Speaking of unemployed drivers, the sharing of autonomous vehicles isn’t happening today or tomorrow, but there’s no reason why it can’t be a reality in the not-too distant future. From Jack Smith IV at Betabeat:

“The world is covered in unused cars — absolutely blanketed with them. All day, our cars sit useless in driveways and parking garages, sitting idle for far longer than we’re actually driving them. But what if when we got out of our car, it automatically drove off to give someone else a lift, and then kept doing so, day in, day out?

A pair of researchers from the University of Texas have published a report outlining the possible impacts of Shared Automated Vehicles (SAVs). For the study, the team simulated a hypothetical cab service of self-driven cars like the kind Google has already developed. They found that in a dense enough urban area — this example used Austin, Texas — the system would replace about nine out of ten vehicles while ‘maintaining a reasonable level of service,’ as measured by the time people spent waiting for a ride. The test was run entirely on paper, modeled mathematically using Austin’s existing daily traffic data.

The hypothetical service would function like Uber, only without drivers who need to sleep, take breaks, be paid, and other feeble human shortcomings. The city-wide program would know enough to know who could carpooling with who, and estimate departure and arrival times, so the cars would minimize the amount of time spent uselessly idling. Ideally, this kind of service would supplant the need for many people to actually own a car.”