[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by polak

I also don't buy this "even if it's not reliable it'll still be safer than humans" angle.

Sure, 50 years from now, if everything goes smoothly and every car on the road happens to be a self driving car, we might have a network that can compensate for a faulty car, but even then, how do you think the world will react to the first time one of these cars has an error and slams in to a median and kills all of it's passengers? Right now when we hear about an accident, we have the nice reassurance and ability to tell ourselves that "hey, that won't happen to me, that driver was just an idiot, I won't do that". The moment that goes away you enter a much different world of comfort. Think about the fear people get from flying but now imagine you had that same feeling every time you got in your car. That's exactly what will happen if these cars crash with any sort of regularity.

So even though it might be safer overall, I think the lack of control is far more off putting than the actual statistical risk of being in an accident, much like flying.

I think you guys are kidding yourselves if you think this transition will be so smooth. We've also seen how slow the world is to adapt to infrastructure needs for new driving technology. I work for a fuel retailer and distributor and our CEO flat out laughed when someone asked about EV charging stations being rolled out in our retail network. It'd be such a great thing for the world for these electric cars to catch on, but we still don't do anything about it, why? Cause it takes a lot of benefit for us to "fix" something that isn't necessarily broken.

I personally think self driven cars will have to be perfect and completely autonomous out the gate for them to catch on.

This post is essentially the definition of Hubris.