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Baby Boomers Will LOVE Autonomous Cars (Trust Me!)
Will older people, older Americans, like autonomous cars? Or will they be annoyed by cars that drive themselves? Will there be too many other autonomous car-related disruptions happening?
I'm going to go out on a limb and assert that the baby boomers will LOVE autonomous cars! And I'm not alone.
David H. Keller wrote about driverless cars in his 1935 short story The Living Machine in a very explicit and detailed way. He even described who would like them - and why:
On Bloomberg, Dana Hull writes about how autonomous self-driving cars (AVs) will be the saviours of seniors in the suburbs (where 79 percent of them live).
“For the first time in history, older people are going to be the lifestyle leaders of a new technology,” said Joseph Coughlin, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s AgeLab in Cambridge. “Younger people may have had smartphones in their hands first, but it’s the 50-plus consumers who will be first with smart cars.”
Coughlin is confident that they will be happy to use them, given the alternative of being trapped in their houses. Jane Gould of Aging in Suburbia says the same thing:
Polls show that even today, there is a surprising level of interest in the self-driving car among older people. Autonomous cars will find a ready market with Baby Boomers as they grow older or frail. In contrast to other types of innovation, it is the disenfranchised- in this case, those who cannot or should not drive, who could be innovation pioneers.
Old people began to cross the continent in their own cars. Young people found the driverless car admirable for petting. The blind for the first time were safe. Parents found they could more safely send their children to school in the new car than in the old cars with a chauffeur.
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