Self driving cars don't preclude private ownership by you. Or ownership of a 7 person SUV sized vehicle.

It does not preclude you being able to rent a 7 person vehicle when you need it.

Or if you own the 7 person vehicle to rent a 1 or 2 person vehicle to commute in.

Costs will be lower and likely most insurance and taxes will be mileage based. So you will have incentives to use the lowest cost vehicle from various sources.
 

Since I telecommute I don't need roads. Other than the Information Highway! :-)

Yes more roads.

In the final evolution of self driving cars (once human driven ones are eliminated) far denser traffic (less headway between cars) can be safely used. That with smaller (skinnier) cars can build scenarios that match anything else for numbers of passengers moved per hour.

More to the point is (for the most part) roads are less expensive than most other mass transit options. The biggest win with moving to mass transit robo-car style is that the public funds their own rolling stock. No more costly tax funded capital outlays for expensive buses, sub-way cars, light rail cars etc. No more costly maintenance. No more costly overhead for managing and running them. Bigger still no more boondoggles with adoption of too expensive systems or systems that don't work or don't suit the purpose etc.

Just fund roads. Let the public fund their own cars to use it. There will be a mix of private ownership and large companies (e.g. Uber) buying fleets and utilizing them as robo-taxis. But this gets government out of the business of providing mass-transit. That means lower taxes and more efficiency as people purchase the best option for their needs.

Just turned sixty. Still can't stomach whisky or pretty much any hard liquor thanks to Dad letting me get a little too much at 18.

The cost structure for Uber drivers is very similar to taxi services and over time will approach them.

Except for the cost to the taxi operators for their medallion. Since there is a a limited number of medallions and you need one to operate they tend to get transferred at great cost. For example a quick Google query for cost of taxi medallion nyc tells us that the current cost is down to $840,000 from a peak of $1.05 million in June 2013.

So the major cost of operation becomes the cost of financing the medallion. In fact (again according to Google) in most instances the medallions are owned by investment companies and leased to actual drivers.

Uber exists to disrupt the requirement for the medallions. They provide a lower friction billing system that makes it easier for both users and drivers to participate.

The ONLY people who are against Uber in the long term are the current owners of medallions. If Uber succeeds their investments will be valueless.

Part of the problem with the recent shooting of the kid with a toy gun was the cop's arriving in a car at full speed and stopping literally a few feet away from the kid. They then had no opportunity to assess the situation and instead pulled out the guns and shot him because they now where afraid they might get shot.

Since the park was empty it would have been far more appropriate to stop and assess from a distance.

So a (possibly) correct reaction to the circumstance they arrived at. But they arrived at that circumstance because of some very bad decisions made as they arrived.

The movie will be released when they can find the backup copy of the official version!

When they went to do a final review on the release copy of the movie they discovered that there had been a final edit courtesy of the "hackers" that apparently changed the ending. Lets just say that Seth Rogan was not amused at how his character ended up.

That is the point.

If the US court wants this data it needs to subpoena the document in an IRISH court and have the Irish division of Microsoft (which operates under Irish law) deliver it.

The current situation is that the US court wants to compel a company (owned by a US company) that is based and operated in Ireland to do something that may break Irish law.

How is/was Fukushima a deadly reminder?

Other than perhaps some deaths from the mishandled (over reaction?) evacuation?

And projected deaths from (drum roll....) computer models on increased cancer deaths.

Compare that to anything else (disasters involving or manufacturing or operating other types of power plants) and nuclear still smells pretty rosy.

And the companies that will finance these fleets and deploy them really really really do not want them be considered as taxis which would bring them under (mostly) municipal taxi regimes.

You can bet that the taxi companies will be all for forcing all self driving cars to have a taxi medallion and a "driver" to ensure that it is safe for the passengers.

It is likely that Uber et al consider their current solution as a market maker to get them into this type of solution. Their app will work just as well for cars with or without drivers. And if cars without drivers are no longer taxis, so much the better from their perspective.

Self driving cars in no way prevent you from being free and using the highway system to move around.

And for many people who cannot drive (too young, too old, disabilities) it makes it possible to do the same without having to hire someone to drive them around.

There are still people who like to smoke in public and other people who would love to be able to drink and drive. Neither of those groups is terribly happy that they don't live in the fifties or sixties. Those of us who grew up in the fifties and sixties are happy that the fifties and sixties are over and that the smokers and drunk drivers are unhappy with life.

People riding horses and bicycles don't usually kill too many people in traffic accidents.

People driving cars kill roughly 30,000 people a year in the US. As soon as a replacement shows up that can reduce that significantly there will be a huge push to implement it quickly. It will take about a for human drivers to get to same place as smokers and drunk drivers are today. Shunned and stigmatized because they make life dangerous and unpleasant for everybody else.

And is more convenient. Book your UHaul on line and the truck drives itself to where you need it. You can fill it up and it will deliver its load to where it is needed (and you don't need to go with it.) Once unloaded it will deliver itself back to UHaul (or its next customer.)

So you save time. And in many instances day or multi day rentals can be reduced in length so can be cheaper. But UHaul probably can keep the vehicle rented out more often so still get more revenue per vehicle.

Also, parking lots can get a lot more efficient. Cars can self park them selves 4-5 deep. Any time one in the middle needs to leave the ones on the outside can just unpark themselves long enough to let it out. So your parking lot density about doubles.