In Brian MacIver’s Christian Science Monitor article about autonomous automobiles, former GM executive Larry Burns predicts that Google driverless cars may be road-ready by 2018. That seems very aggressive, but if it’s true, that development would have great benefits, including lives saved and environmental damage mitigated, and pose equally formidable challenges. The piece highlights liability as a major issue, and it’s certainly an obstacle, but it seems a much more surmountable one to me than replacing the tens of millions of jobs that will disappear in the transition.

An excerpt:

For [SAFE CEO] Robbie Diamond, the importance of autonomous electric cars is linked to safeguarding the country’s energy security – and national security.

“We are dependent on one fuel source for the entire transportation sector,” Diamond says. Even as domestic oil production increases, he says, Americans should reduce their reliance on oil across the board.

Diamond also says the driverless car industry “needs to be a faster tortoise or a more focused hare” to make these vehicles widely available as soon as possible.

As for Domino’s Pizza, the country’s largest pizza restaurateur, having a fleet of autonomous vehicles would greatly reduce operating costs for franchises delivering hundreds of pizzas every day.

“Ten million miles per week are covered by Domino’s delivery drivers,” [VP of communications] Lynn Liddle says during the panel at the National Press Club. According to her, most of the company’s delivery drivers use their own cars, gas, and insurance. Franchise owners reimburse them for on-the-job use of their own vehicles. Trimming back could increase profitability for franchises, even if it pushes out drivers.•