markg wrote:
I didn't read the article Hearthly said it was linked from but I'm not sure how much of it can really relate to cars. The problem in that article is one of people operating machines that are fully autonomous 99% of the time becoming deskilled and therefore unable to intervene correctly when required to do so. Unlike a plane at 35,000ft a computer driving a car that starts getting bad data could be programmed to just stop the thing and usually nobody would be killed as a result.
I guess the suggestion is that if you eventually have a generation of drivers who've never really driven a car, and who might not know what to do or how to react in an emergency situation, then the consequences could be serious.
However I do take the point that in a car, it could just stop safely if it detected something was wrong. Unless something went wrong with the bit that was supposed to work out if something had gone wrong, and then something else went wrong.
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about driverless cars, I can totally understand them making lots of sense, but it'll be a massive cultural shift as for lots of people driving is a pleasure and cars are seen as far more than just a mode of transport.
If you're allowed to get pissed and then have your car drive you home though, I'm all for it. (As I understand it the current thinking is that you'll have to be fit to drive in case you need to take over from the computer, which sounds like the worst of both worlds.)