[Tallguy]

Automation can work in a controlled situation in which nothing unexpected happens. There is no street or highway anywhere in the world where nothing unexpected happens.

I suppose that it might be possible for automated cars to operate in synchronous fashion on a smart highway that 'slots' cars into the traffic pattern, sort of allows for individual "flight plans". That might work... The problem is getting there. For a significant period of time there would remain human-piloted cars that would be outside the system's control, and so you're right back in the trap of having individual automated cars reacting to unanticipated moves of other vehicles. And that can never be near enough to 100% effective to preclude a significant number of crashes.

[cymbeline]

“on a smart highway”

I’d take a car that could drive itself only on smart highways because I think it will be easy to make thousands of miles of roads, especially open highways, smart.

Or maybe the car tell the highways it can handle just by knowing the highway it is on and knowing that it has been deemed ok for the car to handle.

When not on an “ok” highway the car would turn the driving over to me. Perhaps the car would turn the driving over to me if it felt it was in too much traffic or for other reasons.

The car’s brain should be very conservative, turning the driving over to me whenver it was even a little bit uncomfortable.