There's an article in the Fin this weekend about driverless cars and how much closer they are to being available than many people think .
http://www.copyright link/technolog...ess-levels-and-our-waistlines-20160202-gmjkfv
What interests me about this , assuming that it happens in the nearish future , is how it will change a lot of other things that we do .
E.g. The article talks about how the cars we use are sitting idle 95% of the time . Therefore , if a pool of cars were to be used all the time , we would need many less cars . Maybe a quarter of what we have now .
If we used this pool of cars that were constantly available , we wouldn't need to own one . That frees up quite a bit of money to pay for the system .
It would theoretically take a lot of the load off the public transport system .
Roads would not have to be constantly expanded as many less cars would be on the road due to the pooling effect .
If these cars took over general transport from the public version , living close to public transport would not be so popular hence it would affect real estate , design and values .
Speaking of real estate , having very few stationary cars ( parking ) would also free up tons of real estate . Many houses might not need garages any more .
Anyway , how this change may affect other aspects of day to day life is the bit that I'm interested in discussing with those that are interested in this sort of stuff .
