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[alway]

I'm wondering what the driver seat would look like. Would it be empty with the steering wheel moving, or would there be a box sitting there covering that side?

I'm assuming the normal controls would still be there, in case the passenger needed to direct the car if it went off course.

People might feel more comfortable if there's a humanoid robot sitting in the drivers seat. I'm sure there's similar examples of that elsewhere but I just can't think of one at the moment.

So the thing here is a possibly incorrect assumption that the passenger was qualified to operate a manually steered car. Most people wouldn't bother to learn if it wasn't required. Similarly, part of the benefit of self driving cars is the mobility it gives the disabled. The elderly, whose licences have been revoked for being unable to drive properly and the blind are both demographics a self driving car would be nothing short of a miracle for.

There would initially be overrides, but those would vanish in fairly short order as the perception shifted towards humans being the horrible drivers that they are.

As for that last bit, no. That's as silly as putting a big, wheeled, metal horse out in the front of an automobile. It may be a bit weird to see this strange, newfangled device moving without a horse to pull it, but only to those people who haven't seen more than 3 automobiles in their lives. Not having a driver would become the new normal within only half a decade or so.

The big problem when the most accidents will happen will probably be during the transition.  The biiggest chance an automated car has of making a mistake is when a human is involved.   Once there are fewer people driving manually everything will be far smoother, everything is far more predictable when the computers don't have to go into their "What if the guy in front of me does something stupid" routine.

But even during that transition phase I wouldn't be surprised if traffic accidents still go down.  Even when the unexpected happens computers have far far better reaction times than any human in the world, and they will almost always react in the most rational way possible where a human in a quick reaction moment may make the wrong choice.  Only times a computer would react incorrectly is when something it wasn't programmed to react to happens.

Current google cars according to statistics seem to be able to respond to basically everything already, and when some edge case does come up the situation will be patched into the system's memory along with what to do probably within a day of it being made public.

And as for jobs lost, it may seem a bit cold but that is one of the costs of progress.  People need to adapt to a changing world. Does anybody still cry for all the scribes who lost their jobs when the printing press was invented?

Thing is though, vehicles aren't some mystical unsolved physics problem. Motion of all that stuff is incredibly easily predictable. In the case of awful drivers, self driving cars will basically look like ninjas. They can pull evasive maneuvers and crazy movie drifting shit that no human could possibly pull off, and do so in a full repeatable and reliable manner.
Things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldKMl8HPu2I
Or this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY93kr8PaC4 (basically demonstrating the pure-physical simulation approach failing, the pure-reaction based approach failing, and the success of an algorithm that takes both into account, essentially modifying a physical simulation on the fly with dynamic reaction to observed motion)
There could basically be an entire highway filled with cars out to get you specifically and all you would probably get would be the most exciting ride of your life.

And yeah, jobs are only a means to an end. "The economy" is pretty royally screwed either way, since labor and production are almost entirely decoupled at this point; more menial labor tasks won't stop that. But that's just a societal problem, and as such there really aren't solutions outside of societal fixes.

[alexandertnt]

There is going to be a lot of distrust towards autopilot cars for some time. I also suspect that for a while individual robotic car crashes will be "proof" that humans are overall better drivers somehow.

With the way things are progressing, I would be much more comfortable trusting a computer to drive than a human, though it would initially feel "wrong" for a while. I am already comfortable with the car computer controlling my braking in an emergency.

And yeah, as other people have already said, you have to get this idea out of your head that robotic cars are being built to function in ideal perfect conditions. They are being built to function in average driving conditions, including things like blank traffic lights, road works, drunk drivers etc.

eight hours of simulated Coca-cola™ dreams.

Oh god, the thought of that...

[freeformschooler]

What I want to know is do automated cars stop for running cats?

[Greiger]

Well from what I understand low light driving enhancement systems installed in newer cars already identify animals.  Though currently all they do is notify the driver that they are there, not do anything to stop you from pancakeing Scruffles.

If automated cars don't already implement those same systems and analyses them as a hazard it would be a short step to do so.

[alway]

eight hours of simulated Coca-cola™ dreams.

Oh god, the thought of that...

Eh, as a graphics programmer, I've had worse. I fairly regularly dream about various noise algorithms. Or see them when I close my eyes. Or when I look at any patterning on anything ever because it's all just noise algorithms.

And yeah, as other people have already said, you have to get this idea out of your head that robotic cars are being built to function in ideal perfect conditions. They are being built to function in average driving conditions, including things like blank traffic lights, road works, drunk drivers etc.

Or more accurately, they're built to function in any driving conditions. Heck, the original darpa grand challenge in which Thrun's first self driving car first showed its stuff, it was little more than a poorly marked desert path, in which it had to ensure it could dodge the horribly failing competetors' self driving cars.

[Propman]

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/21/us/theft-of-tank-raises-questions-about-the-security-at-armories.html

How do you think they'll handle something like that?

[Greiger]

Likely analyze it as an oncoming slow moving vehicle that isn't communicating with it like other cars on the road are, and maneuver to avoid.  And probably come to a stop if it can't get around it.  If it continues to approach depending on how it's programmed it may even automatically reverse to avoid as well.  Though the passengers should probably abandon the car (and any automated car should come to a full stop when doors are opened) long before it gets close.

What would a human do?  Scream, panic, MAYBE successfully maneuver to avoid not giving a rats ass to any cars that may be in adjacent lanes to do it, potentially crashing and disabling other vehicles that had already successfully avoided the problem.

[i2amroy]

Yeah, and if we have communicating cars (which isn't as likely as self driving ones, but still within reach if some standards are set) then they would even be likely to communicate with other cars and start clearing the lanes in danger before they ever even reached the tank.

Which, as Greiger points out, would be much better than what many human drivers would pull off.

[alway]

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/21/us/theft-of-tank-raises-questions-about-the-security-at-armories.html

How do you think they'll handle something like that?

That one's obvious. They will leave their passengers by the side of the road and zerg rush it en masse, bogging it down in mounds of debris as they search for the glowing weak spot all such boss monsters have. Standard car stuff.

[Greiger]

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/21/us/theft-of-tank-raises-questions-about-the-security-at-armories.html

How do you think they'll handle something like that?

That one's obvious. They will leave their passengers by the side of the road and zerg rush it en masse, bogging it down in mounds of debris as they search for the glowing weak spot all such boss monsters have. Standard car stuff.

I like that one.  Can I change my answer?

[Mech#4]

Shoot the core!

[Sheb]

I wonder how they'll regulate it too. Google has proven they can do it efficiently, but soon every car manufacturer will have his own self-driving cars. How will you know their gear and software is good enough?

[i2amroy]

I wonder how they'll regulate it too. Google has proven they can do it efficiently, but soon every car manufacturer will have his own self-driving cars. How will you know their gear and software is good enough?

I would assume that there would be standards set up that the AI software would be required to pass, just like we have safety standards set up for things like seat belts and airbags.

[forsaken1111]

They'd have to adapt, or be displaced.

This is true for every single large technological revolution in history though. I don't see anyone these days refusing to use cars because they put carriage drivers and horse tenders out of a job, and I really hope that people won't hold up technological progress because some people are unable to adapt.

[alexandertnt]

I don't think manual controls are going to ever be completely removed.

Some people do enjoy driving and would prefer to manually driving their cars. There are also people who may still want to drive their cars only some of the time. I also imagine automated cars wouldn't be able to deal with off road conditions, such as driving on property, four wheel driving etc.

Maby this will result in some cars being fully automated, and specialty vehicles (sports cars, 4WD) being manual/both.