This is definitely happening. City life is becoming more popular w/ the younger generations. I'm a millennial myself who grew up in white bread Midwestern suburbs. After living in a relatively walkable suburb of a major west coast city for the past decade I've come to like having a blend of the urban and suburban lifestyle. I like living in a safe community with good schools and the like, but also don't want to live in a boring white bread community.

 

I absolutely agree. We are living it. We lived out in the 'burbs in South Florida and commuted 60 miles a day back and forth to work. When we moved to Dallas 10 years ago, we could get a lot more house a lot closer to the city, so we bought in the Metroplex and no longer commute. I negotiated with my company to work from home.

The new construction popping up in the area is mind-boggling. We also live near several historic districts, and there are many Millennials and Gen Xers with families moving in and restoring the homes. (The number of SUVs in the area is obnoxious.) The old Italian restaurant mainstays are closing and "fresh kitchens" and juicing places are opening up. Houses in our neighborhood barely stay on the market now. We got our first Starbucks right around the corner, so there you go. I'm glad to see this trend happening.

 

While I agree with you, in every other car I see there is someone holding a device up in his/her face yelling into it or looking down texting. These people already have a false sense of confidence that they are actually focused on driving and they are anything but. These are the people running over into someone else's lane or running across 3 lanes of traffic to take a quick turn because they didn't realize where they were. I'm not sure it could get much worse.

 

That's a very valid point as well, as I'm sure some of these automatic braking systems like on the newer model Benzes have already saved lives from idiots looking down at their phone and not realizing traffic had come to a quick stop.

 

Self driving vehicles are inevitable. Timing, regulations, etc., all to evolve but there will be much higher cost and much more aggravation for those who still insist on 'driving'.
We only have plane pilots today because of unions plus the public woukd freak out without them.

More autonomous capabilities may come to freight by land and air first.

 

We have human pilots because computers can, and sometimes do, fail. One of the many different things I did at FAA Flight Procedures, when I was still working, was to help produce and chart autopilot-coupled approaches to airport runways, when that type of approach was feasible.

 

Computers can fly very well, and they never get tired nor bored, so we need them to fly these loong 15-hour flights over the featureless North Pole. But human pilots do much better in crisis situations, and the best know how to use just the right amount of computer-assist to bring the best out of a bad situation. Just witness the Hudson River landing.

 

As someone looking for a Single family home inside the beltway. I don't appreciate the price jump in the last 5 years. It's made my Property taxes go up due to appraisals AND made it all but impossible to afford without selling one of my condos.

 

I think in the next 20 yrs the Chrysler's of the world or any other car company that is not working on a self driving car will cease to exist.
Also,the car insurance business model will cease to exist.

 

I don't think you will see driver-operated cars completely abandoned any time soon but there will be a time when you may see more and more drivers opting to let the car drive. That seemingly endless monotonous highway that's putting you to sleep. The slow gridlock where you have to stop-and-go.

As people are saying, it's simply easier to live closer to work and/or work from home. A drive to and from work in gridlock for two hours a day, is two lost hours whether the car's driving or you're driving.

Technology will creep in gradually. It already has - it's called the cruise control. It gives you a break on a long monotonous arrow-straight highway. That's evolved to radar-guided distance cruise control and then into auto braking and lane drift alert and even steering you back into your intended path.

 

Yep. Autopilots fly the vast majority of approaches (unknown to passengers sitting in the back), especially in densely crowded airspace at major hubs and in bad weather. With the improvements in cockpit display and the growth of GPS/WAAS approaches - automation will be a big factor in the future to deliver even more accuracy. But in the end the human pilot makes the landing.

Generally when the automation doesn't have the "what-if" factors programmed into it, I agree. Pilots get very bored trying to stay alert on 15 hour oceanic flights and it's a struggle to stay awake in pitch black with just the blast of air and the hum of the engines and instruments lit up to keep you company.

The human computer sitting up front can deal with complex emergency situations much sooner. When the BA flight over the Indian Ocean flew into volcanic ash, automation wasn't going to do much and so yeah, the human pilots saved the day big time.

I think it's a human/machine interaction issue and it's a grey area as tech evolves. The Hudson River landing was recreated in a full motion advanced simulator and 50% of the time, it showed they could have made it to a runway.

The Colgan Air crash (which triggered the new 1500 ATP rule) showed that the pilots made beginner level mistakes because they were paralyzed with indecision and fatigued. The automation was trying to save them, and the pilot flying simply forced the aircraft into an even worse situation.

And that Asiana crash a few years ago at SFO was a weird one. The pilots had thousands and thousands of hours between them and yet they couldn't even execute a simple hand-flown approach on their triple-7. They had relied on so much automation in their careers, they forgot how to hand-fly a visual approach for the last part of the flight onto the runway. The plane's automation system might have saved them there.

 

the day the steering wheel vanishes from the dashboard will be a very sad day. I love to drive

 

but you trust someone texting, talking on the phone, God knows what else......?

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pubs/812115.pdf

 

The average age of an automobile in the US is 11.5 years old. If self driving cars were introduced in 2017, (they won't) it would take over a decade for them to dominate the roads. By the time the self driving car takes over, most folks posting on this forum will be on Medicare and won't give a #$*%*.
BTW, anyone remember:
The Hovercar will replace all cars with tires.
The Gas Turbine will replace the gasoline engine.
And my personal favorite, the 1955 Motor Trend prediction that within 5 years, all cars sold in the US will be V-8s.
Ah yes, fearless predictions and new innovations that never worked, I remember them well.

 

well didn't most cars have V8s in the mid to late 50s?