Self-driving cars will likely lead to more sex on the road, study says

Ford Motor Company is partnering with Walmart and Postmates to study how consumers would handle self-driving cars making deliveries to their doors. Self-driving vehicles have been expected to bring all kinds of futuristic benefits, including smarter cities and safer streets and highways. But some U.K. researchers have identified a potentially more risqué repercussion of the autonomous vehicle revolution: more sex in cars since no one has to be behind the wheel. More than a dozen automakers and companies such as Uber, Lyft and Alphabet's self-driving car company Waymo have been testing autonomous vehicles. While some accidents have slowed those tests, overall safety is expected to be enhanced with autonomous net-connected vehicles, with researchers estimating up to 90 percent of traffic accidents could be avoided, U.K. researchers Scott Cohen, a tourism and transport professor at the University of Surrey, and Debbie Hopkins, a geography and environmental researcher University of Oxford, write in the Annals of Tourism Research. Autonomous vehicles are expected to be widely available by 2025 and, the most optimistic forecasts indicate, the primary means of car transportation globally, they say.