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Abraham wrote:Care to fly without a pilot?

Even drones have pilots...somewhere...

Yeah, that's right and so more there are so more dangerous it gets. For drones it is the wide open sky, cars are on crowded roads. The only positive things I can think about is enjoying a cold brew while driving a driver-less car or maybe watching TV while driving and drinking a beer.

Soccerdad1995 wrote:I can envision a potential future where self driving technology is perfected, and there are self driving only freeways, not accessible to human driven vehicles. In theory, assuming perfect computer control of every vehicle, they could drive with very little distance between vehicles, meaning many more vehicles per mile of freeway, and resulting in less traffic congestion.

Of course, we aren't there yet. But then again, fifty years ago, hand held phones were something we saw on Star Trek, and the Internet was just a glint in Al Gore's eye. This technology will continue to improve, just like all other technologies. Let's just hope that it isn't vulnerable to hacking.

Good points, no doubt.
My thoughts:
All vehicles need to communicate with each other, a network interface and a common interface needs to be developed. Proprietary systems and standards need to be kept out and security has to be ensured. History showed its not going to happen because individualism would be nullified.
A transitional solution is required to keep human and machine apart. Why not using the railways already existing and build that system out?

I guess we will see a chaos coming up in less a common standard falls in place.
Individualism and egoism isn't going to take us to a working solution, especially not in case of a project with that magnitude.

Just my $.02.

Remember DOS and MS Word for DOS, it tooke a generation until it was widely adapted and quiet frankly it would never have made it without a GUI, a lots of frustration as well as crashes.
The common excuses were software and hardware problems and not to forget the user.
UNIX was already miles ahead and stable but the bean counters drove MS to success.
I compare the railway self driving system with UNIX and the cheapo version with rubber tires can be compared to DOS.
I am afraid we'll see many crashes until the human is banned from the streets.

Abraham wrote:It'll take some very brave souls to ride in self-crashing vehicles.

I'll never be one of em...

,,, and me neither, You'll see and hear many fake excuses in the future.

Abraham wrote:Wouldn't a more apt title be: Self Crashing Bus?

Well, basically yes but the bus was actually driving for a while by itself before the crash happened.
I wish they would say which insurance covers the incident and wether or not the self driving vehicle was insured. A friend of mine in the insurance business said there are no policies for operatorless vehicles yet.
One can only imagine how insurance will go up for all of us in the near future.

Just came across this article and thought it is worth a post.
Technology is not ready for self driving vehicles in public traffic.
But orridials don't ffall short on blaming a human being.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41923814