Re: Even in the extremely unlikely event that fully autonomous vehicles ever become viable
but on public roads driving your own car will rapidly become viewed as violently antisocial insanity. I've been saying for a few years now - by the time my (so far unborn) kids are old enough to learn to drive, they won't need to bother, and by the time THEIR kids are old enough, it'll be against the law.
I highly doubt that. For starters, there will still be cars on the road 40 years from now that were built before self-driving cars were a thing. Not many mind you, but there will no doubt be some just as there are still people driving around in cars made in the 1960s today. Around here it's not even unusual to see a mid-60s model muscle car in the parking lot at the local grocery store. In fact, given the type of person who drives them, it's likely that a lot of those cars will still be running up until their current owners are too old to drive. Even in the unlikely event that autonomous drive becomes mandatory there will be holdouts in older vehicles. Just like seat belt laws, autonomous drive laws will not apply to cars that don't have autonomous drive.
Second, we're at least a couple generations from people really being completely comfortable with autonomous cars. More than a couple if the robot apocalypse genre continues to be popular in the future. Too many people actually think Terminator is a realistic scenario.
Third, software is glitchy. Every time some car manufacturer issues a bad update or a car gets hacked - and make no mistake, both will happen on occasion if autonomous cars are widespread - it will be a reminder that computers are not 100% trustworthy.
Yeah, autonomous cars will probably - quickly - get to the point where they're safer than a human driver. But that won't matter. Just as flying is much safer than driving and people still get nervous flying, autonomous cars are going to make the average person nervous for a good long time.
