I think that Google has already had to face up to the fact that people do weird things and you have to have a variety of reactions. So do we, you never know what that idiot in front of you is going to do. Computer react faster.

Jan won a bet with me on this. I used to bet that the algorithm for a self driving car was too hard and we would build "smart" roads that would guide cars first. Obviously she won.

The key is computer learning. While one car is autonomous, they will be able to update their algorithms regularly. While we sleep our cars will be exchanging stories "You won't believe what happened to me today..."

None of these questions would obtain if private persons and companies owned and kept the streets and roads, and private organizations undertook to advise people on safety. If you abolished the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration today, Underwriters' Laboratories could open a highway/traffic-safety division tomorrow.

In other words, you would like a new car that is as safe as, or safer than, the cars now on the road, and won't necessarily wait for the car that is perfectly safe. The latter we call "making the perfect the enemy of the better."

But I would suggest that different humans might have completely different sets of driving patterns and if the autonomous car expected a driver to do one thing and learned to handle THAT thing, but then encountered a driver that took the opposite action, there might not be enough time to safely react.
If all cars were autonomous, one car could expect some sort of standardized response to situations

The beauty of self driving cars is that the entire system can learn. Have one car encounter someone on a unicycle and the system will learn how to deal with unicycles.

We don't have to think of that in advance. Google and the others are gathering that data now and adjusting their algorithms based on their encounters with the erratic public.

I am just thinking like the engineer that I am. If I had to put in programming to take into account irrational, stupid, or unpredictable actions of human drivers- I would hardly know where to start !! Very difficult problem. I would also say that there are no protective measures that would be effective to combat some irrational behavior on the part of human drivers, and accidents would result. I can imagine how the courts would assess blame in those cases to software that wasnt able to anticipate or handle those situations.

Probably better than most human drivers

The problem is that our courts and legal system have perverted the definition of a tort (accident). A person who is injured or suffers economic damage is not entitled to damages unless the perpetrator behaved in a way that was more reckless than a reasonably prudent person and the perpetrator acting substantially more unreasonably that the injured party.

For example a passenger in a car is not entitled to damages from the driver if the driver was taking unreasonable risks if the passenger was egging the driver on (Did not affirmatively complain about the driving).

The problem in law today is that we act like accidents do not happen. A good driver can have a wreck and have done nothing unreasonable. They should not be given a ticket and they should not be liable for damages, even if they hurt property or a person.

lets put all the regulators in the back seats and passenger seats of these cars and watch them become bumper cars.

There is certainly that, but I think the bigger unresolved question is one of legal liability: who is to blame in an accident initiated by a driverless car?

I have used a vehicle with semi-autonomous control, and it worked quite well except when needing to make a choice at intersections or to stop for traffic lights or stop signs. That's because a properly trained pair of driving horses have a good sense of going straight down the road, and seem to understand self preservation.

When taking those same horses a good distance in my horse trailer, I would dread being in an automatically controlled towing vehicle. It takes a bit of psychology to understand that the car behind you is probably going to pass in a no-passing zone and pull in front of your truck as you are attempting to stop for traffic ahead.

I avoided that accident by doing what the passing vehicle had just done, and moving my rig into the oncoming-traffic lane, which happened to be empty. What would the autonomous-control towing vehicle do?

Will the new autonomous vehicles be able to sense the horse-drawn vehicles on the roads of Indiana, Ohio, or Pennsylvania? Will the Amish need to adopt some sort of set of radar reflectors in self defense?

If all cars were driverless, I can see things being better than now. If all cars have human drivers, we have what we have now, which isnt great. If some cars are autonomous, and some are driven by humans, how is that going to work? How is the autonomous control system going to account for the supremely STUPID and unpredictable things drivers do while they are texting, dealing with screaming children, arguing with spouses, etc.

As long as I get a choice.

I feel that way too, but I imagine a future in which cars do not even have a driver's seat and are more like first-class seats on an international flight: a little alcove with a desk that can turn into a bed. It's possible when it gets to that point no one born after that point will even think about wanting manual controls, anymore than we want to scrub clothes on an washboard. I would have a hard time with a lack of control, but I think the extra free time will be far more desirable to people who never had to drive.

We have systems in place to allocate damages, medical bills, pain and suffering, death and loss of future income and all the issues related to the vast number of highway deaths. The system works. My concern is that some neo-luddite jury will ignore all this and award someone a billion dollar award as punitive damages because there was a software bug.

Agreed

Impressive. I might want to drive occasionally, but I would love to not have to drive and I would like many other people not to drive.

Besides we are not getting any younger and at some point it will not be safe for us to drive, but we could use a driverless car

I'm willing to bet the best algorithm is the head on collision as off center as possible.

Another thought about autonomous cars: What if the program is faced with the decision of a head-on collision or hitting pedestrians? It's the type of scenario people bring up when discussing utilitarianism and human behavior, but now we may actually have to think it through and put it in a program that will be deployed in a fleet of cars.

"While we accept killing almost 100 people a day, every day with human driven cars."
That was my thought exactly.

"There is no question that someone’s going to die in this technology"
This is true of any new technology. It's true of IoT. Very some combination of human error and automated devices will kill someone. Maybe it will be an app error turning on the stove by accident on a phone app in a distant city.

As you say, nor can an autonomous car prevent the same accident if the oncoming car blew a fuse, broke a steering links, etc.

I have an employee who was driving along, minding his own business one night when a woman in an oncoming car had a heart attack and came across the lane at him. He had a barrier to his right and no where to go. They medevacked him out, so being a good driver doesn't mean you can't have an accident.

Yes, whatever happened to the idea of the laissez faire free market.

Thinking of bureaucrats and MADD (the directors of much of NHTSA) designing autonomous cars kind of reminds me of the old engineering saw about what a camel is: A horse designed by committee.

Google is actually seeking gov't direction to choose their designs and concepts of self driving cars to fit some idea of cars that few of their people use or rely on. They're socialists and environmentalists.

Me, I like to drive and in 58 years of doing so all over this nation, I've never wrecked an auto or hit anything else. I have been hit from the rear three times at stops.