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Shoutout to the 1995 issue of Popular Mechanics that swore we'd have no more traffic by 2005
I was digging through a box of my dad's old magazines from like 1993 in the garage last month and found this piece predicting self-driving cars would make traffic jams extinct by 2005. The writer went on about how by then we'd all just punch in a location and nap while our cars zipped around at 90 mph on roads that would never, ever clog up again. Fast forward to now and I sat in a 40 minute backup on I-95 near Philly just last Tuesday, staring at a semi that was very much not driving itself. The article even had this goofy illustration of a family playing cards in a car with no steering wheel, and the guy guessed the tech would cost about $800 extra per vehicle. Honestly it's kind of sweet how hopeful they were, but I got a real laugh out of it, especially since the same issue had a piece about how the internet would never replace going to the mall. Does anyone else have a favorite old prediction they come back to when they need a laugh?
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alexlewis1d ago
Used to think those old predictions were just silly clickbait before it was even a thing, but the more I read of them now the more I actually get why people believed it. My grandpa had a stack of Popular Science from the 60s swearing we'd all have robot butlers by 1980, and honestly reading it now just makes me feel bad for the guy.
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