A few days ago (you can read the original post here) I wrote about how the Delphi company, which has driverless car software, had initiated a cross-country trip from San Francisco to New York, effectively duplicating Horatio Nelson Jackson’s famous 1903 cross country trip that was the first made in a car.
It barely made the news then, and out of curiosity I did a search to see if the car made it to its destination. It did. Three days ago:
http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/driverless-car-completes-cross-country-trip-9-days-n334776
It amazes me that this story didn’t receive much press (at least none in the venues I usually frequent!). Granted, the car supposedly made 99% of the trip using its driverless features, so it didn’t make the entire trip using only the Delphi software, but still: It crossed 99% of the entire United States, effectively, on “auto pilot”!
That’s pretty damn amazing! And, paradoxically, chilling.
Once again I can’t help but think what the future of car transport will be like.
On the one hand, using driverless cars will greatly reduce both traffic congestion and highway/road fatalities/accidents. As I noted before and given some of the smaller driverless cars such companies as Google are working on, there may come a time when people no longer even have to have a car. I envision a future where there is a small fleet of very economical to use driverless cars on the streets. You use an app on your phone to call one in, it takes you to your destination, and when you need to return home, you call one in to do that.
The other side of the coin is darker. How many jobs will be lost with the full arrival of the driverless car? Already there are several careers that will be endangered, from truck drivers to taxi/Uber drivers. What about public transportation drivers? School/Public bus drivers might become irrelevant as well.
Alas, technology moves ahead and there’s no turning back. After all, there was a time the Blacksmith had one of the most secure jobs in any town.
Not anymore.