Self-driving car convoys

I enjoyed that pleasure yesterday for the first time in almost 4 years, a delightful experience in comparison to the previous occasion when she managed to kerb both nearside alloys of my 3 day old BMW.
 
On paper, if you calculate the numbers, I'm almost 100% certain that roads full of self driving cars would be a lot safer than the current roads full of human controlled cars. The issue is that people like to have a sense of control, and also that some of us (myself included) quite like driving.

Also, you can already commercially get cruise control systems that maintain a certain distance to the car in front (sorting out the acceleration/braking for you).
 
Google are doing this as well. And yes I would be happy to trust 'auto driving' I would use it often but not always I enjoy driving myself.

The possibilities are wide reaching.
Auto driving would be great when you are tired, in particular if you are driving long distance, let the car drive and you can have a nap.
Imagine being able to to phone your car and ask it to come and pick you up.
Imagine taking the car to the airport and instead of paying for the car park your car could drive itself home.
Or having a drink at the pub and letting your car drive you home instead of sitting in a sick filled minicab.

Ultimately it will be safer the radar can see everything all around it. Your eyes can only see straight ahead. Its the future people.

 
Carrying on from sushifiesta 's post, I think he might be on to something there.

What if in the future you had to pass an extremely stringent driving test in order to earn the right to control your own car? Those who failed would be forced to become passengers in their vehicles.

Wreck your car, lose your privilege. Simple as that.
 
The technology side of things is pretty much there (which is well exciting!); the legal side of things will probably take decades to hammer out. Who is liable if a car crashes while in automatic mode? And any software crash could quickly become a hardware crash!
 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18248841

Would you let yourself be driven by a wifi car?

Don't see why not, if we take a commercial flight ever to anywhere we're already in a wi-fi plane, so it's not that much of a leap of faith to downgrade 3D in a plane to 2D on the ground.
Even back in the 80s British Airways shuttles from LHR to MAN had Autoland, which meant they could land in Cat.III (which is fog so thick that you can't see your hand in front of you and normal flying is a no-no) when most flights would be forced to divert to a fog-free airport.

It's been done in cars a lot before, and the only thing that's really newsworthy is that for the first time it's been done on public roads.

And, Josephiah surely the point of this is that with all the radar and ultrasonic sensors an automatic car can't crash?
<laughs so hard he has a trouser accident, and a change of underwear>
 
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