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Many People Still Don't Want To Ride in Self-driving Cars, Survey Finds (cnbc.com)
A lot of people may still have serious reservations about riding in fully autonomous vehicles, a new survey from Gartner indicates. From a report: The Gartner Consumer Trends in Automotive people surveyed about 1,500 people in the United States and Germany from April through May, and found that 55 percent of the people they spoke to would not ride in a fully autonomous car. However, just over 70 percent would ride in a car that was partially autonomous. Gartner defined partially autonomous vehicles as those that could drive autonomously, but allow a driver to retake control of the car if needed. Advocates of autonomous driving have said the technology will actually make driving safer, since statistics indicate human behavior is the major cause of most auto crashes. But many consumers familiar with the tendency of other electronic devices to sometimes malfunction or perform erratically still seem to have trouble accepting the idea of being held in a vehicle that could fail.
It's not just about safety, but expediency and what happens if something goes wrong. Do you want to risk being stuck for hours because there's no driver that can drive you around the branch in the road? Do you want to be delayed to a meeting because it will put safety above all other concerns and stop or slow down whenever in doubt?
Aircraft have well-defined places to take off and land, with very strictly enforced rules. In transit there is nothing like trying to weave through unmarked construction with cyclists and pedestrians trying to cross your path without warning.
There's more to worry about with the craft control itself, but that's where computers excel.
I'd get in a pilotless plane long before I'd be a passenger in a driverless car.
The world will change whether people who enjoy driving like it or not. Just like nobody today insists on riding in an assisted elevator those people will have to adapt. Over time the pressures of technology will make human driven cars more expensive to own because of the higher insurance rates, having to add more mechanical steering components etc. Even just individual vehicle ownership may become very expensive because car sharing services will likely become extremely prevalent and efficient. Owning a vehicle outright will make very little economic sense. There will always be a market for manually operated cars but those cars are likely going to get relegated to race tracks and that market will probably be as big as the market for chariots today. And yes, chariots are still a thing and there is a chariot racing track not far from my place. And it's being used daily. But needless to say the people who go there don't ride chariots to the office in the morning.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
I would bet that this is common for new technologies. I remember the early 1990s when a lot of people didn't like the idea of carrying a cell phone. I remember in the 2000s, few people saw the value of smartphones. I knew several people who weren't sure about Netflix streaming, and thought the idea of cord-cutting was absurd. A lot of those people have now cancelled their cable.
Of course people are unsure about self-driving cars. Give it enough time for them to be common, and to have a proven safety record. The results of that survey will change.