Self-driving cars could be used for sex, nightlife: study

Nigel Roddis/Getty Images

• Once fully self-driving cars are prevalent, the time we used
  to spend driving can be filled with other activities.
• Researchers from the Universities of Surrey and Oxford
  examined their effect on urban tourism and nightlife.
• Their paper says hotels-by-the-hour could be replaced by
  self-driving cars, like a roving red-light district.

Roving brothels could be the new norm once fully self-driving
cars hit the streets, according to new research into their effect
on the future of urban tourism.

“Hotels-by the hour are likely to be replaced by connected and
autonomous vehicles (CAVs),” Scott Cohen and Debbie Hopkins write
in the
Annals of Tourism Research journal for publication in January
2019. “This will have implications for urban tourism, as sex
plays a central role in many tourism experiences.”

Fast Company first
reported on the paper this week. Without the need for actual
driving — or a steering wheel, pedals, and everything involved —
autonomous cars have more room for other activities, from roving
restaurants to bars or hotels.

Of course, with connection comes surveillance, and most owners or
operators of the cars will probably have security in place
through cameras or other monitoring, the researchers point out.
However, they say “such surveillance may be rapidly overcome,
disabled or removed.”

“Moreover, personal CAVs will likely be immune from such
surveillance,” they say. “Such private CAVs may also be put to
commercial use, as it is just a small leap to imagine Amsterdam’s
Red Light District ‘on the move.'”

Read more:

Waymo’s first commercial self-driving rides could happen as soon
as December: report

This is only the beginning of research into how autonomous cars
could affect tourism, as most research has gone into their effect
on traffic and commuting. Still, the paper’s authors hope their
work “contributes a foundation and starting point for a new
empirical sub-field in tourism research, centered on CAV
innovations and the tourism system.”

How exactly self-driving cars will use the interior space once
things necessary for human driving are obsolete is unclear, and
the paper’s authors are quick to recognize that. Instead, they
say “these very uncertainties offer timely, interesting and
important opportunities for scholars to reconceptualise the urban
in tourism studies, and to delve into the inner workings of urban
life and urban tourism to contribute to discourses of urban
futures.”