On Thu, 2018-04-26 at 11:03 +1000, David wrote: > > But perhaps with smart networked cars parking sensors will be > > obsolete. The car would simply tell the car park where it has > > parked. If that car park fills up, the car could drive itself > > elsewhere and come back when you are leaving. Self driving cars > > could make soccer moms (unpaid uber-drivers) obsolete. ;-) > Maybe!!!!
I just had a vision of an entire city turned into a clogged and slowly churning cauldron of driverless cars, all waiting to be called back to their owners, who are shopping, working... and didn't want to bother with parking. As soon as parking is a problem that people don't have to worry about, those who currently provide parking will stop providing parking, because the space could be used more profitably for other things. The amount of parking will decrease, all parking spaces will become short- stay (for loading and unloading) and cars not in active use will be told to go crawling around the city until needed... or flitting from short-stay parking spot to short-stay parking spot. Law of Unintended Consequences. Interesting thought experiment is to wonder what all those unused cars could be doing, what possibilities a critical mass of unused cars might pen up, the possibility of laws forbidding driverless cars from being driverless without an occupant for longer than X minutes, the possible rise of "car minder" as an occupation, the rise of dead driverless cars that ran out of energy, blocking traffic because there was nowhere to park... whew. Cars that can recognise an oncoming parking inspector and leave; parking spaces that communicate with cars and negotiate terms; parking spaces in areas that humans cannot go - deep underground, dark, airless. Regards, K. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Karl Auer ([email protected]) http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer http://twitter.com/kauer389 GPG fingerprint: A0CD 28F0 10BE FC21 C57C 67C1 19A6 83A4 9B0B 1D75 Old fingerprint: A52E F6B9 708B 51C4 85E6 1634 0571 ADF9 3C1C 6A3A _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
