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.

Are you a troll, or are you really this stupid?

Yes, it is. However: if a woman has had too much? That's still not an excuse to take advantage of her. I don't know about anyone else, but I've had women want to have sex with me while they were significantly drunk, and I just won't do it because I know they'll regret it later, and I don't want to be That Guy. Oh, and for the record: Women should not take advantage of guys who are too drunk, either. Of course there's a double standard, as always, which is also bullshit, but that's another subject entirely.

Glad to see I'm not the only one coming down on this side of the issue. I'm getting flamed from all angles by assholes calling me anything from 'white knight' to accusing me of being the very thing I'm protesting against, all because I have the almighty nerve to speak out against date rape and abuse of women in general.

For what reason are you being an argumentative asshole about this?
Since you appear to be too stupid or too stubborn (or both) to figure it out for yourself, I'll make it simple for you: You see it happening, you stop it. That simple enough? How about this: A woman asks for your help because she's afraid someone is going to assault her, you goddamn well help her. Is that easy enough for you to understand? How about this: Lead by example by not being an asshole to women/assaulting women (Note: not accusing you of anything so don't go there!).

I also cannot, apparently, stress that enough. I am not meaning to imply that a majority, or even a large percentage of men, would actually do something like this, and I will apologize to anyone who was offended because that's what they thought I was saying, but at the same time I cannot stress enough that there has to be a zero-tolerance policy for such behavior.

Oh, and by the way: I'm no goddamn 'White Knight', far from it, I'm a fucking cynical curmudgeon if there ever was one, but regardless I will not suffer fools or assholes gladly. So any of you calling me a 'White Knight' can kiss my ass.

So what? What the hell does that have to do with anything, other than maybe you're trying to deflect myself and others from the actual subject? Also, why should I take anything just another goddamn Anonymous Coward says here even remotely seriously? You're not helping here by doing that, you're actually making things worse.