There is a significant issue that needs to be taken into account with driver-less cars though: Do we want the car to make critical decisions on our behalf? For instance, let's say there is suddenly an obstacle on the road with not enough time to brake. Do you swerve onto the pavement where a pedestrian will be at risk or do you let the collision happen, putting yourself and you passengers at risk? More importantly, are you happy to let an algorithm make that call for you? I'm not.,(reply>), Depends how good the algorithm and the vehicle control systems are. With any luck they'll be able to pick a path that minimises harm to all humans involved and sacrifices the vehicle instead. But I would expect that they would be biased towards causing less harm to random bystanders and favouring injury to the occupants in such a rare, unavoidable severe harm situation, as that minimises the overall potential damage (four to six riders, and quite often only one, vs what could be a whole crowd of people) and also the probable amount of litigation/insurance payout (one of you chose to ride the car, the other was just walking along minding their own business...), and the owner/responsible person in charge of the machine would be expected to sign up to an ownership agreement including that policy. After all, that's how you'd ideally expect a human driver to react in the same situation, choosing noble sacrifice instead of injuring or killing potentially hundreds of others - only their reactions would be slower and less carefully considered, more like panic reflexes instead.<br><br>Thing is, that sort of situation is already extremely uncommon anyway, and other than driving along mountain roads with crumbling cliffsides above them producing falling rocks (where pedestrians and cyclists would be at risk anyway and best advised to take the bus), what are the most common "sudden obstacles" in the roadway? Simple.<br>1/ Other vehicles whose drivers have made a (series of ) bad decision(s). Which shouldn't happen any more unless there's a serious, mass malfunction of the driverless units.<br>2/ Pedestrians or cyclists who have made a bad decision, or are too young to know any better. This would be harder to avoid, but the driverless car would probably still be better at avoiding them, though maybe not <i>predicting</i> their next move through intuition. Even so, there's rarely more than one or two, so it should be fairly easy for the decision to be - depending on public and legislative mood - either to brake as hard as possible to minimise the impact whilst still proceeding in the same lane (and transmitting the emergency brake warning signal to any following vehicles, plus those to the sides if the errant person is still moving across the road), possibly still hitting the person but at a lower speed than a slower-reacting human driver would have; or to kamikaze into the scenery, maybe a wall, lamp post, someone's front garden etc, whilst making sure to pick a path that didn't hit anyone else along the way, and of course still applying full brake force and transmitting a warning signal.<br><br>The apocryphal 10-tonne concrete block tumbling into the road after being poorly secured to a truck crossing a bridge in front of you is something that happens so infrequently versus the other two that you may as well discount it entirely. It's as likely to fall directly on top of you, or onto a pedestrian itself, as cause you to swerve into one.<br><br>I mean, I'm not sold on the idea yet. For one thing, I don't know how good an alternative to full manual control would be offered, or possible, for dealing with nonstandard driving situations, of which there are definitely quite a lot throughout the UK (apart from the TRL Greenwich lot, it's notable that much of the research is taking place in the US, which has much greater distances regularly travelled by road, and generally a less dense network of much wider, more open roads), and which I was engaged in a week last Sunday... driving through west Wales on a hunt for Lake Vrynwy (sp?), which was more of an exploration and ended up taking me up a supposed B-road that was more like a highland farm track, replete with 1-in-4 ascents, blind corners and crests, struggling cyclists, many errant sheep, and difficult passing situations when meeting other cars coming the other way; it was as much an engaging driving challenge as a sightseeing cruise (though if a SDC <i>could</i> handle it, that would have made enjoying the views a bit easier). And when I got to the perimeter road of the (artificial) lake, I didn't really know which way to go - I turned on the spur of the moment, and along the way to the actual dam and visitor centre (...and seeking a non overlooked place to change out of some ripped shorts...) I detoured up some forestry commission tracks that very definitely weren't on the GPS map, or suitable for particularly high speeds. Lots of bumps that could upset accelerometers, lots of unsigned turns that I took on a whim, unmarked edges to the track which just merged into the undergrowth, lots of dust to cover over camera or lidar lenses and clog up small air intakes and mics, parking/passing spots that were just roughly cleared patches of undergrowth where the ditch moved outwards by six feet, etc.