If you’re driving a train its the same as if you’re flying a plane. You’re still responsible for the vehicle for the whole journey. If something goes wrong, you’re expected to respond immediately and deal with the issue.
This is different from what a user expects of an autonomous car. We expect the car to handle and take responsibility of all of that, such that the driver is nothing but a passenger.
Even when automation reaches that level, the big issue will always be insurance. Even if autonomous vehicles have less accidents, that will only mean less revenue for insurance companies. And that’s assuming they can pin liability onto the customer, rather than the manufacturer.
Between driving a train or everyone driving cars, there’s a subtle difference between expecting everyone to do so individually or expecting a few to do so professionally.
I would not trust autonomous cars for the coming while. If Tesla cannot make autonomous cars work in a tunnel, built entirely for Tesla cars, used only by Tesla cars, then I doubt that within my lifetime, we’ll see autonomous cars become good enough for the general public. And even if they do, they’re one computer bug or cyberattack away from a motorway pile-up. And you can bet your ass that a driver in an autonomous car will doze off when he’s got the chance, so you cannot trust everyone to drive a self driving car.
Besides, autonomous cars still have almost every other problem as regular cars. You still have two tons of steel, glass & plastic for one person to move around, supported on rubber tyres on asphalt, which is noisy, energy-inefficient and an absolute space hog. Now it’s not the owner calling the shots as to where & how the vehicle is going, but a black box.
If you’re driving a train its the same as if you’re flying a plane. You’re still responsible for the vehicle for the whole journey. If something goes wrong, you’re expected to respond immediately and deal with the issue.
This is different from what a user expects of an autonomous car. We expect the car to handle and take responsibility of all of that, such that the driver is nothing but a passenger.
Even when automation reaches that level, the big issue will always be insurance. Even if autonomous vehicles have less accidents, that will only mean less revenue for insurance companies. And that’s assuming they can pin liability onto the customer, rather than the manufacturer.
Between driving a train or everyone driving cars, there’s a subtle difference between expecting everyone to do so individually or expecting a few to do so professionally.
I would not trust autonomous cars for the coming while. If Tesla cannot make autonomous cars work in a tunnel, built entirely for Tesla cars, used only by Tesla cars, then I doubt that within my lifetime, we’ll see autonomous cars become good enough for the general public. And even if they do, they’re one computer bug or cyberattack away from a motorway pile-up. And you can bet your ass that a driver in an autonomous car will doze off when he’s got the chance, so you cannot trust everyone to drive a self driving car.
Besides, autonomous cars still have almost every other problem as regular cars. You still have two tons of steel, glass & plastic for one person to move around, supported on rubber tyres on asphalt, which is noisy, energy-inefficient and an absolute space hog. Now it’s not the owner calling the shots as to where & how the vehicle is going, but a black box.