Sometimes they're sitting there between calls doing paperwork.

The problem with cutting their budget is that traffic enforcement(writing tickets) generates revenue, solving crimes doesn't. So you'd be forcing them to write even more tickets.

Even in areas where the police department doesn't get a cut of ticket revenues, generally the legislatures will alter funding - IE give the cops money to be able to afford to write tickets where the money from the tickets goes to the schools. If they don't write enough tickets, they'll be questioned by the budget committees.

You spout things you do not know. I never stated that they all had national support. I don't remember who, but Langley wasn't the only one with government support. Which is why I said 'some'.

Do you own a car? If so, do you change it's oil or take it to a place? Why?

Most people don't do it as explicitly as I did, but people still do it. It's one of the major reasons people drive rather than taking the bus. Sure, it's more expensive to drive, but they value their time highly enough that they'd rather spend $5 to get there in 1/3rd the time that the bus would take.

People especially do it when they hire a contractor to fix something in their home, mow their lawn, etc...

At how much cost compared to salvaged cell phone CPUs? Secondly, the 'needs' you list rather depends on the task they're being asked to do. There are still lots of tasks out there that aren't particularly CPU dependent.

Oh, now that's an idea: Said CPUs tend to be fairly ruggedized. What if we're talking about micro-servers intended for use in neighborhood locations for whatever function?

As Kenh says, "maybe not your cellphone".

My cell phone is more powerful than the old domain controller at one of my previous jobs...

Since so much of what you said is the same thing as I said, doesn't that make you far from reality as well?

For example, you said: "If a pedestrian runs into your lane and the car does an automatic emergency break AND the car following you crashes into you because of that, the liability issues are clear."

Which is simply an expansion/different case on my "pedestrian considered at fault for darting into traffic."

You don't address my pointing out that the system maker could be held at fault, but I specified 'possibly' for a reason - that's reaching into politics. We all should know that what is 'right' is not always what happens.

Fact is, I figure auto-drive accidents that are the fault of the car will be extremely rare, but still happen. That's where the limited liability becomes important.

That rather depends on the use you're putting them towards, doesn't it?

Cell phone processors might tend to be slow, but they're rather power efficient per operation. Always good in a data center, especially if the single powerful processor gets a lot fewer operations per watt.

I can see it being useful for highly parallelized tasks. Google searches, serving HTML pages and even video streams, re-compressing audio/video streams*, etc...

I'd say give the cops medals for NOT shooting the homeowner shooting at them thinking they're home invaders.

It's also yet another reason why I want to get a home security system that records. Including audio. Maybe I can set it up to forget the audio(and video) unless there's gunfire within an hour?

Don't set a trap(Fails even in the USA), shoot them in the front, and have a 'legitimate' reason to express fear for your life. Them having weapons of their own(knives should work) would help.

If you DO end up shooting one in the back, being able to state that you were aiming for his buddy that hadn't turned yet might work. Or 'he turned as I pulled the trigger' while sobbing or something.

Remember, human reaction speed is something like 200ms. If you decide to pull the trigger a moment after he decides to turn, it's quite possible that you'll have pulled the trigger before you recognize that he's turning, too late to recall the 'pull trigger' impulses. And while guns fire fast, they still take time, giving him time to turn a little more.

Should 'most' smugglers and dealers, I'm assuming of drugs, be criminals in the first place?

If they're trafficking persons, well, people are harder to hide.

Everything I've read says that the intelligence agencies are so deluged in data right now that they can't find anything in the mess much of the time. If they stopped trying to spy on 'everybody' maybe they'd have the resources to actually properly review the data that DOES matter.

Actually, auto makers are tending to do the opposite, actually using speakers and installing other systems to make the engine noises LOUDER. ;)

So long as the collision avoidance logic is still in charge to prevent collisions, I'd be more concerned about an OTA update attack that changes the auto-drive programming.

Such as to direct hitting something in certain circumstances...

There's still a lot of cars in Germany, something doesn't have to apply to 90% of people to still be highly useful.

Also, self-driving cars can also increase fuel economy through a combination of reduced speeds(no rush if you're reading), more fuel efficient driving(let the car figure out the ideal acceleration rates and such), and perhaps even stuff like predicting the next light to avoid having to stop at all.

Oh, and if you want to keep your export economy...

Yeah, except that I predict that it'd be more along the lines of '340 car traffic jam' because they yanked up the dots and rearranged them.

Seriously, 'avoiding collision' is really the most programmed for condition for auto-drive cars. Combine an ever-vigilant computer that's never distracted with defensive driving that 'only' trusts it's redundant sensor suite* and you should have to work very hard to get it to collide with something.

*And refuses to drive if those don't work.

Sure, but they're the 1%ers, not the 99%ers, because just getting a license is much harder and the German Police will bust your ass for things like tailgating or not signaling before they will for speeding.

As for the AC's worry about an auto-drive car hitting somebody. I'm sure it will happen, but will be incredibly, incredibly rare.

So rather than 'hit by a drunk driver while crossing the street going to Church Sunday morning', it'd be more along the lines of 'failed to stop in time when pedestrian unexpectedly darted into the road and the car couldn't stop fast enough due to black ice'. Which, like the real world, generally ends up with the pedestrian being considered at fault for darting into traffic, especially during bad weather.

Still, the manufacturer of the auto-drive system will probably end up taking at least some of the liability in that case, but there's an equally good chance they'll be let off the hook because the owner/operator of the vehicle modified it somehow (or grossly failed in maintenance like replacing bald tires). I predict that once the systems are good enough, congress will pass some sort of limited liability law so that those killed by malfunctions only get something like $1M, which helps with predictions so the manufacturers know how much liability to bake into the price of their systems. Remember, it's saving lives on the whole, we don't want to drive them bankrupt.

As you mention, reduced insurance rates is a reason to buy the new vehicles, and that ties in directly with reduced car accidents. The other stuff is bonus.

Though when I figured it out, valuing people's time at $10/hour NOT spent driving, that was the biggest factor.

15k miles/year average per vehicle, figure an average speed of 30 mph, that's 500 hours/year. Or $5k. Even if you only value your time in the car at $5, perhaps because you get motion sickness if you're not driving* so you can't read/watch TV, that's $2500. Given that I only pay ~$1k/year for full coverage...

Anyways, a self-driving option is a dead simple choice at $5k, and would still be attractive to many at $15k. Note: This would be for a 'Johnny Cab' level AI that doesn't require you behind a wheel to operate correctly.

*It's a thing, many people who become motion sick if a passenger in a vehicle don't if they're driving. It's probably the control thing. They know that some disruption is happening.