FWIW, Ohio has entered into a collaboration with Michigan and Pennsylvania for the development and production of self-driving cars.

http://www.govtech.com/fs/transportation/3-States-form-Sm...

As usual you don't have the slightest idea what you are talking about. I was doing computer programming probably before you were born, or maybe when you were still in diapers or a snot-nosed grade school pupil.

This is an excellent point. My new RAV/4 Hybrid has a lot of very neat safety features -- telling you when someone is in your side-view mirror blind spot, when it's safe to pull back into the right lane after passing another vehicle, and it will automatically break your car if your attention is diverted and the car in front of you makes a sudden stop. I hope to never have to use that last feature, but it's a nice one to have just in case. In all of these instances, though, a human driver is still in the driver's seat. I'm all for computer-assisted driving, I'm just dubious about computer driving.

Hoo hah!!!

The issue of "vision" brings up an interesting point.

I watching a show about driverless vehicles a few weeks ago.

One of the things that the people said they still haven't been able to work out,is how to keep sensors,cameras etc.functioning under less then ideal conditions including during snow,dust or when they just get dirty.

They have the same problem,to a lesser degree,with solar panels.
Solar panels just lose efficiency.Even with redundancy,if sensors and cameras can't function, the system goes down.

Remember my undergraduate major at OHIO was broadcast journalism. Please read everything I write phonetically. ;-) Put it this way, if it didn't brake your car, you -- and maybe you and your passengers -- would be broke (in maybe more ways then one).

There was a segment on one of the radio talk shows yesterday about a you-tube video of a "bucket truck" driving down the highway,with its boom/bucket fully extended.

Apparently this isn't uncommon,especially with mobile t.v. or radio vans.

Would seem to me,with all the technology out there,they would have some type of ignition/transmission lock to prevent moving a vehicle with the boom extended.

The article you linked does not at all prove my point wrong. We're not talking about designing a computer that can do all the things a brain does as efficiently as the brain does it. We're talking about designing a computer that only has to do one task--drive safely. You can teach a computer many, many combinations of possible outcomes and it can recall them quickly to accomplish that task. Quicker than humans because the human brain is also doing many other things at the same time.

But that point doesn't even matter, because the important point is your second one. That somehow my trust in the computer to make the right choice is based on blind faith. That's not true at all. I'm basing my opinion on the overwhelming agreement of research in this field. If the research said the opposite (or a different finding comes about in the future with a larger sample size) I would change my mind on this issue. You see, my initial reaction to the thought of allowing a computer to do the driving was the same as yours--an emotional one. I was convinced that I could do better than a computer and I did not like the idea of giving up my control. But the evidence says I was wrong and I've changed my opinion on the matter accordingly.

I'm happy to see this discussion raged on for several more pages since I last checked in, and am proud to have played my part in stirring it up in the first place.

Saw the firing of the Ford CEO and their reasoning and had to find this thread. Despite strong profits, they didn't want a leader who was anchored to the old way of doing things, so they promoted the guy who was in charge of, you guessed it, the development of their driverless technology.

Get on board guys, it is coming hard and fast.

Said before and I'll say it again.
They can have my steering wheel when they pry it from my cold dead hands.

Agreed. Having worked in Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems there are a number of areas driverless cars are a crap shoot at best. And thus, lawsuits would be all over the place. Multiple driverless cars, on the same road, whether a highway or 2 lane road, would have issues with things like black ice, rain freezing (to ice). Multiple cars cannot know how the other will respond, thus if any car in a situation chooses a decision that conflicts with another car it's an accident waiting to happen. I will never in my lifetime be a passenger in a driverless car.

For each it would/will be a choice. I prefer to have some control over a situation where I can make decisions that may help with my safety and well being and not be at the mercy of an external decision making entity.

I may not know everything about AI but was involved in it for years. There are, and will continue to be some situations where a smart system cannot make an optimal decision due to the many other variables and data (other cars) that can impact the decision made by each individual car. And that exists today with humans driving cars. But I can make my own decision now and will do so in the future.