I suppose that they might work for people who have a short attention span or trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time, but some of us-me included-don’t care to entrust our safety to an inanimate object we are not in control of-hence the “manual mode”. Give me a plain old vehicle any day-no bells or whistles-that I can operate, maintain, etc-I can actually afford one of those, too...
“I suppose that they might work for people who have a short attention span or trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time, but some of us-me included-don’t care to entrust our safety to an inanimate object we are not in control of-hence the “manual mode”. Give me a plain old vehicle any day-no bells or whistles-that I can operate, maintain, etc-I can actually afford one of those, too...”
The counterpoint to that is that computers don’t get tired, distracted or drunk. Sensors can literally look in all directions at once. Plus, electronic reaction times are potentially orders of magnitude faster than our slow, chemically based nervous systems. Redundant systems will provide fallback if electronics fail.
I do think there are edge cases like icy roads that will pose a challenge for autonomous cars - however they pose quite a challenge for human drivers as well.
I don’t see these systems adding more than a couple thousand dollars to cost. We’ll see how things shake out, for sure. ;-)
(Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy driving, but it would also be nice to have “chauffeur” mode and get some work done in transit...)