Autonomous Cars? Yes. They’re a thing. Click to keep reading!

22 Aug Autonomous Cars? Yes. They’re a thing. Click to keep reading!

The rise of autonomous cars is upon us. Although some of us might feel like the Jetson’s era was just a kitschy cartoon, self-driving cars are likely to change the urban landscape.

If we use self-driving cars the same way that we currently use passenger vehicles, our commuting time could be spent in a more task-oriented way.

They could also be used to supplement public transportation, where people struggle with the “first and last mile”. If someone needed an alternate form of transportation to get them to bus stop, for instance.

Another model for the self-driving cars would turn them into a service. So a kind of self-driving Uber, where many people would choose not to own a car. The cars could assist with the mobility of the elderly and visually impaired.

A Google spinoff, Waymo, has a fleet of self-driving vehicles that is logging 25,000 miles on public roads daily. The Waymo CEO John Krafcik recently announced that the cars have driven 8 million miles since inception. Waymo hopes to launch its commercial driverless transportation service later in 2018. More than 400 people in Phoenix, Arizona are using the Waymo app currently in a trial period.

While self-driving cars will certainly change the face of most urban centers, testing and licensing is an issue that will have to be addressed prior to widespread adoption of the technology.