Too dumb to drive on their own, but very friendly.

Cnet has a Q&A with Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, who has returned to the board of the once-storied, long-struggling gaming company. In addition to comparing Atari to a successful child that graduated to drug addiction and jail as an adult, Bushnell waxes enthusiastic about auto-cars, the kind of vehicles that use software to do the driving. Google acknowledged recently that it has self-steering cars tooling around busy California streets and highways, monitoring traffic and god knows what else.

I know planes routinely use auto-pilot, but I think Bushnell is a little too sanguine about auto-cars in the near term, since a major psychological aspect of car ownership (in America at least) has to do with control and autonomy. (Thanks Newmark.) An excerpt:

“Nolan Bushnell: But the biggest thing for the near future is auto-cars, which will change everything.

Cnet: Tell me about that. Why do you think they’ll change everything, and how so?

Nolan Bushnell: It’ll be within five years, somewhere. The costs are there right now. The Google car actually was cost-effective. Think of no traffic congestion, highways that can hold 30 times as much traffic. Half the energy costs. It just goes on and on. The only issue is how powerful will be the Luddites.

Cnet: What do you imagine would be the chief objection of the Luddites?

Nolan Bushnell: The Schumpeterian creative destruction of entrenched interests. For example. every Teamster, cab driver, UPS driver, all these drivers will need to be retrained. Insurance will drop to a fraction of what it costs now. People don’t understand how horrible the average driver is. The number of body shops will be 20 percent of today. It’ll be disruptive, and they will not go away without a fight. Of course, bars will do a great business because drunk driving will be OK.”