It's dangerous enough out on the road, without some driver turning over control to a computer that may or may not be up to the task - and the computer itself is at the mercy of ALL the subsystems (sensors) it relies on. Failure of any one could result in innocent deaths.
It seems to me that we're in a dangerous zone between "normal" manual control of vehicles and fully automated machines that are not fully cooked, where failures have huge impacts.
If and when "flying cars" become prevalent, and people who have no idea how to fly get behind the wheel and push the "automatic" button, these dangers will only increase.
fully automated cars are significantly safer than real drivers already.
Are they perfect? no, but they already exceed the performance of a human in terms of safety.
Intersections for instance are where most accidents occur. And a fully automated car can look every direction at the same time. Something a human can never do.
Meatbags rely on a lot of 'subsystems' too. Easy to find articles of someone having a heart attack or seizure behind the wheel.
In the end the data will speak, and it's already showing us (with millions of miles driven) that automated vehciles are less likely to be in accidents than those piloted by easily distracted meatbags.
Our grandkids will marvel at the fact we tolerated 10s of thousands of deaths, and millions of injuries, every single year just trying to get around.
Good point. The biggest danger is in between... human and computers both doing some of the driving. Crashes happen between the two stools.