Holy Shit, I wrote alot. I apologize in advance!
I think self driving cars are the future and can be the future, as long as it is properly regulated. Too many people don't obey the laws of the road, and frankly don't like to even in situations where it doesn't benefit them to do so. My take on this is that if self driving cars were everywhere, the big thing or complaints from alot of people would be that their commute would possibly get longer, or that the technology would create unsafe scenarios for people. This is just me playing devil's advocate. I think the reasoning behind this would be that self driving cars would be programmed to obey the rules of the road, no matter what. This, as we know, people do not do. People constantly exceed speed limits, (sometimes, a valid thing to do to avoid an accident) take illegal turns to get to somewhere faster, drive down wrong roads, get angry and hotheaded and generally ignore safety guidelines while driving.
Many times, it works out for us when we need to make a quick u-turn to avoid driving all the way up the street, just to get to the bodega, but guess what? The self driving car may not do that. It will almost certainly always obey the rules of the road, unless you take it out of auto-drive and take back control of the driving. I definitely want to see this technology go forward, and I can't wait till the time comes when us common folk can afford it reasonably and safely, but I just wonder if there can truly be a mass adoption, even in the future, when people realize that the control of driving, in all aspects, are removed from their hands and placed in the hands of truly "non rule breaking, law abiding cars".
Dare I say, and I haven't looked up statistics to prove it, but you would probably somewhat agree with me; alot of the accidents we have today involve some form of driver rule breaking. Of course not all cases involved, but a good amount. A majority of accidents may not have anything to do with rule breaking as well, such as if people get sick behind the wheel or scenarios like that, but let's just deal with driving as it relates to the rules of the road. So to have these things driving us around, I do feel like our accident rate will go down in certain scenarios due to less "human error" involved, but I truly feel like a 20 minute commute, that actually ran you like 15 mins due to normal human driving, will take you double that time, especially in densely populated cities like NYC or LA. (Can you imagine the traffic?) This I feel some people may not be willing to trade in exchange for a self driving automobile.
Self driving cars may be more enjoyed in areas with long open roads, where there isn't a high density of cars. Here, the full technology may be enjoyed, but as for driving in the cities, I think there would be too many scenarios and situations where the self driving car may do more harm than good. One major example I can think of, is take a hugely populated city like New York. Now take a line of self driving cars and place them all driving down a one way street. Now imagine, an ambulance trying to get through. Sure enough, the ambulance will be in human driving mode, but think about how hard it would be to get through a long line of cars that stop exactly at the light, or slow to a stop on detecting pedestrians at the edge of the sidewalk. Maybe a bloody kid ran into the street to grab his ball. Anything like that. Would not the priority of these cars be the safety of human life first? Given this scenario, the self driving car will choose to stop instead of risking human life. I mean, I hope so. Therefore, ambulance ain't getting through, especially if there are cars up ahead, already in the intersection. Now, someone's life is in danger.
This is just a random scenario to pinpoint the downside of "obeying the law" in emergency situations, not so much the downside of a self driving car. Thing is, if we see an ambulance or fire truck coming through, we can automatically pull over anywhere, and make "way" for the emergency vehicle. Not saying the self driving car wouldn't be programmed for that as well, but in a busy intersection where the car is already "preprogrammed" to stop, how can the programming also tell it to go at the same time? Can the self driving car even make such a decision? Can any software make such a decision? I truly don't know...
"Ever hear the phrase computers say in movies sometimes: "Cannot compute?"
Also, what if there isnt any room to go? A human driver can negotiate this. Will a self driving car be able to? All the while keeping your safety and the safety of other cars and vehicles paramount? I honestly do hope so, as that would be fantastic. Don't get me wrong, I want the car to be able to handle these types of scenarios. Who knows, maybe the technology will evolve into just that.
That being said, I would love to cruise from New York where I live, to California across the states and the car takes me there. Wouldn't it be amazing if there was enough faith and trust in these vehicles that you could go to sleep in one of these things overnight at your starting point, and by the morning, you are safely at your destination almost 1000 miles away? I know this is an exaggerated scenario, but to me, this is the best part of the allure.
All in all, I'm in on the side of self driving cars, we just need the team of Einstein raised from the dead, J.J Abrams and the entire team of Scorpion and Walter o Brian himself to code and program the software! Just kidding, we can definitely do it. Humans, despite their penchant for "error" are amazing. Those google guys are doing an excellent job.
I just want one of those bad boys Colin Farrell drove with Jessica Biel in Total Recall.
