But once they have accident rates that compare favorably with accident rates for human drivers, they'll have a saleable product. Self-driving cars don't have to be perfect, they just have to be better than people.
To be allowed on regular public roads without humans behind the wheel in most jurisdictions, they're going to have to be better than people in virtually all conceivable circumstances rather than just on average. (This isn't even necessarily a bias in favour of the status quo or irrational fear of machines though those exist too; the analogy would be a person with unusually quick reaction times who drives 100k miles every year without incident still being liable to lose their licence if they're proven to have a bug in their system that makes them occasionally inclined to drive under the influence or faster than speed limits...)
And, as a practical matter, not to fail in ways that average people (aka the voters) won't see as crazy and incompetent--even if the occasional tired or under the influence human driver might have done something equally bad.
Also, let's say the accident rate was slightly better than that of an average human's.
Among people, there are some good drivers and some poor drivers. The average driving ability --- including fast reflexes for dealing with accident situations, for example --- is somewhere in between.
Is it fair to possibly force self driving cars on the good drivers?
(they probably shouldn't jump on the self-driving car bandwagon early anyway, but just a thought.)
People (especially males I've noticed) seem to equate good driving with great reflexes.
I have pretty good reflexes, but that doesn't make me a good driver.
I equate good driving with common sense, not speeding over the limit or taking unnecessary risks, not tail gating people, and in general not being a tool.
I.e. when you're driving a 2-tonne metal tank going at 80 km/h, good == safe.
In this sense, autonomous cars have already far surpassed us.
I apologize if I made it seem like I meant great reflexes meant good driving. Instead, I included it because great reflexes might help people get out of accident situations (say, like properly pulling the handbrake when the car starts spinning out of control, or turning away from a deer in the right direction last second, etc.)
Again though, I was discussing the situation in which cars were only slightly above average, meaning there were likely situations where some people would do better than it and might be putting themselves in more risk going into a self-driving car.
(if your point was more to make sure people don't take the wrong message away from my post, sorry for this response then!)
This assumes self driving without human intervention. If your in the car you can keep an eye out for danger and still be far more relaxed. Open road on a sunny day, no cars, sit and chill. Creeping along at 5mph in a traffic jam, relax it's all good. Driving in a more complex situation ok, manual time.
People suck at paying attention to boring situations. So, the easiest part of the trip is likely the best thing to automate.
Remember, the actual accident rate is very low. Further cars and humans are likely to make different mistakes so if you supervise and the car does sub second reactions and 24/7 360 degree vision the combined rate is likely to be great.
Force? I said they had a salable product. Even if every car sold today was self-driving, the average car on the road is eleven years old. It's going to be awhile before anyone is forced into anything. At least in the US.
