Will Autonomous Cars & Mobile Gyms Help With America’s Obesity Epidemic?
One of the top posts on Hacker News right now is an announcement from the CDC that 70.7% of US adults are overweight.
Reading the comments, one user (3pt14159) mentioned that the issue is American city design:
“This is directly related to the way American cities are designed. It’s a car centric culture where big houses are far away from each other. That means driving everywhere. That means long commutes. That means TV over communal activity. That means big grocery runs with shelf stable food.
Then pile on hyper sweet drinks and nutritional misinformation campaigns, and of course Americans are going to be overweight.”
This analysis feels pretty spot on to me & it makes me wonder how American’s lives might change with the advent of autonomous vehicles. It’s going to take time to adjust the car centric, commute based culture that stems from the houses. But, one interesting thing that could happen is that we might have mobile gyms. What if instead of driving my car to work, I could take a “Peleton” or “Soul Cycle” ride to work, where I’m doing a studio cycling class during the commute.
If we assume that fewer and fewer people will own cars over time, and instead opt for “cars as a service” (Uber, Lyft etc.), there’ll likely be increased competition around what the experiences during the ride will be like (e.g. food services, entertainment, work stations & more). Consider that companies like Google & Microsoft already pick up employees in Wifi Enabled buses for them to be able to work during their commutes.
Self-driving cars will allow for us to have that commute time freed up from driving, which will be a substantial new surplus of human time available. What we end up doing with that time will depend substantially on how governments regulate Autonomous Vehicles. For example, will we need to be seated at all times in a self-driving car, or will you be able to walk around and do all kinds of new activities?
It could be that all that spare time at least helps give people the opportunity to use their commutes for exercise, meditation, education and more productive / communal activities. Pretty much anything that happens in a building right now, could one day happen in an autonomous car.
