Truckers, bus drivers, and taxi drivers will be gone soon. That will save businesses millions of $$$ and make commerce faster and more efficient. At the same time, there goes millions of jobs….

Bringing a vehicle to a full stop (heck, even a slower collision speed) in an emergency situation would result in the near elimination of all motor vehicle fatalities. Not accidents or injuries even, but fatalities. It would go a long way toward dampening the first two as well.

No they don’t. All they have to do is build a 3D model of how the world looks like and then avoid the obstacles, like every car game AI already does.

That part is not rocket science

What’s tricky is to build a system that can recognize traffic signs, know how to behave when there are accidents, traffic jams etc. Basically have common sense.

To give you an example. A basic Ford F-150 will set you back around $65000, most of this is tax, based on the weight of the car. The annual tax to be paid is $2900. A Suzuki Alto costs $9000 and there is only a sales tax of 19% no annual taxes at all, and with fuel right know at $8.35 per gallon people choose what they need more than what they want.

I would imagine that governments would implement similar stimuli to buy self driving cars when they become available. That combined with VERY steep rises in insurance for people who want to keep driving their own car will remove the old style cars from the road in a few years.

It will all be here soon, thanks to the law of accelerating returns.

Michael E. Arth

not soon, obviously, but this is the logical evolution of transportation .. assuming we continue to use personal vehicles to move around.

when machines become perfect at driving, no crashes and reduced traffic congestion, trusting a fallible human behind the wheel will seem like an absurdity to our great great grandchildren.