People that temporarily leave chilly climates and head to warmer climates during the winter are … [+]
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Snowbirds.
They migrate seemingly en masse yet distinctly in a onesie-twosie fashion, dong so from the northern colder areas of the U.S. and Canada down into the southern parts of America during the winter months.
You might be thinking that I am talking about some migratory animals such as flocks of birds. Actually, I’m referring to human beings. Yes, people opt to escape the freezing temperatures and scoot down to southern locations in the Sun Belt once the harsh and frigid winter begins to rear its chilly head in ice-cold northern locales.
Snowbird is the cheeky moniker given to this brand of person. The name certainly befits their actions. They fly, drive, walk, and run to get away from the snowy climates of their hometowns. For the otherwise unbearably icy months of winter, the snowbirds set up camp in warm places such as parts of Arizona, Texas, California, and Florida.
When I say that they establish themselves temporarily in southern locations, this widely ranges in terms of formality versus informality.
Some people have a second home in their favored snowbird destination. During the rest of the year the house is pretty much boarded up and unused. They typically have a local contact watch over the property for them. Hopefully, their secondary home remains in a proper and preserved dormant state until the snowbird comes to roost during the winter.
Rather than owning a second home, some snowbirds book a lengthy stay at a resort in their targeted warm spot. Of course, the cost for this luxury can be a bit high. In some cases, the resorts are happy to have the bookings. You see, resorts that usually rely almost entirely on summer bookings and making money only in the hottest months are at times pleased to charge a reasonable rental cost for winter use. On the other hand, there are enough snowbirds and other business-related bookings during the winter that the daily, weekly, and monthly rental fees can often be kept at sky-high rates.
The traditional snowbird is a retiree (see my discussion at this link here), often subsisting on a rather constrained budget.
As such, one of the most popular forms of snowbird living consists of using an RV (recreational vehicle). The RV might be kept at home in the northern location for the bulk of the year and then used as a means of transit down to the southern warmer climates. It is a twofer. The RV can be used to get to the desired destination, plus the RV becomes the secondary home while staying in the more accommodating weather.
Massive RV communities of snowbirds can be readily seen in the south during the winter periods. There are RV parks that purposely try to attract snowbirds. The snowbirds are treated like royalty. The influx of the RVs and the spending by the snowbirds can make or break some of these RV housing businesses. In some cases, the RV parks are on wide-open desert or wilderness-like lands that would not have many other money-making possibilities other than serving the RV snowbirds.
In other cases, conventional year-round RV parks get themselves ready each winter for the added arrival of the snowbird RVs. One qualm is that this can lead to RVs packed together like sardines. Those that are always at the RV park are apt to resent the interlopers. That being said, many of the permanent RV residents are overjoyed to have the snowbirds arrive, providing a semblance of quaint freshness and newness for a while (and, then, the perm RVers are comforted by the fact that those interim visitors will ultimately head back out).
These RV communities can seemingly appear and later disappear as though miraculously occurring via the waving of a magic wand. The matter is typically a dramatically seasonal activity. During the time that the snowbirds are in town, all kinds of associated economic benefits get kicked into gear. Restaurants do brisk business. Entertainment venues flourish. And so on.
For many snowbirds, there is a tendency each year to reside in the same place for their escape from the wintry north. This creates familiarity and a type of bonding, sometimes alluded to as being a member of the snowbird family or imbuing the snowbird community spirit. People get to know each other in their warmer locale and become buddies. Snowbird buddies, as it were. This can be exciting. You have the joy of getting reacquainted during those winter months. Familiar faces can make the extended time away from your primary home a lot easier and make for an all-out fun time.
In some sense, the desire to avoid the cold weather is almost an excuse to have a kind of extended vacation. Sure, no one probably prefers having to shovel snow and deal with the problems of those overbearing winter months, but at the same time, they are drawn to the snowbird destination delights as much as getting away from the cold.
I should perhaps also mention that living in cold weather can be adverse to one’s health. Retirees are often more susceptible to the dangers of getting overly cold or finding themselves slipping while trying to walk on iced-up sidewalks and streets. A bona fide case can be made that you are potentially doing the right health-related effort when scooting down to a warmer locale for the winter.
Not everyone is entirely elated about those snowbirds.
