CMU teams up with GM for driverless cars

I guess this will be a nice way ahead. Huge drop in accidents and leading to fall in auto insurance premiums. One could work while in transit. Casualties would be speed gun manufacturers and offcourse chauffers.

Another idea that sounds leading-edge but doesn't go very far.

One thing is that people actually like to drive. The promise of living longer but in a totally controlled environment is a death sentence in itself. I rather take my chances. This concept of safety is limited in the sense that at our level of evolution we do most things unconsciously and hundreds of thousands of people die in this country, directly or directly out of our lack of wisdom and awareness.
Are these lives less valuables than vehicle related ones. Why not regulate all of life to be safe.

The side effects of this kind of technology if it were to actually work are pretty odd -

* The number of cars on the road would skyrocket (or at least use of a single car): kids being put in their own cars to go to school at which point the car would circle back to pickup mom and/or dad.

Number of cars might actually decline as empty cars could be routed to go to the next person and not sit idly in a parking lot.

* Long distance family travel would change pretty significantly - no more needing to worry about driving while drowsy, getting lost during a rush hour, etc.

* Amtrak (already suffering financially) would just be done for.

* Courier services - same as Amtrak; Limo/Sedan services - same.

* Cross country car trips would take almost no time

* Traffic could be eliminated if the vehicles were engineered with a 'hive' mindset (imagine actually being able to drive away a concert/sports event at a reasonable speed b/c every other car in the city bypassed the area).