Sure. Just like broadband Internet, right? Because everyone in Kansas has broadband now, right? Oh, wait, that's right, they don't! There are suburbs I've lived in where there was nothing but dialup..

The fact of the matter is: The entire highway infrastructure will have to be completely overhauled, at enormous expense, before 'self driving cars' could be a reality, or even have a chance at being prevalent. Even then there will always be roads and places where there is no such infrastructure, and people will have to operate the vehicle themselves to get where they want to go. Also, what do you do about situations where you're not even sure where you're going? At the very least, the puzzle of real, full-on human-level artificial intelligence has to be solved, I think, before anything like this can be practical. There are too many variables, you can't program an 'expert system' for all of them, something will come up it doesn't know how to handle.

I thought of something else that will be a problem with 'technology' like this, with regards to criminal activity. I've made the argument before that hacking a system like this will be as easy as hacking any other computer system, and criminals will use it to steal vehicles, or to carjack/kidnap people. Imagine this scenario: All you'd need are two or three 'attacking' vehicles, to surround and restrict an autonomous vehicle in such a way that is has no choice but to slow down, in order to avoid what it perceives as an imminent collision. From there it becomes a trivial matter to continue slowing down, and forcing the vehicle to pull over and come to a complete stop. From there extracting the passenger(s) becomes exceedingly trivial, and voila, you've either kidnapped the passenger, stolen the vehicle, or both. There's no way they're going to code an 'evasive maneuvers' routine into the vehicle, or even come up with a reliable way to have it detect that it's being gamed like this. Of course someone will say 'Nobody is going to do this!' or 'That'll never happen!', or 'All cars will be autonomous so it won't be possible', but that's as complete a fantasy as saying (in some people's dystopian future) 'guns are illegal so where would anyone get a gun?'. At best I think we'll have an advanced 'autopilot' system, as an option, of course, but people will still be driving their own cars, at least for the next, say, 50 years or so.

Moto Razr V9. Before anyone calls me a Luddite: I don't have sufficient use for the features of a smartphone to justify the cost of purchasing a smartphone in the first place. I barely use a phone as a phone for that matter, it's only even turned on a few minutes a day unless I'm actually using it to make a call. Seriously, I don't understand how it is so many people treat a cellphone like it's a lifestyle, especially with what a dataplan costs from wireless companies. Yes, I understand you can use wifi instead, but still: why the obsession? I've got any number of other things to do than sit there an obsess over a telephone, regardless of how much processing power it has, etc.

I'm an amateur athlete, so it's usually more like 'come home from work, am kind of tired, need to do training, decide to take a short nap, drink or eat something with caffeine in it first, nap for 20-30 minutes, get back up, get up to speed again, get ready, go out and do training, feel much better than if I just pushed through it'. Can do this at work, though, too, especially at lunchtime.

I've done this for years, and didn't even know it was a thing. Seems to work.

You're in the middle ground between myself (always have manual control available, unimpeachably) and the guys frothing at the mouth for fully automated cars with NO manual controls of ANY kind (who I think are so stupid they must be trolls), and you're reasonable sounding enough that I'll address you rather than get in another shouting match with them:
Be honest with me: Would you ever feel 100% secure getting into a box on wheels that has nothing more than a big red button marked 'EMERGENCY STOP' to control the vehicle in an emergency? Here's the Nightmare Mode version of that question: Would you feel OK putting your own children in such a vehicle, programming it's destination, and waving as they roll away? Myself, I cannot see how anyone with a lick of common sense could possibly be OK with such an arrangement, and I also cannot believe that I'm in such a tiny minority as some would have me believe.

A 'warning system' to supplement the drivers' own sense of situational awareness would be fine. However: No 'taking control of the vehicle from the driver' for any reason. Anything that facilitates drivers to drive more safely is good thing. Similarly I'm all for better driver training and better driver testing.

How about you go fuck yourself, asshole? It's not part of YOUR personal freedom we're talking about taking away here, now is it? You're too goddamn myopic and/or brainwashed to see it, aren't you? Luckily for the rest of us you and people like you are not the only people with a voice in a discussion like this. I can't believe they allowed you to breed.