Residents that live in the snowbird destinations are at times quite disturbed by the perceived intruders. Snowbirds are apt to cause local traffic congestion to worsen. This is partially due to the added volume of vehicles on the road in those areas during those packed-in months. It can also arise because the snowbirds do not know their way around the local byways and streets. In short, those snail-paced drivers that make radical turns and seem to do oddball driving are labeled as those darned intrepid snowbirds that ought to go back to where they came from.
Even snowbirds themselves are apt to eschew the snowbird moniker.
When someone in a local area asks if you are a snowbird, you are tempted to insist that you aren’t one. A clever relabeling is to refer to yourself as simply a winter visitor. This provides an immediate indication that you acknowledge your visitor status and want to emphasize that you respect the locals and consider yourself fortunate to be amongst them during the winter months.
I mentioned earlier that snowbirds tend to be retirees. This is somewhat a misleading portrayal if you think of retirees as sedate and just lolling around at their snowbird destination. The baby boomers that are in that classification today of retirees are often very active. They want to play golf, tennis and do lots of outdoor walking and hiking. Some like to take on part-time jobs in their snowbird destinations, either to make some added dough or to be active and give back to the local community.
There has also been a rising amount of blogging and vlogging by snowbirds. They are social butterflies that want to share their experiences with the masses. This can be helpful to newbie snowbirds. Many lessons learned from being a snowbird are being conveyed across social media. Out of this comes more snowbirds and likewise more informed snowbirds that are better equipped to be a snowbird.
The latest trend is the emergence of the zoombirds.
You’ve probably not heard about them. The naming is a clever readaptation of the snowbirds moniker and applies to those that are able to work remotely and that travel to warmer climates during the winter. As you know, the use of Zoom has become associated with being able to do your job remotely and online. Employers are less concerned about where you are living and mainly focused on having online access to you.
If you can arrange to work remotely, you might as well live in a locale that befits your preferences. Thus, many that are not retirees are now finding themselves lured into the snowbird existence. For most of the year, there are some remote workers that are living in the northern areas. Upon the onset of winter, they head down to southern locales just as snowbirds would do.
A key criterion for the zoombirds is that they must end up in a place that has really good Internet connectivity and will allow them to carry on their online work efforts seamlessly. Some RV parks have been caught off-guard by this requirement. Those behind-the-eight-ball RV parks were previously not especially worried about providing top-notch online access and broadband capabilities. Now they are.
On a lighter side about snowbirds, they frequently bring their pets along on their journey.
It would ostensibly be hard to imagine leaving behind your beloved dog or cat while you were frolicking in a warmer climate. Some like to refer to these snowbird accompanying pets as snowdogs and snowcats. I guess if you take your pet bird with you, it would be a snowbird snowbird (a droll piece of humor on my part, I must say).
The preponderance of snowbirds (the human ones) tends to be at the wheel of a car or RV for a lot of their snowbird efforts.
They drive a long distance from their primary home to the snowbird destination that they have chosen. Once they’ve gotten settled in at the destination, they drive around extensively in their new local area. This includes trips to the grocery store, visits with friends at nearby snowbird encampments, touristy types of trips, and the like. Eventually, they have to make that same long drive back to their primary home. Miles upon miles are racked up.
Driving, driving, driving.
The constant and ongoing ordeal of driving can be an onerous chore. You need to keep your wits about you and avoid getting into any car crashes or other maladies. Lots of driving woes can arise. A common aspect is inadvertently going faster than the speed limit and getting ticketed for the transgression. Plus, as earlier stated, your local driving might infuriate other drivers and confound the existing traffic situation.
It sure would be nifty to find a solution for dealing with all that needed driving.
Wait for a second, there is a potential solution that will gradually emerge. I’m referring to AI-based true self-driving cars.
Note that there isn’t a human driver involved in a true self-driving car. Keep in mind that true self-driving cars are driven via an AI driving system. There isn’t a need for a human driver at the wheel, and nor is there a provision for a human to drive the vehicle. For my extensive and ongoing coverage of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) and especially self-driving cars, see the link here.
Here’s an intriguing question that is worth pondering: How might the advent of AI-based true self-driving cars be a sizable benefit and a boon to the snowbirds and the zoombirds?
I’d like to first further clarify what is meant when I refer to true self-driving cars.
Understanding The Levels Of Self-Driving Cars
As a clarification, true self-driving cars are ones that the AI drives the car entirely on its own and there isn’t any human assistance during the driving task.
