I Have No Idea What I'm Doing - Future of self-driving cars?

The reality of self driving cars is going to fundamentally change how we treat transportation, and transportation services.

Gone would be the fleets of truckers, gone would be the fleet of taxis. Jobs in those fields would radically drop, and that's going to be a fact.

But at the same time, the self-automated cars will revolutionize in time and speed, by allowing better more efficient, and quicker transportation, it would allow people to work further and further away from homes. Opening up opportunities to work hundreds of miles away, on a daily basis.

I am continually amazed how little automation is given attention to by the current political rhetoric when it comes to employment. You can scream all you want about unfair immigration laws, exporting our jobs overseas, and how we need to bring industry jobs back to the US…but the reality is that automation is going to do more damage to our labor markets than any of those easily touched subjects.

For good and bad, automation is something that needs to be thoroughly discussed in our public rhetoric, and how to better prepare future Americans and those that are going to be most affected by this to survive the radical change to our economy.

I think you’re exaggerating a bit too much. Why are cars being able to drive themselves make it possible for people to work “hundreds” of miles away? It’s not like they’re running on highly-efficient rockets. They’re still cars, they still are restricted by speed limits, and they still consume gas. All that will change is that humans don’t need to drive them.

If anything, self-driving cars will make it possible for even children to “drive” themselves home from school. For elderly and disabled to be transported. An automatic means of driving in areas unknown to it’s occupants.

I believe we will still need drivers simply because computers are not perfect. There needs to be someone around to make sure goods are safe and to maneuver the vehicle in case of error. I would hate to be in a self-driving car pile-up because the computers don't understand what to do because there is road work and the detour isn't on the GPS.