Hopefully self driving cars are banned as with some other forms of automation that could put people out of work and may devolve society. Progress isn't always good.
Why bother? It isn't something to be concerned about because new jobs will be found and the world will improve. It's basic economic history. Don't be a Luddite. It isn't like the retail meltdown is causing mass nationwide unemployment, and driving is the same. It isn't our job to delay progress to prop up make-work jobs, and humans can be put to much better use doing other things than being behind a steering wheel.
In a different note, self-driving cars do have the potential to fix two big ills: car ownership and internal combusion engines. People have a lot of their wealth locked up in cars that just sit around all day, and once car ownership goes away in favor of self-driving ubers, that will all be released into new consumer spending. Also, mass redevelopment of parking lots, drive-thrus, strip malls and the like will occur. American cities have a massive amount of space dedicated to car ownership, and there will be a lot of opportunities to transform that. Secondarily, regulations should mandate that these fleets of self-driving ubers be electric, which has the potential to affect global carbon emissions darastically. Since they'll have to be new-builds anyway and geofencing will keep all trips below the point where charging will be an issue, ever one of these new cars can and should be electric. Of course, in an ideal world, we'll solve the problem of American automobile-oriented design in general, but this is a powerful opportunity for a high-impact low-investment transformation of our inefficient mobility networks until that can happen, and without car ownership, at least most people will opt to fly or train instead of road trip.
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