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Americans Still Deeply Skeptical About Driverless Cars, Says Poll (theverge.com)
A new poll was released today that basically repeats data we've seen in previous surveys: Americans still don't trust self-driving cars, and are nervous about the coming onslaught. The Verge reports: Asked how concerned they'd be to share the road with a driverless car, 31 percent said they'd be "very concerned," while 33 percent said "somewhat concerned," according to the poll which was just released by Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety. A majority (63 percent) said they would not support "mass exemptions" from federal motor vehicle safety standards for self-driving cars, and were not comfortable (75 percent) with automakers having the power to remotely disable vehicle controls, such as the steering wheel, and brake and gas pedals, when the autonomous vehicle is being operated by the computer. And people overwhelmingly support (75 percent) the U.S. Department of Transportation developing new standards related to driverless vehicles. The poll surveyed 1,005 adults between December 7-10th, 2017, with a margin of error of +/- 3.09 percent.
You say your concerns are safety then you list economic concerns. Concerns which I think won't even be valid, I really doubt we will see people buying driverless cars in the way they buy a car currently.
So back to safety, this always gets me too. Do you not see how others drive? The NTSB declared driving deaths are a "public health crisis" and linked ~90% of crashes back to human error. Driverless cars don't have anyone to SMS.
Unproven tech, several thousand pounds of steel. No shit Sherlock we don't trust them.
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If you rear-end somebody, it is your fault 100% of the time. The only possible exception is if their brake lights are out. If you're close enough that you can't react in time to an instantaneous stop, you're too close. The problem with human drivers is that none of them believe the laws of physics apply to them. Everyone assumes their stupid driving will be fine because nobody else will do something stupid, too. Several examples:
1) I had a friend tell me a story about when he was going ~100 MPH on a motorcycle on a rural road. A semi ran a stop sign at an intersection he was approaching and he was forced to stop in an inelegant way that led to damage to himself and his motorcycle. He lamented that his speed would have been perfectly fine if the idiot semi driver hadn't run the stop sign. He didn't appreciate when I pointed out that the semi's running the stop sign would have been perfectly fine if the idiot on the motorcycle hadn't been going 100 MPH.
2) In snowy areas like mine, big 4x4 trucks zoom past at 15 MPH over the speed limit with black ice all over the road. I have known several who do this. I point out how stupid and dangerous this is. They respond it's fine because their trucks have 4-wheel drive. I point out that 4 points of contact on a friction-less surface is still just a friction-less surface and offers no additional protection from sliding.
3) Ever time I hear about someone rear-ending someone else, the offended sounds exactly like you and blames the person they rear-ended for stopping too fast. As I mentioned before, it's your own damn fault. Every time.
Yes, the software will have bugs. No, it won't be perfect. But I sure pick their defect rate over the defect rate of human drivers.
I watched a news report where they tested out driver-less cars in Germany. All went well until they came upon some road construction. The sensors didn't seem to register the cones and signs that were set up, and the car wanted to drive through it into a hole that the construction crew had dug. The person observing the car had to interfere. Errors like these is a sure sign that autonomous cars are far away in the distant future.
I drive a Tesla...autopilot is quite good but not even close to being something yiu can depend on. No matter what other sensors get added to support such things as recognizing traffic signals, stop signs and so forth, itâ(TM)s going to be a long time before before these systems can anticipate, for example while driving down a street, recognizing that there are kids playing on the path, kicking a football and one of them might run into the road.