Recently, I stumbled on an online article about the Google effort to lobby the State of Nevada to allow self-driving automobiles to be used within the state.  That article is available at the following link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/science/11drive.html?_r=1

A more recent and broader article about self-driving cars was posted on Friday, March 31, 2012.

http://news.yahoo.com/coming-soon-self-driving-cars-120300164.html

If self-driving cars were to be broadly available, they would profoundly affect how society functions today.  There are many obvious consequences from having the ability to acquire and use a self-driving car:

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President Obama has proposed billions of dollars for rebuilding America’s transportation infrastructure.  Many others, including the America 2050 project, have very thoughtful plans for more intelligent transportation networks that will enable America to be globally competitive.  As a person who has been a strong advocate for transforming our transportation infrastructure, I could not agree more with the goals of better use of our transportation infrastructure and more public transportation in place of single-occupant vehicles.  The one place in which I might take a different view from those who advocate building new transportation systems is that I believe we need to repair, maintain and getter better yield from what we have.

However, I also believe that we could reduce the stress on our transportation systems with three non-transportation initiatives, all of which are far less expensive to implement than building a lot of new transportation infrastructure.

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I find a lot of the commentary on what we will have to do to achieve energy independence and to adjust to a time of scarcity to be misguided.  Telling Americans they have to “sacrifice” and “conserve” sounds good, but is not sustainable over the long term.

On the contrary, finding ways in which to conserve energy or reduce spending that actually are perceived as beneficial to individuals is far more likely to succeed and be sustainable.  Why does the “sacrifice” or “conserve” message not work? (more…)