I don’t want to see people getting too hopped up over these driver-less vehicles because they take the fun out of driving and I think there are millions of car owners who would agree. If the technology is supposed to be yet another one of those things that saves us from ourselves then I’m not interested. Driving a car is fun. Being driven in a car isn’t unless you’ve been invited to join in a limo party.
To a lot of people, perhaps most, driving is not fun, not after the initial few years of driving and after the novelty wears off.
Cars and trucks are just transportation, though there will be many who enjoy driving themselves.
I’m pretty sure that, if driverless vehicles prove to be safe and less expensive, and gives people a lot more free time to do other things, that eventually, nobody will miss the driver-involved vehicles. Even those that enjoy driving, will move on.
But, perhaps there will be a future for people-driven cars, where they can enjoy themselves, but on tracks and areas that are specifically set up for that kind of enjoyment.
If airplanes had been designed from the beginning to be easy to operate as everyday transportation, and if had also been affordable, that people would find that very difficult to give up too. But, the regular Joe and Jane out there don’t miss that at all, just like we don’t miss horseback riding or the horse-and-buggy. If we were to take away the horse-and-buggy from the Amish, they would be adversely affected, but they too will be taken off the roads, or the roads will be modified to give them their own lanes.
In any case, I’m pretty sure that as time passes, driverless vehicles will become the norm.