My thought was that the public would fear and refuse to use the technology but some brave souls are jumping right in.
My opinion: full self driving is only a matter of time. At some point in the future insurance companies will figure out that self driving is less dangerous than human drivers and start offering cheaper premiums and deductibles to self driving only cars.
Where does the faith in the tech and its future come from though? Wouldn't it be more logical to wait and then say "hey, Geico is offering a 20% discount if I buy a new car with these features, guess they must really make a difference" rather than going around proclaiming how much safer they are in advance?
Well now that you've put me on the spot like that and I have to think about it: baseless I suppose. Just a general faith that technology always improves.
> Wouldn't it be more logical
Yes, it would.
People seem increasingly angry about technology and tech workers though.
So it seems like the climate is oscillating between extremes. Maybe people are getting disoriented.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/security-tech... (The Cambrian Explosion in Technology, and How It's Affecting Us | Seeing the progress made across various fields over the last few years, we can ask if we are witnessing a Cambrian explosion in technology today)
This means that if a model has sold 1 million cars they each need to drive 100 000 miles with autopilot enabled before the insurance company has enough statistics to say "this is safer than a human".
Tesla for instance does that statistic against "average driving" but the "Average driving" happens in cities. And most Teslas enable Autopilot on highways, where Tesla recommends enabling it, too.
Accidents happen much less on highways, so of course this "statistic" looks better. Put Autopiloted Teslas in the cities and then see how that statistic fares. My guess is it will become much, much worse.
The more real statistic is that even Waymo, which is about an order of magnitude better than anything else on the market, has an "incident" where a human driver would need to intervene every 5000 miles. For everyone else, a human driver would need to intervene every few hundred miles.
That's far from the "self-driving" technology we were promised.
Two relevant posts from someone that used to lead the Waymo project, before it was named Waymo:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2019/06/10/gmcrui...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2019/04/18/are-ro...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/04/uber-goog...
I compared your recent comments to 6 months ago. They seem a bit better now.
Why not just email and apologize? We all have bad days. Why let a string of bad days tank your 8-year history?
Regardless of what you decide, I wanted to leave an encouraging comment. At least one person is thinking of you and cheering you on. Good luck.
Others will lead the way, even if the US succumbs to regulatory paralysis.