Look, don't get me wrong. I am all for autonomous cars.
In fact, I dislike some human drivers so much, that I hope everyone is forced to drive an autonomous car. You know, the idiot drivers that drive erratically, are distracted, swerves in traffic, tail gates, speeds in excess compared to average traffic speeds, etc. These people should get their license revoked.
Driving is a burden for these people, and they are better off taking the subway. Or an Uber. But they still need to get to their destination for work, for play, or for their errands.
What I am stating, is that the current generation of robotic cars, are inherently unsafe.
They need more situational awareness, such as the ability to see all traffic on the road. Including the car in front of the car in front of it. This can possibly be handled by the Vehicle-to-vehicle communication standard that the DOT is proposing.
The other scenario might be to make illegal, all non-robotic cars from driving on the freeways and highways. So, all roads that allow you to travel at high velocity, must be a robotic car.
But this presents another problem. If you take away people's ability to drive, then you also take away, their ability to get experience with driving at high speeds. So, in the future, you end up raising a whole new generation of people, that don't know how to drive properly at high speeds.
Basically, until we get to a level of technology where these cars are fully safe, then the edge cases where accidents and collisions will happen, may end up being more critical with a robotic car, than with a human driver.
The danger, lies in the fact, that these robotic cars, will lull the human driver, into a sense of complacency. Where they think that 99.90% of scenarios will keep them safe. And maybe it might. But what about that 0.10% scenario where it won't. And not only is it dangerous for them, then it is also even more dangerous for someone else.
And when the robotic car gets into a situation where it needs human assistance, then it is an extreme edge case, where no human can possibly react safely in time. The human driver would never have gotten themselves into that situation in the first place.
But even with all that, I am still rooting for robotic cars to succeed, and to safely drive us all one day. And to safely handle that 0.10% scenario.