Self-driving vehicles that never go faster than 25 miles per hour could soon be delivering groceries and retail products along sidewalks and local roads.[1]
That’s partly because federal and state regulations recognize a special category of "low-speed vehicles" that don’t require all the safety features needed for highway driving.
As long as the delivery vehicles don’t go faster than 25 miles per hour or go on streets with speed limits over 35 miles per hour, developers have more flexibility.
There’s a lot of experimentation going on right now, but also a lot of work to be done before fully autonomous vehicles are ready to deliver your pizza. However, in both practical and regulatory terms, these self-driving delivery vehicles are far less challenging to develop than drone delivery services.
And the potential impact is staggering. "Autonomous delivery could transform all of retail," according to The Wall Street Journal. That would further accelerate "the shift from stores to e-commerce." In fact, the paper adds, “with sufficiently inexpensive autonomous delivery services, we might stop going to the grocery store, or at least stop carrying our groceries home.”
Each weekday, Scott Rasmussen’s Number of the Day explores interesting and newsworthy topics at the intersection of culture, politics, and technology. Columns published on Ballotpedia reflect the views of the author.
Scott Rasmussen is founder and president of the Rasmussen Media Group. He is the author of "Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System," "In Search of Self-Governance," and "The People’s Money: How Voters Will Balance the Budget and Eliminate the Federal Debt." Read more rep ts from Scott Rasmussen — Click Here Now.
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