Not only is that a good idea, I personally believe it's good for humanity in general. What I've seen developing over decades is people in general getting lazier and lazier, dumber and dumber, and less and less educated. They are forced to think less, do less, and it's not good for people's health or overall quality of life. Never needing to learn to drive a car is just one more thing. Some people think it's going to enable them to do more and be more free, but I think it will have the opposite effect: People will be more and more trapped because they're more and more dependent on technology for even basic things like getting yourself from point A to B. Remember the movie Wall-E? I see us potentially heading for a world full of people like that.

I think it more likely that you're lazy and stupid and incapable of seeing potential problems and the potential for abuse of a technology such as this one. What was the last time your smartphone fucked up on you? How many times a month? How about your computer? Your DVR? How, if we're living in such an idyllic utopia of technology, can an entire modern airliner completely disappear over the ocean with all hands aboard, and never be seen again, and cannot be found, hmm? Care to explain how the order-of-magnitude more sophisticated, and might I add system-redundant, autopilot and flight controls, could possibly allow such a thing to happen, or to even leave the rest of us with no idea where it ended up? How about how many different exploits there are for your computer, allowing it to become part of any number of botnets controlled by criminal organizations? It's almost trivially easy to do these days, what makes you think that it won't become trivially easy for some to hack your fully-autonomous, no-manual-control car, and either send you off to a firey death, or kidnap you, or just plain steal your car? Oh, and if this became the rule rather than the exception, how long do you think it would be before politicians and law enforcement would demand a remote manual override capability be hard-coded into the vehicle's computer, so they can pull you over anytime they want, for any reason, and you have NO SAY in the matter? The answer is 'IMMEDIATELY', that's what. If you want to live your life in a prison, that's your business, but I'll be damned if you and people are going to drag me down into living like a caged animal with you. There must be unimpeachable manual controls in any vehicle that carries human passengers. This is non-negotiable for reasons of both basic human rights, and for basic safety purposes.

If you don't like or are too stupid to drive safely then I suggest you start taking the bus, or a cab, or have someone competent drive you, but you and people like you are NOT welcome to take away the abiliy of I or others like me who are competent and safe drivers to continue to be the masters of our own destiny -- and direction and speed.

Now, you're being just plain silly. You can communicate directly with and reason with a human driver, and if necessary in extremis you can physically fight with them over control of the vehicle. You can't argue with a malfunctioning computer, especially when all you've got, at best, is a big red button marked "STOP" that it conveniently ignores because it's malfunctioning.. or has been hijacked by someone else.. like the police, or a hacker.

The only 'gains' that will come from people not having control of where they're going in vehicles will be for oppressive totalitarian police states that have complete control over all movements of citizens, and for criminal organizations to steal cars and/or kidnap the passengers. That, and in a small way, funeral homes, who will get business from traffic deaths caused by software malfunctions. Fuck that noise. Enjoy being treated like so much cattle to be moved around at someone else's whim, I refuse to go along quietly.

Are so many of you so thoroughly indoctrinated by your government into the idea that trading your freedoms, one by one, in exchange for the false promise of 'safety' is a good idea? Because that's what I see too many of you doing on the subject of 'autonomous/self driving cars' that would have NO manual controls, and consequently NONE of you would have the training or skills to drive anyway! You are giving up yet another freedom if you believe this is a good idea.

I side with the DMV on this one; I don't ever want to see vehicles on public roads that have no manual controls whatsoever, it's just a bad idea.

Wow, five-star post! Do you always write so well? Is it natural talent or did you have to go to a special school to learn to do that? Someone should nominate you for a Pulitzer Prize for that comment alone! Tell us, how do you do it? We're all totally jealous of your god-tier writing ability!

I'm ex-SCA; I've known a few actual black Knights. They were all pretty cool dudes, really.

(not you I'm responding to, but..) I'm almost 50 years old. I've had more than my fair share of sex, am rated as pretty good at it, but frankly it's not all it's cracked up to be, have more important things to me to pursue at this stage of the game, so NO, I'm not 'trying to get laid' by 'being a (goddamn) White Knight', I just happen still believe in quaint notions like 'right and wrong'. Someone doesn't like it? They can suck it. I'm sick and bloody well tired of people IN GENERAL pretending to be 'civilized' when I know damned well that it's just a facade.