These driverless vehicles are considered Level 4 and Level 5 (see my explanation at this link here), while a car that requires a human driver to co-share the driving effort is usually considered at Level 2 or Level 3. The cars that co-share the driving task are described as being semi-autonomous, and typically contain a variety of automated add-on’s that are referred to as ADAS (Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems).
There is not yet a true self-driving car at Level 5, which we don’t yet even know if this will be possible to achieve, and nor how long it will take to get there.
Meanwhile, the Level 4 efforts are gradually trying to get some traction by undergoing very narrow and selective public roadway trials, though there is controversy over whether this testing should be allowed per se (we are all life-or-death guinea pigs in an experiment taking place on our highways and byways, some contend, see my coverage at this link here).
Since semi-autonomous cars require a human driver, the adoption of those types of cars won’t be markedly different than driving conventional vehicles, so there’s not much new per se to cover about them on this topic (though, as you’ll see in a moment, the points next made are generally applicable).
For semi-autonomous cars, it is important that the public needs to be forewarned about a disturbing aspect that’s been arising lately, namely that despite those human drivers that keep posting videos of themselves falling asleep at the wheel of a Level 2 or Level 3 car, we all need to avoid being misled into believing that the driver can take away their attention from the driving task while driving a semi-autonomous car.
You are the responsible party for the driving actions of the vehicle, regardless of how much automation might be tossed into a Level 2 or Level 3.
Self-Driving Cars And Snowbirds
For Level 4 and Level 5 true self-driving vehicles, there won’t be a human driver involved in the driving task.
All occupants will be passengers.
The AI is doing the driving.
One aspect to immediately discuss entails the fact that the AI involved in today’s AI driving systems is not sentient. In other words, the AI is altogether a collective of computer-based programming and algorithms, and most assuredly not able to reason in the same manner that humans can.
Why is this added emphasis about the AI not being sentient?
Because I want to underscore that when discussing the role of the AI driving system, I am not ascribing human qualities to the AI. Please be aware that there is an ongoing and dangerous tendency these days to anthropomorphize AI. In essence, people are assigning human-like sentience to today’s AI, despite the undeniable and inarguable fact that no such AI exists as yet.
With that clarification, you can envision that the AI driving system won’t natively somehow “know” about the facets of driving. Driving and all that it entails will need to be programmed as part of the hardware and software of the self-driving car.
Let’s dive into the myriad of aspects that come to play on this topic.
First, it is important to realize that not all AI self-driving cars are the same. Each automaker and self-driving tech firm is taking its own approach to devising self-driving cars. As such, it is difficult to make sweeping statements about what AI driving systems will do or not do.
Furthermore, whenever stating that an AI driving system doesn’t do some particular thing, this can, later on, be overtaken by developers that in fact program the computer to do that very thing. Step by step, AI driving systems are being gradually improved and extended. An existing limitation today might no longer exist in a future iteration or version of the system.
I trust that provides a sufficient litany of caveats to underlie what I am about to relate.
When I refer to self-driving cars, you can reasonably include in that rubric the advent of self-driving RVs.
By and large, the AI driving systems for a car are approximately the same as those for an RV. There are some subtle and yet notable differences, particularly related to the oversized aspects of an RV. You could say that a car is nimbler. For an RV, you have to be more judicious about making lane changes, taking those sharp turns, and otherwise take into account the lumbering nature of being a larger-sized vehicle.
Anyway, the beauty of an AI driving system for snowbirds is that they can sit back and let the AI do the driving for them.
On that lengthy cross-country trip to get to your snowbird destination, the AI will be dealing with all the driving-related stress and angst for you. You can be having fun and start partying right away. No need to be attentive to the roadways. Sleeping or taking a nap is a fully allowed action.
This brings up one potential spurring effect of AI self-driving cars for snowbirds. Whereas a snowbird might be reluctant to drive extended distances when having to sit at the wheel, the AI driving system will go for as far as the snowbird wants to go. This means that the southern locale for your snowbird destination can be even further away than it might otherwise have been.
If you were going only to Arizona for example because the drive to Florida seemed far distant, you can now try out the Florida snowbird destination with ease. Just instruct the AI driving system where you want to go and then let the AI take care of the rest of things for you. No-fuss, no worries.
