What The Hell Actually Happens When You Hop In A Driverless Uber?

Whether you like it or not, at some point in the foreseeable future, a driverless car will offer to take you where you wanna go. Hopefully in a cutesy robot voice that makes you feel at ease with the whole situation. 

If you’re sitting there vehemently denying the entire situation, then we’ve got some news for you. The first fleet of driverless Ubers have already been rolled out in Pittsburgh and soon enough, they will spread to other cities and countries like a gnarly case of chlamydia at Uni Games.  

It’s not just Uber making the move, either. According to their Master Plan 2.0, electric car giants Tesla are planning to release their own driverless fleet and Uber’s direct US competitor, Lyft, partnered with GM back in January. 

In other words, accept your robot driver overlords or perish. 

Impending Uber/taxi driver mass retirement aside, there are still a number of questions that we have about driverless ride sharing. For starters, can it still be called ride sharing if you’re not sharing with a human? 

Here are our thoughts. 

Currently, entering an Uber or taxi involves a friendly greeting, clarifying your destination and preferred route and making sure you don’t get your 3am drunk kebab all over the interior. The small talk is often nice, too, although it can be one-sided if alcohol is thrown into the mix. 

So you bust out your phone and order an Uber, entering your destination address then and there. 5 minutes later, a car with a hella scary looking bunch of cameras rocks up and no one’s in the drivers seat. What. The fuck. Do you do? 

Well, currently, a trained Uber engineer and someone else taking notes will be in the vehicle to guide you through the experience, but for arguments sake, we’ll pretend we’re past that point and robot cars are getting around on their own.

Think about the little things. Will the robot be voice activated? What happens if it starts taking a different route? What if you need to stop the car and get out for any particular reason? Is it willing to participate in a politically charged debate with only half the facts? This shit is important. 

Realistically, a lot of these problems could probably be solved with some variety of control panel in the car or on the app that contains an emergency stop button, an option to change your route and a political smalltalk button for good measure, just like the DJ-3000. 

 

You’d also hope that there’s a team of people monitoring these cars at all times from a central location, so if one decides to drive its passenger into the ocean, it can be promptly stopped. 

Un-bloody-likely, friend. Why own an expensive car when you could instead summon one to your front door, get out at work and send it on its way. Fuck parking. 

The benefits that this model has on society will be pretty massive. For starters, a fleet of driverless cars will be able to service an entire city’s needs with much fewer vehicles, meaning less congestion on the roads and of course, less output of greenhouse gasses. 

We reckon this will work via a number of subscription services where the price will vary based on how often you need to get around and how far you need to go. A little like the driverless version of GoGet or ya run-o-the-mill hire car joint.  

But this will have far-reaching consequences across the globe. Obviously, professional drivers will be out of a job, but beyond that, how will this change play into car culture? 

Will there still be a place for luxury cars? Restored classic cars? Motor sports? Will we instead watch engineers compete to make the fastest driving robot? It will be exceptionally interesting to see how cultural trends transform as driverless cars become more commonplace. 

Just as there’s a Shannons to insure fancy cars, there will probably be a driverless service for similar vehicles. 

A sticky question indeed. Particularly when it comes to the lives of passengers and pedestrians. Who’s life should be spared and what factors are weighed up in making that decision? It’s a pretty immense topic that we covered recently. Many a kink will need to be ironed out before robots have free reign of the road. 

But what if you want to drive your own car? If part of the appeal of a driverless society is less congestion on the roads, do we allow those stubborn to accept change to potentially ruin the benefits for the rest? Short-term, the answer is pretty well obvious – there will be a mix of both. But when is the line drawn for the good of the majority and the environment? 

If you ask us, we think the change will happen by itself over time as people come to accept their new robotic drivers as safe and efficient, rather than scary and untrustworthy, kinda like the Fintech industry right now. Not everyone feels comfortable with tap-and-go or other electronic payment technology. These things take time to become accepted by the wider population.  

Another sticky one to think about, but increasingly important in this twacked out age of internet connected everything. 

Stealing a driverless car probably wouldn’t go down in the traditional sense, but with the vehicle connected to the interwebs, it’s vulnerable to hackers. 

What the bloody heck do you do if your car is suddenly hijacked? The doors are locked, the route is changed and you’re hopelessly sitting there waiting for a swift shiv and mugging combo. Robust security measures will be absolutely essential if driving robots really wanna earn our trust.