...AND CHEAPER...:

Straightaway, the benefits of the technology seem world-changing. People with disabilities will find their lives made much easier. Traffic accidents will probably decline significantly. Traffic efficiency will help reduce emissions (if there are emissions). I would argue that the secondary effects will be even more game-changing.

Road rage could disappear. It is much easier to take personally the driving sleights of a human being than an impersonal machine. (There might be "car-rage," in the future but its psychology will probably differ.)

DUIs will be much rarer. Self-driving cars will presumably be equipped with a mechanism that prevents operation or inhabiting by passengers who wouldn't be able to take over in an emergency; alternatively, they might well be programmed to drive extra carefully with a passenger who is inebriated.

Car insurance -- no longer necessary. (Some insurance might be, but the liability will transfer to the machine, not on the driver.)

And human beings will learn, as Wired put it, how not to drive. Driving two hours a day takes up more brainspace than riding two hours a day. We might become more productive or perhaps we will use the time to relax before work; perhaps we will consume more media -- we don't really know what our brains are going to do it with the experience, but Volvo, Google, and other companies are doing their best to figure that out.

I've thought of a few other mainstays of daily life that everything will have to rethink.

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