[Yo-Yo]

We are within ten years of self-driving cars being the trend.

And in ten years we will still be within ten years of self-driving cars being the trend.

The problems with complete, door-to-door self-driving cars are so immense, they may never be solved.

Would you trust your life to a self-flying airplane that had no pilot onboard? That is a relatively benign environment, where the airports are very tightly controlled, the standards for runway and taxiway markings are extremely high, the maintenance level is immaculate, and yet we still haven't even tried to remove the pilot from the cockpit.

The problems with surface streets are infinitely more severe. Potholes. Snow. Faded lane markings. Pedestrians. Construction zones.

Self-driving cars will for the next 30 years or more be nothing more than an intelligent cruise control for freeway use.

[SamAdams76]

Autonomous cars will be here sooner than we think.

[Dr. Sivana]

The problems with surface streets are infinitely more severe. Potholes. Snow. Faded lane markings. Pedestrians. Construction zones.

... and an exponential increase in the number of bad actors and pranksters messing with the RF communication that the cars will have to have with other cars and the infrastructure to make 100% self-driving a reality.

[pepsionice]

Last year, the German gov’t gave the transport ministry three years to come up with the draft for allowing unmanned vehicles on the German autobahn system. Note the word “draft”. They’ve been given enough indication by Mercedes that their vehicle will be ready around 2020 to sell to the public (no guesses on the price but it’ll probably over $75k). I saw a demo of the car last week on German news, it’s routinely test-driven now on the autobahn with a guy in the seat but the computer handles everything).

What I see happening is that Germany will likely be the first country to approve this business, and the first country to note someone’s untimely death due to the autonomous vehicles. But about a year into approval there...there’s going to be significant pressure on US car makers to produce and for the fifty states to approve some kind of standard.

[Buckeye McFrog]

You’ll KNOW they are serious when they start bribing Congress to pass laws granting 100% liability exemption from any damages caused by autonomous vehicles.

[Paleo Conservative]

Would you trust your life to a self-flying airplane that had no pilot onboard? That is a relatively benign environment, where the airports are very tightly controlled, the standards for runway and taxiway markings are extremely high, the maintenance level is immaculate, and yet we still haven't even tried to remove the pilot from the cockpit.

The Air France seems to have done this in the 2000's. Air France flight 447 crashed, because the pilots didn't actually know how to fly the Airbus A330 manually in case the automation failed. The design of the joysticks used by the pilots also contributed to the crash. The pilot had no idea that the copilot was pitching the plane up when he needed to be pitching it down to regain airspeed. That mistake wouldn't have happend in a Boeing 777 cockpit where the control columns are linked together.