The more control we hand over for the sake of convenience, the more control our government will exert over us.

What if there was a form of public transportation where you took a single occupant 'bus' or such and that took you from A to B without your having to do anything (like a bus)? Would you ever take something like that?

I'll play devil's advocate here... What if there were a service that you could call and a driverless car shows up to take you where you want to go? Doesn't have to be public, it could be a private company providing the service. Like a combination of a rental car company and uber, basically. No car ownership hassles (repairs, inspection, refueling, heck even cleaning), no need for car insurance, choice of makes and models. Would you use that service?

I just had this discussion with someone last week. He made the above suggestion. I'm pretty firmly in the 'hell no give me a stick shift and rack and pinion steering so I can feel the road' category, but I enjoyed considering the hypothetical.

Plus, I'm currently training a new 16 year old driver. That experience alone is enough to soften my stance against driverless cars. (only half joking)

Oh, I agree we're on the path to not having any choice in the matter. I wonder how long it will take?

Hadn't thought of the elderly; I imagine driverless cars would increase the elderly's ability to be self-sufficient for longer. That's actually a positive that I hadn't considered.

Dude I was discussing this with suggested the utility of driverless cars when going on long trips. I wouldn't want to use them on a day-to-day basis, but I could see using one on a 8-10 hour drive. It would be nice to be able to sleep a long car trip away and arrive refreshed.

I would think there would be more profit in being a cyber road-pirate. Jack a self-driving truck full of...idk...electronics or weed or whatever can be sold on the black market. (Are there semis full of weed yet?) Not sure what the motivation would be to hijack individuals, unless someone had a grudge. Rich people would be able to afford extra precautions against hijacking. But yeah, you're right - of course criminals will find a way to exploit the system.

I live in an area with heavy trucking, lots of warehouses. There's been a lot of talk in the local news/papers about self-driving trucks improving the safety on the local highways. The highways weren't designed for the traffic burden they're under, and people get smushed pretty regularly on the highways around here due to the excessive volume. I also wonder what kind of infrastructure changes will need to be made.

There is such a service in the greater phoenix area. Waygo

My biggest problem with the self-driving cars is machine error. Machine error, while less likely than human error, GUARANTEES error at a defined, albeit infrequent rate.

RIP Michael Hastings :(

True, but the number of injuries/deaths prevented by driverless cars will greatly outweigh the number of injuries/deaths caused by machine error. The AI car has sensors all sides, instant reaction time, humans can't compete in a near accident situation. Add to that the elimination of intoxicated or distracted or drivers once the tech is mass adopted.

Bring back the road beers!

It will never happen! Somehow these arseholes will still want insurance and violations, you will need registration, I bet updates will become costly and mandatory several times a year. Being drunk will stay on the books even if cars drive themselves which seems absurd however they will claim it as a safety issue with windows being allowed to be opened. Insurance will go up on older self driving cars causing the price of driving to skyrocket. They will no longer give driving lessons in 10 to 15 years. Gas prices will be inflated and even with cars being driven at optimum performance for fuel consumption it will seem like somehow the new self driving cars are creating traffic instead of avoiding it.

The price to fix the new cars will become astonishing high.

If you want to understand the future look not at what you can now do, but what can they make money on.

They can make money on tickets Think what kind of tickets will they issue? They can make money on upgrades which will be considered car Maintenance this will be considered a safety issue. They can make money on entertainment “TVs sound systems” etc that have to be built into the car by car companies for safety reasons. They can make money off of providing internet for your vehicle. Driving routes or destinations will be calculated and your car will need to be maintenanced or you will be ticketed. Aka need new tires, brakes, oil, etc for safety reasons.

Self-posts don't require a submission statement.

"Your Amazon Echo has revealed you engaged in wrong think. You are now being driven to a detention facility."

The only text it is programmed to say is "stop resisting."

Because that wouldn't be abused...

Those cars are going to be rolling fatality machines. Autonomous vehicles are NOT ready for public streets yet, but the auto industry is recklessly rushing to be first to the market. I wonder if the auto industry will successfully pressure lawmakers to reduce their liability for lawsuits when they start killing people.

Except they are, and they're safer than people.

But no one wants the truth anymore, they'd rather believe that humans are special and irreplaceable.

They said that about Chess, and Jeopardy, and Go.

And machines beat them all...

I for one welcome our autonomous driving masters. Nap on the way to work, text on the road as much as you want. It'll be a complete transformation of what it means to use cars.

No more DUI, no more human error. Safer for everyone.

Make no mistake, these cars will drive you straight to the police station if you are suspected of a crime... very likely for 'wrongthink' or even as a 'pre-crime' preventative measure. If you are considered too dangerous why not send you driving into a brick wall at top speed? If these things are running on intel processors hacking them will be child's play.

Sorry to say dude (as you're not really "wrong") but most cars produced since about 2005 are essentially all drive-by-wire style; They can already drive you into a wall.

true. There have been a few suspicious deaths of politicians in single car accidents starting around that time.

If the police want to talk to you, they don't need anything so elaborate. All they have to do is freeze you bank account and/or credit cards and call/email/send you a letter to come into the station or face even worse charges.

What would you do in response? Grab your prepacked go-bag and prepare for a life on the run? How many people, even on this forum, are prepared to do that today? The <1% of people that would are of no concern to them, more than enough people would comply.

Drink all day, drive all night.

If you think people who DUI would willingly buy one of these...

Who said they'd be given a choice?

How’d that work for gun control?

My advice: stop huffing paint friend. It does bad things to the brain.

Teenagers texting while driving are already rolling fatality machines.

Awesome. Self-driving cars will lead to a massive reduction in highway fatalities. Can't happen soon enough, IMO.

Gives a whole new level of real to the phrase 'you own nothing goy!'. 'Oh it's not communism, it's progressive!'

My first encounter with the idea of self driving cars was about approx 3-4yrs ago on BBC Radio 4. An 'expert' was on saying they were the future and his main reason was for security purposes. This was so the Police or any security force could claim control of any vehicle. I have been amazed at the escalation of this technology ever since.

Do you have the clapper ready for the AI takeover of humanities creative power trough tech? It can't be far away now.

Thanks for the write up of this dark near-future view, but i hope many people wake up so it does not include their future.

Unfortunately..they've given me zero reasons to do so.

Luckely many people are reaching the same conclusion. Together we can turn the tide, but if we stop paying attention we will become passengers of our own created reality.

Personally, I can't wait for self-driving cars. Yeah, there will be some issues, maybe even fatal ones in the early years. But networked computer systems will be so much better at controlling traffic than millions of individual people are. Ultimately traffic fatalities will become rare, or so much lower that the benefits will outweigh the concerns.

But judging from the picture, why is GM stupidly modelling self-driving cars on the human-driver design? Forward-facing seats? Really? Seats in these cars should face or at least swivel inward, so people can relax, work, relate to each other....

Also, for those interested I found this article really thought-provoking...it's about how current technology is going to greatly change our lives very soon, much of it based around self-driving cars:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/must-read-article-how-our-lives-change-dramatically-20-delahunty

GM continues to lead the way in bailout shitter cars for the ignorant.

This ain't cutting edge. This is pure retardation.

They should have Michael Hastings as their poster child.

This will go over like a fart in church. Can't wait to foot the bill for their next bailout.

The only text it is programmed to say is "stop resisting."

Who said they'd be given a choice?