This probably won’t stop companies like Google, Uber, and Tesla from throwing shareholders money away by developing technologies no one wants (like Google Glass and touch-screen computers), but self-driving cars are a myth altogether.
I’ve long argued that self-driving cars would appeal to people who cannot drive due to a physical disability. Fantastic, let’s build a few for them – maybe. The problem is, they aren’t safe and probably never will be. Ever use a computer that never crashes? My Linux machines almost never lock up. Notice I said almost. That means there are times (albeit rare) that a Linux machine does lock up. It’s more common with Windows. What happens when the OS in the car locks up? With no driving controls, you can kiss your ass goodbye.
The engineers cross the line when they insist on taking control completely away from the driver. “No steering wheel, no accelerator or brake pedals, no driving controls for you, stupid human”, says the software developers who have yet to write perfect code that runs on hardware that never fails.
Another strike against the pipe dream is the fact that people like to drive their own cars and we like to be in control of them. We don’t trust computers with our lives. Airplanes have had autopilot for decades but there is still a flight crew at the controls. Even if they drove perfectly and never wrecked, people still like to drive their cars. We’re not perfect, either, but we like to be in control. And THIS driver will ALWAYS be in FULL control.