Since I was a boy, I always loved cars. My first sentence was “look at the car.” My affair with cars carried on to my teens, listening to Springsteen and Thunder Road, the car a place where anything is possible… adventure.
I am also keenly aware that automobiles are dangerous. We all feel safe when driving. However, motor vehicle crashes—not crime or terrorism—are the number one killer of healthy US citizens traveling in foreign countries.
We all know drinking and driving is an enormous problem. I first became aware of alcohol as a vice while at Wheatley High School, in Old Westbury, NY. I remember observing all those synthetic Mothers Against Drunk Driving a/k/a MADD t-shirts during the Reagan years. All in a hopeless effort to try to persuade us from drinking too many Piel’s at a house party before getting behind the wheel of your beat up Toyota Celica.
Now we observe soccer mom’s gabbing away on their iPhones while accidentally rear ending BMW’s. Let’s face the facts, car accidents are costly. Guess what? Our huge motor vehicle accident problem is about to be solved by Google.
I think Shakespeare said “kill all the lawyers.” Google is about to kill all of the ambulance chasers. It’s Trojan horse: self driving cars.
Google has been working on self-driving cars as a side project for years. The great state of California is that latest to legalize self-driving cars. So far, the cars have racked up more than 300,000 driving miles, and 50,000 of those miles were without any intervention from the human drivers, Google says. According to CNN, there have been no accidents while the cars were controlled by the computer. The only documented accident with one of the Google vehicles was a fender bender that took place while a human was in control.
Little tipsy after your fourth Glenfiddich, let Google drive you home. Bye DWI attorneys.
Distracted driving will be a thing of the past. You will be able to conduct a bit of quick research for work using Google on your Android while your Google self-driving car drives you to the Supermarket. That fender bender will be avoided. Bye accident chasers. Bye ambulance chaser commercials.
With no accidents, consumers will win big. Remove that hefty car insurance premium bill from your automatic deductions. If I were Warren Buffet I would sell Geico to the Chinese.
You friendly Hunt’s Point body shop… gone. With no more accidents, no need for new fenders. Auto body part suppliers… gone.
Look out, Google’s self-driving cars are about to cause a major disruption.
What do you think? Will Google kill all of the lawyers? What other fields do you think will be disrupted? Do you think American’s will be so willing to give up driving cars?
