In this poll of 158,000 people on how they felt about self-driving cars, ~30% said they’d "be very or extremely concerned about riding in a self-driving car" - unsure if the risks outweigh the benefits and cost.
Curious: does our community share that reservation?
From an emotional perspective - yeah, I'd be concerned. I'm so used to driving that this would no doubt feel very weird... At least until I got more used to it.
But analytically - not in the least. Human drivers are terribly dangerous. Machines won't get sleepy, drive drunk, or be easily distracted.
What gets really interesting about all this is when you start to consider the classic philosophical / ethical issue of "the trolley problem". Are you ok with your robot car making a decision that puts you in danger in order to save more lives (like if you're on a collision course with a bunch of kids crossing the road and the car swerves to take you off the road...)
That's a really interesting and scary perspective to consider. I think it plays a lot into the human desire to control our own fate and outcome, even though when we're on the road with other drivers, our fate is oftentimes already not in our own hands.
So this year I decided it was really about time I applied for the
@vExpert subprograms, and guess what! I'm in! So Thanks to our Programme Manager @vCommunityGuy and Sub Programme Business Units!