause. Do I save lives, make new friends, and get paid? Or do I go on a Quixotic quest to remind people that we are going to have to change a lot of the foundations about our economy, our legal system, and our social norms because of this massive change?

almost a million folks, drivers and those in related fields, to look for work.

No hours of service violations. No accidents from sleepy over-stressed drivers. No 36 hours of caffeine binged driving straight without a nap. every truck would be in use every day, all day. far more profitable for the companies.