<br><br>It probably would be ace for making progress along the often slow (because of dawdling sunday driver) A-roads that got me in and out of the area by being a much better judge of when to overtake (and probably able to call up "overboost" from the motors, and negotiate safe places to pull back into the queue with other cars), and it might even do away with the problem altogether (as an SDC isn't going to play some of the stupid games that other drivers either found it fun to play with me, or didn't even realise they were playing; if there are other cars stringing along behind them with riders who want to travel faster and arrive at their destination sooner than their own rider feels comfortable or is demanding, then they'd hopefully run as fast as possible within the limits of comfort and safety until a place to briefly pull over - or at least slow down to a more easily overtaken speed - and let everyone else by presented itself... and they certainly wouldn't do the idiot thing encountered both there and on the motorways further east of <i>speeding up as someone else tries to overtake despite being apparently happy to go much slower until then</i> ). And allow you to admire the scenery, have a nap, or get on with something else during what was otherwise just 2+ hours of dead time. Might even be allowed higher speed limits in light of their better reaction times (...though, really, just being able to cruise at something resembling 60 on the western section, and maintaining 70-80 on the 2-lane motorway and dual carriageway sections without people constantly pulling out to pass left-lane traffic at a 1mph differential would have been an upgrade...)<br><br>But when it comes down to that sort of tricky barely-single-track road that the system might glitch and decide is actually someone's driveway or maybe even just a wall, or something you actually want to try driving yourself, or exploratory situations where you don't really know where you are and are just looking around with the benefit of being able to go several times faster than walking (and at least 50~100% faster than cycling), making decisions about which way to go almost on a split second basis? Or anything not in the map, so it would be navigating just as blind as a human, and moreso than one who actually knows the area? (Or, indeed, outdoor festival car parks, which are generally just some randomly-laid boardwalks across a field) ... I'd hope that there would be some kind of manual control option retained, for those of us who were sufficiently qualified and experienced. Even if just a pop-out joystick in the centre console or something.,(reply>), People that don't trust driverless cars are idiots, sorry.<br><br>The simple fact is humans are bad at driving, so bad that governments and organizations pay to put up billboards and advertisements telling people to stop texting while driving.<br><br>Sure <i>you</i> might be afraid of your own car driving by itself because being without control is unnerving, the simple fact is you will be a thousand times safer if all the cars around you were driving autonomously (and you'd also get where you're going faster). I don't trust a human I've never met to drive their cars, and considering that's a majority of the traffic on the road... yeah no, I'd be more at ease if every car on the road was on autopilot.,(reply>), @seigeengine<br>all of taht's very true. There are certain things on a car that can't be tampered with electronically. the steering in most cars, and the emergency brake when people bother to make sure it still works. Any car that's completely automated has to have that option somewhere.<br><br>Tracking down the source of the tampering is easier said then done, because of the nature of how that usually works.,(reply>), @NewFormofSilence I'd only trust an automatic car that didn't rely (or even posses) external communications equipment such as a cellular receiver. or at least a manual emergency brake... That inner mischief maker in me would love to send one of those automated cars on a joyride from my laptop to see how many mailboxes I could take out before someone managed to figure out where I was hacking the car from.... And if myself, being of sane mind enough to never actually want to cause injury while messing with the car. There has got to be at least a few out there who would happily send people off cliffs and into buildings.,(reply>), seigeengine;  this is beyond the ability of a mechanics shop,  it requires tampering with the software to <b>target</b> pedestrians.     The only thing a mechanics shop should be able to do is install the signed software update or maybe  break the steering control completely, so the vehicle drives in random directions on day 1.