It'll be wacky in ten years (or maybe it'll only be 5), when none of us are driving and all the cars are driving themselves.
Guess the LEO's then will have more time to focus on other activity.
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I've never met a local or state police LEO in CA who had a surplus of time
There's always more than double what they have time to handle, with the staff and budget they have available. Interesting thought exercise, how much of your state is funded from vehicle fines and tickets...
I've spoken that my day job is at a company that also happens to be committed to making self driving cars happen (
read my disclaimer then
follow this link for some interesting and amazing public info from this year's CES show regarding self driving cars), this is personally in the back of my mind every time I read about self driving cars.
In California, CHP (state police) is partially funded by vehicle license fees - what happens if people don't buy cars, but buy access to a car and the car does all the work? No more Taxi drivers, no more limo drivers, no more Uber or Lyft (at least not with people driving), fewer deliver drivers, fewer truck drivers... So less money for the government (they don't like the word "less" when it comes to their money
![[thumbzup]](https://www.steelsoldiers.com/images/smilies/icon_smile_thumzup.gif "Thumbs Up [thumbzup]")
), and more people out of work.
So the individual people who would normally pay for insurance, don't have to pay what they did since the risk is lower and likely moved to the manufacturer of the safety devices, less money is pushed into the underwriting business, so they won't need as many people to support the policies and claims - and also repairs would dry up, so the autobody business would likely collapse to. Like how cheap your paint is? What happens when a car only needs to be painted when it's built and the vehicle is retired after its design life with the same paint job? Aftermarket paint will likely be harder to get as well as someone who knows how to apply it.
If you re-watch the Jetsons where everybody had a flying car and everything is done for them by robots, it makes you ask what the heck George Jetson was doing at a job?
Better to build and service the robots that be the guy the robots replace - that said:
(
From my favorite people at Despair.com)
"I've also noticed that in the traffic "herd", if a driver sticks out, people give them more space and more drivers see this space and appear to wonder what's wrong with the driver that other people are leaving space for"
That's interesting- could improve safety. Besides driving a FMV or a fender flapper or painting car dayglo pink, what can we do to stick out?
That's not quite what I meant by "sticking out" - think the drunk guy who can't hold a lane, or the person texting who slams on their brakes when they realize that finishing their sentence would equal rear ending the person in front of them - then returns to their text when thy come to a stop ("crisis averted... Next!").
As for standing out in a good way, reflective markings during night and bright colors during the day will help - especially if you keep the flat CARC paint job. Adding lights up to the federal standard (on military vehicles that are not required to have them), will make your truck "blend in" to the expectations of drivers who are on auto-pilot (only seeing what they are looking for). Even if the reflective markings or lights are removable for shows and other "accuracy matters" events.
There is a
safety thread with a lot of good ideas - also good to think about what happens if you break down.
