Driverless cars: how the movement is completely dependent on cascades
There are countless articles providing advice on how to review the movement toward driverless cars. While the initial discussion was centered on salient bad reviews and mistakes, it has become more complex as powerful reviews outshine the rest. For example, the Obama administration has provided encouraging words and resources to support the movement. While there are many network effects connected to the transition in to driverless cars including what to do with the massive amounts of data collected, I will be focusing on the transition toward public approval, and this effect on the infrastructure needed to create success.
There needs to be clusters of innovative people in order to gain a following to the driverless car movement. This will create tests for the technology to improve the mistakes that can be made. Without this following, the new technology will be seen as a luxury for a small portion of the nation and will never surpass a tipping point.
Assuming that the technology eventually surpasses this tipping point, the nation would benefit from a renewal of surrounding infrastructure. If the roads reflect technologies that improve safety through signals to the driverless cars themselves, accidents will diminish across the nation. While this may seem viable in certain areas of the country, it is hard to imagine driverless cars taking over the old technology in a complete switch within this lifetime. Instead, I believe that the use of the technology will encourage dense clusters where the technology is socially rejected. While the cars will discourage people from teaching their children to drive autonomous vehicles, other parts of the nation will be more motivated to push the traditional way of driving on their children. This divide between clusters of the population is already being seen with the divide between interstates and local roads who receive less maintenance. As a result, the push for autonomous vehicles has been skewed toward the commercial front of transporting goods. It is yet to be seen whether the general population will reach the threshold of acceptance over this new technology, but it has certainly reached a point of pertinence.
http://fleetowner.com/technology/one-day-humans-no-longer-wheel