So self driving car brands are currently in the process of offering subscription based self driving features.
Soon these subscriptions will be cheap enough for everybody to abandon public transport and get into their self driving cars instead.
This means that everybody will be in their cars and it will create the biggest traffic jam in human history!
And finally, self-driving cars will be totally safe and able to drive completely unsupervised! While standing still in traffic going an average of 5 km/h…
It will be beautiful (/s)
This is a much talked about risk in urban planning, where empty cars going slowly around inner suburbs will be cheaper than parking costs. The “zero occupant problem”
Congestion pricing, taxes based off mileage or driving time and providing depots on the edge of cities are ways to combat this
Parking Lot Piercer
The fact that this has a name is such an indictment of failures in urban planning. I’m going to assume an American coined the term because a lot of other places have not fought the idea of public transport as much as the American automobile industry.
I think it’s called “deadhead miles” in other contexts, like with shipping.
That would make sense actually. How would congestion pricing work though? Like you have to pay for the duration you occupy the road? How to track this?
It’s only really trackable with a gross amount of surveillance, either gps based inside the car or cameras on every street
I suppose they could do something like the toll roads, where you drive through a coil and trigger a wireless badge. Everytime you trigger it you will pay a certain fee. If you don’t have a badge, your license plate is recorded and you get sent a fine. Similar to speed cameras you already have.