Self Driving Cars (SDCs) have been announced for production by some of the big car makers by 2020 and are being predicted to reach the mainstream by 2035 with around 12 million cars on the roads by that year. There are various kinds of SDC in the planning stage, basically ranging in the degree to which they are actually capable of driving without driver intervention. Gradually, of course, they will proceed to the point where little or no intervention is required. A recent study also predicts that by 2050, most of the cars and commercial vehicles on the road will be SDCs.
Kind of scary when you think abut it - eighteen wheelers charging down the road without a driver on board. But then we already have jumbo jets that can fly and land themselves and we don't worry much about that -don't even think about it much. One difference however is that the jets have pilots on board to take over when things go wrong. With the trucks, this would be the situation for quite a while as well, but there is a likelihood that eventually the drivers will be phased out.
Lots of implications of SDCs, social, business and otherwise. Here's one article on the subject.
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