Roll on driverless vehicles. Major manufacturers are gearing up for mass production in the 2020-2022 timeframe. It is expected that the main transition will be over the 2022-2030 timeframe. After 2030 will driven vehicles still be allowed as speeds can be potentially much higher on freeways and motorways, spacing closer to increase capacity, optimum driving algorithms and speeds will reduce queuing and in all circumstances accident rates will be much lower?
Reduced accident rates has been the main driver for Google and Tesla, but also with Google where not being able to drive in the US with their limited public transport options. Aging populations means disabilities are a growing problem, especially cognitive decline and the increasing number of blind and partially sighted.
Tesla have reported that their accident rates for automatically driven cars are currently only about 30% of manually driven ones. They say as the AI improves and more vehicles are AI driven this will fall much further. Two areas that are still problematic for AI driven vehicles are snow and thick fog, so it is going to be interesting to see how that is fixed as it is also a major problem with manually driven ones too.
The improvements that AI will make to the running costs for all commercial vehicles, including taxis, accident rates and with the amount of development behind the AI, it will in my view, make the transition inevitable and sooner rather than later.
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