I am genuinely scared about the impact that self driving personal vehicles will have on our cities and land-use. Being able to be hands and attention free is much more appealing to a driver, making more driving and longer commutes more appealing, leading to more sprawl and more land space dedicated just to driving. Because the technology is inherently flawed there is also going to be mounting pressure to adapt streets for self driving cars rather than humans.
@vallery I'm sometimes too optimistic by half, but I think it could end up being positive. Road charges on empty cars will likely be much much more politically popular... and then it's a shorter step to charging non-empty cars in congested areas and generally rationalising cost per space used in the transport systems.
