That's true but there's also a separate element here which is there is an obvious need for aviation and not an obvious need for autonomous vehicles.
We've grown numb to it, but 40,000 US traffic fatalities is an obvious need.
I agree. In the US trains and buses deliver slow, unreliable, inflexible, expensive, dirty, and dangerous service at high cost.
It will be great to see the safe, clean, flexible, and affordable transportation that will be possible with self-driving cars.
Cars are noisy, take a lot of space, are crazy expensive, dirty (even electric ones leave tire particles in the air) and are involved in 99% of road incidents. Them being self-driving wouldn't fix any of these issues. Maybe they'd be a little safer? But even that is doubtful.
I understand US transportation is in a dire state right now. This shouldn't be a reason to make it worse, quite the contrary IMHO.
the main argument i can see in favor of autonomous vehicles is that they don’t get tired, ill, or drunk, but would they outperform on other kinds of situations across a larger uncontrolled ecosystem? is it worth the expense to develop?
the main reason to develop them is to make military capabilities more mature, which i don’t support. the military would love to have unmanned convoys that are guarded by drones.
that way they can have an easier time doing invasions of sovereign countries
It is of course such an emotional vs rational argument, so extreme, so ridiculous, what can you do but grab a picket sign and say to ban all cars and combustion engines for the sake of poor kit kat. A very easy sell since combustion engines are already viewed as the devil
At least in America, the need for autonomous vehicles is much, MUCH more obvious than for aviation actually unless you're a 20 year old exclusively city person. In most of the country by area, and at least a good hundred million-ish people by population, being able to have [arbitrary point to point mechanized transportation] is a necessity for normal adult life & work. Right now that equates exclusively to having and being able to drive your own vehicle. There are no other options of any kind unless you are extremely wealthy to the point you can employee an exclusive human brain & body not your own for that role. There are no buses. There are no trains. There are no human driven taxis for that matter. Normal family, friends and neighbors can fill in on an occasional/emergency basis and that's a safety net, but you will be heavily restricted. And tens of millions of people, indeed eventually almost all of us, do not have the ability to safely drive themselves. They are either too young, too old, have some sort of disability preventing it, or have made some poor life choices that nonetheless are compounded upon by this.
Right now it can't be helped, it is what it is, our mechanical technological capability ran ahead of our information processing capability so the human brain and body was called upon to fill in and here we are. The law also reflects that, with far more generosity given to poor and dangerous driving because it's by necessity a quasi-right however much it's called a "privilege". But fully public road autonomous vehicles would change all that. Driving yourself would truly become a hobby practice, not a requirement. Major training could be demanded. If someone has any DUI infractions or the like boom, no more driving privilege. You could be 90 with failing eyesight and reflexes and physically incapable even during the day. And it'd all be ok with everyone still having near identical mobility because they could just fall back on having the car itself take them where they need or want to go on their schedule, same as someone driving today.
That'd be just wildly huge and will only get bigger as America follows the rest of the developed world in terms of aging demographics. This is putting aside all sorts of massive improvements in productivity, lives saved, urban/suburban/rural development, electrification, and probably more we haven't considered. Certainly there are pitfalls to be avoided but it blows my mind anyone could possibly not see all this. The car is one of the most important things in American society and consumes EONS of human time. Literally. An eon is a span of one billion years. Hundreds of millions of people have absolute spent a year or more of their lives behind a steering wheel. It adds up. Anything that shifts that is by definition enormous.