LONDON — A new article published in the Annals of Tourism Research offers an insight that is hard to ignore: Autonomous vehicles are the future, and they likely will change the way we have sex.
The new article discusses how driverless cars will reshape how we travel for work and leisure, with also the potential to create a red-light district on wheels.
Scott Cohen, deputy director of research of the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at the University of Surrey in the U.K., who led the study, wrote that the “the intersection of automated mobility and the urban night” might create a “growing phenomenon.”
“For instance, ‘hotels-by-the-hour’ are likely to be replaced by [autonomous vehicles], and this will have implications for urban tourism, as sex plays a central role in many tourism experiences,” Cohen said.
“Personal [autonomous vehicles] will likely be immune from such surveillance,” he noted. “Such private [autonomous vehicles], may also be put to commercial use, as it is just a small leap to imagine Amsterdam’s Red Light District on the move.”
Cohen’s study looks at all sorts of potential issues involving autonomous vehicles that could lead to new socioeconomic opportunities and a range of threats and inequities.
But the focus on sex and such cars is dead on considering that, according to one report, about 84 percent of all Americans have had sex in a car.