Future of urban development

[Kane]

Anybody know how long it took us to settle on plans for the new span of the bay bridge? Or the expected completion date for high speed rail?

[The Comrade]

thing is though it doesn't really require any infrastructure changes. at least as it works now (as far as i know)

[Revenant]

[Medius]

[Kane]

[The Comrade]

this isn't building a bridge.

[Kane]

[The Comrade]

how? it's literally a car that drives itself. that's it. that's the only change. no new infrastructure required. some regulations probably, but that's it.

[John Galt]

i think they will be commonplace in 10 years, but i don't think governments will catch up much. they will just allow them to be there, possibly still requiring a sober emergency human driver behind the wheel (like some states have it set up now). a generation growing up in a world where cars drive themselves will reject car ownership. that will be a fundamental change, but that's fairly organic change that will take some time. still, they will be commonplace before that

kane, you're talking about the government DOING something. they don't have to do anything here. google is not the us government, and google has made these cars. so has other companies. the government doesn't have to spend money on a bridge. they jsut have to tweak some laws to allow it and get out of the way, and in a few states they already have.

[Kane]

I think you'd see massive pushback by consumers that like having control (It's strange, I identify the act of manually driving your car as something akin to maintaining a degree of autonomy objectivists and libertarians appear to desire whereas I see self driving vehicles as something far more collectivized) and from Car Manufacturers themselves not to mention the web of other industries and jobs tied to it.

No more taxi drivers. Truck drivers. Meter Maids. Garbage Men. Gas stations.

It's a fundamental rethinking of how our society operates. All the gearheads I know are terrified of this ever coming to pass. I don't think we're there yet.