Self-Driving Cars

We aren't all on the same page as to how we are visualizing the next few years.

Some are talking about level 4 or 5 autonomy meaning the cars may not have a steering wheel and sleeping in the back seat is acceptable and normal. I think we may get there sooner than some do (and I have been through an IT career too). Percy is right that there will still be deaths but if they are way less than letting humans drive we're going to have to adjust to that or stick with killing lots and lots of people.

For the 2020's I'm seeing more of a level 3/4 autonomy where people will still have to "drive" and be attending to the cars behaviour a lot of the time (or all). However, I see a scenario where we will not be allowed to turn off the autopilot. Instead we will be able to override it for short periods of time only and we better be able to justify out taking over after the fact.

Tangle writes: But more importantly it removes the requirement to own a car or even rent one.... Imagine all those empty parking lots. - all that new space.

There's an incentive for the auto industry.

ringo writes: There's an incentive for the auto industry.

Yeh but their incentive is to still have a business at all.

They may even do better because in theory they could cut out the entire chain of distributors and dealerships. The cars just drive off the conveyor belt to wherever they're needed then work their wheels off generating fee income day and night.

Tangle writes: Yeh but their incentive is to still have a business at all.

They'll melt down every whale and cut down every tree to make fuel before they go gentle into that good night. And the public will support them whole-heartedly. (Have you heard about the kerfuffle over pipelines in Canada?)

... how will they feel about having their degree of safety taken out of their hands?

Well, I would guess they/we would feel pretty much the way we feel today when we give over our safety to airplanes, trains, ships and such. The first few experiences with the technology could be concerning/exciting to the novice but at around the 100th, just like the road warriors today living between airports and hotels, it could very well become ... mundane, boring, just there .

Maybe, but I don't plan to be a statistic in collataral damage until something better comes along.

If you drive yourself, or take a common carrier of any sort, you already participate in a risk pool of significant effects. Just add autonomous cars to the list. Right now the risk is not acceptable without an attending driver monitoring the show. So, as of now "autonomous cars" means they come with attending drivers. But, as NoseyNed conjectured upthread, this will not hold for too much longer.