The irruption of autonomous vehicles in the United States will displace many workers but at the same time will create many more employment opportunities, according to a report released today by a Denver (Colorado) organization.
According to a Bell Policy Center report, some 3.8 million people working as “motor vehicle operators” would lose their jobs, but at the same time autonomous vehicles would benefit 11.7 million other workers for whom driving Is part of their work.
According to Rich Jones, director of public policy and research at that organization, the new class of vehicles would negatively affect 2.8% of the total workforce in the country, but would create new or better opportunities for 8.5% by allowing them “Greater productivity and better working conditions”.
According to this analysis, which used data from the US Department of Commerce, those most adversely affected by the foreseeable massification of these vehicles will be the drivers of large cargo trucks, light trucks or trolleys for deliveries or home delivery, as well as drivers of Buses and taxis.
But for others, such as security guards, emergency personnel and private chauffeurs, freewheeling cars would be an advantage, according to this analysis.
“Automated and self-propelled vehicles could be an important part of Colorado’s transportation infrastructure before we know it,” Jones says in his report, which he believes could occur in the country “before the ten years that Musk estimates.”
Jones referred to Elon Musk’s remarks on July 15 before US governors when business tycoon, founder of automaker Tesla, argued that in a decade most new cars in the US will be self-employed and in two decades drive one Conventional car will be something “rare and optional”.
In Colorado there are already prototypes of such autonomous vehicles, such as Otto, a truck that a year ago transported a load of beer from north to south of the state, or as the Autonomous Vehicle Impact Protection that the local transportation department began to use last week.
