Wide open roads and hyper aggressive drivers

Fair enough.

Although with all the traffic laws we have on the books, the only way to obey them all is to not move (but that alone may break a few laws).

What I was thinking was that in the same spirit as those criminals who work in groups and now commit insurance fraud by boxing a car in and stopping quickly to claim whiplash will switch to simple robbery by boxing a self-driving car in, stopping it and holding the occupants at gun point.

Especially when cars lack manual controls (no steering wheel or pedals).

Eventually there will be an autonomous vehicle hit by a train because it was stopped on the tracks and wouldn't / couldn't ram the car in front of it to get off the tracks.

I'd guess/hope that so-called autonomous vehicles will include in their designs an emergency operator override function, and the attendant controls. In the stopped-on-tracks example, the gelatinous lump in the left front seat could push a button, for example, that instructs the car to obey any and all manual inputs that said lump might then choose to perform. That would include allowing contact with surrounding objects as necessary in order to move away from the imminent peril of an approaching train.

Sans the aforementioned override and/or nominal operator controls, how many nanoseconds would elapse between the occupants of the autonomous vehicle getting crushed by a locomotive, and the filing of the first lawsuit?

This is an ongoing conversation, to be sure.

Well, at least longer than 1 Planck time...maybe.

There's going to be all kinds of trolley problems and the car manufacturer has to decide up front how to solve them. If a child appears in the road - run over them or go off the cliff? What if there are 2 or more people in the car? Is it better to save 2 lives and run over the child? What if the system mistakes an animal for a child and takes the passengers off the cliff? Or mistakes a child for an animal and runs over the child?

Who lives and who is sacrificed will have to be determined ahead of time, written into the system requirements and implemented in the code. The loved ones of the people who come out on the short end of this kind of decision will be able to correctly state that "your system was programmed to kill my wife, child," etc. I think it will take a long time to work through these issues.

I worked at EXPO86 in Vancouver. The insurance company decided 12 people would die at the fair so that they could determine what we paid.

I forget how many actually died. Two died on rides because of their own stupidity.

Considering how many millions of people attended our death rate was pretty low. I bet more died on the way home.

I had to look it up. Planck time equals 10 to the -43 seconds.

I think people are driving like there is no tomorrow.

I saw a video the other day where a Tesla ran smack into an overturned trailer because it did not recognize the image.

As for self-driving cars in general, I would not mind being able to sit back and let the car or motor home drive on long interstates. To do that, all that's really required (simplification warning) is a cable embedded in one or more lanes and some sensors in the vehicle. Other than that, though, I enjoy the physical and mental chore of driving along with exercising personal control of my day. To a great extent, self-driving cars are-- for the majority of people-- the answer to a question no one asked and for whom the answer is unsatisfactory. Get ready for the upheaval wherein a majority of people want to live their lives in the face of a relatively few who don't.

I wonder if people realize self driving car will eventually eliminate speeding. The navigation system will know the speed limits and comply. No self driving car company's lawyers will allow software to break the law. Police departments will no longer be able to generate revenue for the local community.

We can then all commute is a wonderful complacent dystopian society, but I wouldn't want to be a pedestrian.

I'd wager that, as a hedge against lost revenue, registration fees will be indexed to vehicle types. This has already happened with hybrid and full-electric vehicles in some states, vis-a-vis their [politically] imputed link to reduced fuel tax receipts.

My light truck registration is more costly than that which I pay for Mrs. TM's compact SUV. The former, by virtue of its greater GVWR, is presumed to cause greater wear to our highways and byways. I think otherwise, but a fair argument can be still be made here. Not so with my example of higher registration costs for autonomous vehicles that never speed. That's a bald cash grab to replace speeding ticket fines that aren't being collected. I'm sympathetic to the cynic's argument that such fines don't require replacement.

Tall Man,
I would never take a bet that says taxes and fees won't increase.
It would be more likely the sun would fail to rise in the east.

Of course there will be a replacement for the lost fines. One thought it there should always be an override for manual control. The government will have your vehicle rat you out when you engage it. Then they will send you a fine in the mail for your indiscretion. Presently the government owns the information is you cars computer. People have been prosecuted using their cars data.

My definition of a cynic is, a realist with a sick sense of humor.

Speaking of fines and taxes, I've noticed lately that the revenuers are out in force since most people here are back to work.

We drove to Cape Cod for Memorial Day weekend to open the house up. I have never, ever in 50 years seen so many Mass. State cops out doing patrol, and sitting in the weeds running radar. Ever.

Locally, they're scarce, which is ok with me.

I seem to have the polar opposite of hyper, aggressive drivers when I'm out driving or riding.
Yesterday, while riding home from work, I was behind a line of cars with the lead car doing 35 in a 45 mph zone.
Then I got into town and was stuck behind another line of cars with the lead car doing 18 in a 25 mph zone.

That was yesterday, here. Today was roll stop signs to get into traffic and not accelerate day.

Southern California people have morphed into 2 categories that I see, 50% over or 25% under posted.

Riding at 75 mph on the freeway (my normal pace for bike or car) I am "flying by" cars doing 50, and dodging cars doing 100 (80% are not flowing). Both are unnerving. Normal is everybody at 75 with a few work trucks doing 60 and some Brodozers doing 90 (20% of drivers out of flow).

In the insurance fraud investigation business, we called the planned rear-end accident the "Swoop and squat". The guys who plan the accidents and get the car and passengers together are called Cappers. I think that, as self-driving cars become a reality, the story will stay the same. Guys will still swoop in front of them and stop in an effort to get rear-ended. The benefit will be that the Capper can now reach into a deeper pocket, suing the car manufacturer claiming that the self-driving system is defective, not just suing the driver's insurance company. The game changer will be that there will always be video evidence produced by a self-driving car, which will probably negate or mitigate the claims.

HBSURFDAD, yes, it is unnerving around here lately. Being extra careful changing lanes and merging to make sure I'm not going to rearend someone going 50 for no reason, or get rear-ended by a guy in an M5 going 100. A guy was arrested in Orange a few weeks ago for going 110 on Chapman Ave. At least we can camp out in the Car Pool lane when we ride.

In the Car Pool, as George Carlin once said, "You only have to worry about assholes on three sides of you".

Watch your 6 guys and gals, the newer high performance cars are really easy for a thrill seeker in their 500 + horsepower Hellcat or twin turbo supercar to come up behind you when you're going 70 + on the open highways lately around here in so-cal...

One of those idiots came up on me , and passed me going north of 100 mph yesterday on a open stretch of 4 lane highway when I was in the number 2 lane.

And I ride my moto's with one eye in my mirrors , hoping to see one of these , " Hey, let's see what this baby will do " , hypercar leadfoot drivers, not scare me.

It's a free country and all but , take it to the race track guys !

And it won't be just the video of the vehicle involved, they will be able to access the video of any autonomous vehicle in the vicinity of an incident.