Snowbirds are likely to be willing to try greater distance locales. They might also find it easier to stay at one place and then try another one. This might normally be exhausting. After having made a tiresome drive from your primary home, you want to get off the road and not make another long drive. With the AI driving system at your command, you can merely select another location and then see how things look once you get there.
In brief, snowbird migration is bound to go up in terms of lengthier distances, along with potentially doing switchovers during the snowbird migration period as a result of the self-driving capabilities.
There will also be an increase in people opting to be snowbirds since the hurdle of having to drive is taken out of the equation. Non-drivers and people that generally have a distaste for having to drive at length will be comforted by the notion that the self-driving vehicle will do that dirty work for them.
Another advantage will be the local driving facets.
A human driver is often unfamiliar with local roads and how to best traverse across town. The AI driving systems are likely to be specially trained for local driving nuances. Upon seeking to go to a local grocery store, the AI driving system will figure out how to get you there and do so with the least amount of disruption to local traffic. Locals will relish this capability.
Furthermore, you don’t need to necessarily go along for the ride on those local trips. You can send your self-driving vehicle to do an errand for you. Have it to go to the grocery store and preorder online, such that the clerks at the store will merely load your groceries into the autonomous vehicle and the food will be delivered back to you. Meanwhile, you are out hiking or hitting some golf balls.
We should though include some of the downsides or gotchas that might arise too.
For example, if you are living in your RV, it would seem pretty tough to send it out on a driving errand without you being inside. Your entire secondary home could become possibly errant and wayward, as it were. Of course, the RV should go do the errand and come right back, though this would seem a dicey situation to be in. Anything that happens to your RV means that you are suddenly without a place to live as a snowbird.
Another consideration is that some people love to drive. Yes, some snowbirds are eager to get into the driver’s seat and do the driving. Perhaps it is the thrill. Maybe it is the idea of being in command. Regardless of the reason, the point is that there are going to be snowbirds that don’t want to have the AI do the driving and will instead insist on doing the driving themselves.
That is a bit of a thorny thicket.
True self-driving cars will likely not have any driving controls that are accessible for a human driver. The belief is that if you include driving controls, people will be tempted to use them. This then suggests that a true self-driving car would sometimes be AI-driven and other times be human-driven. For those that want to reduce the number of car crashes and resultant injuries and fatalities, you need to get humans out of the driver’s seat entirely. No waffling about that. See my coverage at this link here.
There are some drivers today that exhort you will never get them to give up their driving. You will need to pry their cold dead hands from the steering wheel before they stop driving. Snowbirds that have that mindset are probably not going to be especially enamored about self-driving capabilities.
One supposes that you might have a human-driven RV and tow along with a self-driving car that you would use during your winter stay at a snowbird park. Or, maybe the reverse of that. You might have the RV be self-driving and then tow along a human-drivable car that you would use at your snowbird park.
Generally, it assuredly seems that most snowbirds would welcome the self-driving capabilities and be happy to not have to do any of the driving themselves. I’d bet inevitably this will be the predominant viewpoint.
Conclusion
We should also ponder the interests of the zoombirds.
They would seemingly relish the self-driving aspects. I say this because they can be working while amid a driving journey.
Instead of “wasting” time at the wheel, the zoombirds can be using their laptops, smartphones, and otherwise engaged in work activity during any of their road trips. The odds are that self-driving cars will be outfitted with high-speed connectivity. Passengers can tap into that facility and undertake Zoom-like live interactions at any time, including while on lengthy highways and byways.
There are a lot more twists and turns on this overall topic.
For example, I earlier mentioned that snowbirds often bring along their pets. Having a self-driving vehicle is handy when you think about the myriad of pet-related chores. You can put your beloved animal in a self-driving car and have them taken to the local vet. You might decide to send your dog to visit with nearby friends while you are on a golf outing. And so on.
There’s more.
While on your snowbird trek, relatives and acquaintances might want to come and visit you. They would seemingly be more inclined to do so if self-driving cars were available. They load the family into a self-driving car and head over to see the snowbird encampment that you are at.
Endless possibilities.
All of this showcases how mobility will change due to self-driving and autonomous vehicles. Pundits are describing a new era known as mobility-for-all. Once mobility becomes cheaper, easier, friction-free, and plentiful, our behavior as to how we live, where we live, and what we do is bound to be changed too.
Perhaps I’ve whetted your appetite about becoming a snowbird or a zoombird.
Now, all we need is the self-driving advent to emerge.