Lets Fix It: Lets End Human Driving

TIME Ideas Innovation Lets Fix It: Lets End Human Driving Sam Shank, chief executive officer and co-founder of HotelTonight Inc., speaks during a Bloomberg West Television interview in San Francisco, California on Jan. 2, 2014. BloombergGetty Images

Sam Shank is the CEO and Co-Founder of HotelTonight

This Influencer post originally appeared on LinkedIn. Sam Shank shares his thoughts as part of LinkedIns Influencer series, Lets Fix It in which the brightest minds in business blog on LinkedIn about how they would fix whats broken in this world. LinkedIn Editor Amy Chen provides an overview of the 60+ Influencers that tackled this subject as part of the package. Follow Sam Shank and insights from other top minds in business on LinkedIn.

Ive long been fascinated by the idea of technology replacing human drivers.

Lets be honest: people arent always great drivers. They get distracted, tired and make mistakes. Technology can simply do a better job. This is a subject Ive thought about deeply for the past 20 years. I believe it will have as much impact on the world as the switch from horse transport to automobiles.

The consensus opinion is that safe and reliable driverless cars will be available within a few years. Tesla just announced Autopilot, which will be available soon via a software update, and will allow for autonomous driving on freeways an amazing first step.

Heres what I think will happen next: the initial use of drive-anywhere autonomous cars (I call them AutoCars) will be with companies like Uber or Lyft rather than individually owned. They will rapidly gain acceptance because theyll save people time (imagine all you could do with that time currently spent behind the wheel), will lower the costs of getting from one place to another, and will be way faster while also being safer than human driving.

Soon thereafter, as adoption skyrockets, cities will designate areas that are AutoCar-only. Lanes of highways will become AutoCar-exclusive, allowing for more density of driving and far higher speeds. Roughly 10 years from now we will see the End of Human Driving a seminal moment of the first half of the 21st century. Im guessing my young sons will not need to learn how to drive but Ill probably teach them anyway, as recreational driving is fun and wont ever go away, any more than automobiles put an end to recreational horse riding.

The benefits of AutoCars are so pronounced across many areas health, saved time, mobility of kids and seniors, lower road costs, efficiency all of which Id love to explore in future posts.

But what I think may be the biggest impact will be on our physical landscape. It always strikes me as interesting that the physical landscape hasnt changed all that much in decades, despite the fact that the way we work and communicate has changed dramatically thanks to information technology. Sure, buildings have more glass and cars have more rounded edges, but if you compare two photos from 50 years ago and today, its often hard to spot much difference in the landscape (besides a few outfit choices and smartphones).

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Lets Fix It: Lets End Human Driving