Automous vehicles are an 80/20 90/10 problem....
80-90% of the effort will be in the final 10-20% of the problem...
The fact that you don’t have autonomous trucks or busses doing interstate runs, shows you just how far away we are from autonomous vehicles..
The interstate run is a far simpler problem... All traffic is flowing in the same direction, no cross traffic, etc etc... Yet, here we are NOT having anything autonomous doing this yet, they are driving cars around metropolitan areas... This stuff is being oversold folks.. its not there yet, not by a long shot.
Yes, accidents happen every day, and will continue to happen even with autonomous vehicles, however, the bill of sale that we are on the verge of autonomous vehicles for the masses is complete BS.
Its being overhyped and over sold... its got a LOT more baking to do. I do hope they get it done, particularly so older and visually or otherwise disabled individuals may have the same freedom of movement the rest of us enjoy. I certainly do not want to think of the day when I am old and must give up my car...
But this accident or not, the tech is not remotely there yet...
“But this accident or not, the tech is not remotely there yet”
The tech has gotten this far by being given a complete pass on all the rigorousness that automatic aircraft and train systems are forced to deal with. If they keep giving them a pass then we can expect a lot more deaths. The first automatic pilot type device was made in 1910. Yeah just a few years after planes were invented. But it was a LONG time before passenger jets were allowed to use ‘autoland’ capability. Doing something as an experiment is not the same as having it ready for prime time commercial use.