On a large scale, the implication of self-driving vehicles is that of a more dependent world. If self-driving cars overtake the market, less people will buy cars, and therefore less people will learn how to drive. Eventually no one will know how to drive. There is also the trust that would be given to machines to handle moral dilemmas in a split second. How does someone program a car to decide between two bad outcomes, such as swerving one way and hitting someone vs swerving the other and injuring the people in the car? In another more immediate way, there would be a huge rise in the dependency of programs like unemployment and welfare due to a massive loss in driving centered jobs. This creates an increased dependency on education and skills training even for low level jobs. As a whole self-driving cars would have a huge negative economic impact, at least at first due to heavy upfront costs. It could also potentially collapse the entire automobile industry, because the only way this truly works is if every car on the road is fully autonomous.
However, there are positive aspects to self-driving cars. These vehicles would work by communicating with each other, thus increasing safety, and decreasing traffic. These cars would electric, those greatly reducing emissions and contributing to a cleaner environment. The most intriguing, in my opinion, is that self-driving vehicles would allow for cities to be redesigned in more human focused ways. As it is, so much room is wasted on street parking, parking lots, etc. Self-driving cars could be stored outside the city to be called upon as needed, thus freeing up said spaces to be better used.