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Nevada Authorizes Development of Driverless Car Rules
DrEldarion writes "Via Forbes: 'The State of Nevada just passed Assembly Bill No. 511 which, among other things, authorizes the Department of Transportation to develop rules and regulations governing the use of driverless cars, such as Google's concept car, on its roads.' Pretty soon, cars will be able to dump their own dead bodies into the Nevada desert."
In the very long term, automated cars able to coordinate their driving will be more efficient. There will be fewer driving accidents and people will get where they are going faster. In the short term this sort of technology is more likely to be first actually used when it is limited to highway driving (which is comparatively simple) before it becomes useful for general driving. Unfortunately, it could take only a few bad accidents before people will start reacting strongly against automated systems even if the systems are safer than humans on average. This is sort of what we're seeing now already with nuclear power: the death toll from nuclear power is much smaller than coal, but nuclear power is treated as terrible because the accidents are rare and spectacular and involve a technology that is seen as novel, strange and unnatural.
You're a bit more keen on their chances than I am. People underestimate risks when they are in control.
In 2009 there were 30,797 traffic-related fatalities in the USA. If we could cut that in half with self-driving cars that'd be amazingly good. But the public wouldn't go for it because now the machine is in control, so the risk is overestimated.
How many stories would we see about "killer cars that account for 10,000 traffic deaths per year"? How many people wouldn't buy them because of how "unsafe" they are?