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That said.. I think most of the deaths we will come to associate with self-driving cars, trucks and other autonomous vehicles (such as delivery drones) will be from depression, despair. The current wave of taxi driver suicides in NYC is just the start.. With millions of people employed as drivers....
How so, through automation? I'm assuming you mean that initially most of these vehicles will need to be 'supervised' by a present driver as such. You see an oncoming wave or a gradual progression?
Chak-
How so, through automation? I'm assuming you mean that initially most of these vehicles will need to be 'supervised' by a present driver as such. You see an oncoming wave or a gradual progression?
I see the occupation of lorry driver as the first to go into fast decline. The industry employs alone in the UK 2.2 million people - the UK's fifth largest employer. That is a significant labour pool about to slam into a wall. How many of these people have skills or abilities that will allow them to transfer to other forms of similarly renumerated employment? Demand for people to handle the "last mile" will continue for awhile but those jobs are increasingly as sub-contracted "self-employed" with debt as entry ticket (and declining earnings)..
Right now the industry is lacking in drivers. Demand is high but as soon as automation-- and the shortage is just more fuel to the adoption-- takes hold these jobs will go the way of the dodo. If this is not the stuff for a mental health crisis in the making...
EdwardZ
Many people have been killed by semi-autonomous drones. This has often been the intent-- although all too often targets are misread. Real automonomus killer robots, however, are slowing entering the market. Kalashnikov Group, for example, has revealed it has developed a set of fully-automated combat robots. They are not alone.
That said.. I think most of the deaths we will come to associate with self-driving cars, trucks and other autonomous vehicles (such as delivery drones) will be from depression, despair. The current wave of taxi driver suicides in NYC is just the start.. With millions of people employed as drivers....