Will autonomous cars change our lives for the better?
Jeffrey Tumlin is director of strategy with transportation, planning and engineering firm NelsonNygaard in San Francisco.
An expert on autonomous vehicles, he will be speaking in Cork at the Academy of Urbanism Congress, and he sees a few potential problems.
Jeffrey believes autonomous cars will increase traffic congestion: "People think that adding capacity and widening roads will solve congestion, but making driving more convenient will actually reduce the number of kilometres people will drive."
"People place a very high value on their time, and when buses are stuck in traffic or are unreliable, people choose the mode that is most reliable, so there's been a massive increase in congestion in both New York and San Francisco."
Jeffrey says that cities all over the world are facing similar problems, but that investing in public transport would be a wise move: "We can move ten times as many people per square metre of roadway in a bus than we can in a private car."
He also has worries about privacy and freedom, as Google is the biggest investor in autonomous vehicle technology.
"They make money knowing a lot of personal information about you. The revenue model for autonomous vehicles is going to be advertising, specifically taking advantage of the value of time in the people inside that vehicle."
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