It's certainly the case that societal changes are hard to predict. It might be the case that self-driving vehicles will encourage longer drives, for example. T

It's certainly the case that societal changes are hard to predict. It might be the case that self-driving vehicles will encourage longer drives, for example. That said, I think my own personal carbon footprint would likely fall, because most of the time I could use a much smaller vehicle. Unless I doubled the amount of time I spent on the road, I'd probably use less energy overall, as I could use a 2 seater car with half the mass. Public transport is, of course, much more efficient; but it's also much less convenient, and at least in my country, more expensive. It costs less to run my car for a year than it would be to pay the equivalent bus fare for a year. If buses were self-driving, maybe the opposite would be true.