driver assisted autonomous cars?

begin quote:
 I'm not the first person to feel this way. In his 1940 book, Magic Motorways, futurist and streamlining guru Norman Bel Geddes, who created the General Motors pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair, predicted big things for cars 20 years later: “These cars of 1960 and the highways on which they drive will have in them devices which will correct the faults of human beings as drivers. They will prevent the driver from committing errors. They will prevent his turning out into traffic except when he should. They will aid him in passing through intersections without slowing down or causing anyone else to do so and without endangering himself or others.”
end partial quote from:
http://www.wired.com/2012/01/ff_autonomouscars/2/

As I was reading this and also knowing that we humans on earth will be allowed to buy (if we wish) a self driving car possibly as soon as 2017, I was sort of realizing where all this going which I didn't really expect.

I realized that except for country roads where there isn't much traffic that eventually even if you are driving your car yourself that on freeways it might become manditory to have the computer watch over your moves as a driver, for example.

The main reason for this is that most of the time (even in heavy traffic on a freeway bumper to bumper) less than 50% of the road is filled with cars and trucks. So, in larger cities people would be required to be at the very least semi-autonomous for greater efficiency of dealing with traffic because a computer (or computers) is more efficient in terms of time in regard to how many decisions can be made in a second over any one human. So, autonomous driven cars basically would end all traffic jams unless there was an accident. And even then computers could reroute 1000 cars and trucks faster and more efficiently than any 1000 humans could because the humans don't know each other (mostly) and couldn't come to an agreement fast enough regarding heavy traffic or lane closures.

So, likely there will be times (out in the country where people completely drive their cars) but then there will be heavy traffic areas where people won't be allowed to drive their cars which will be great IF: it isn't heavy lightning, snow, rain, or heavy dust or metal dust in the air or the temperature isn't too high or too low or too humid or too much static from dryness where the computers are in the vehicle.  etc. etc. etc. Or if you hit any bump (like when 4 wheel driving or a road hazard) that dislodges any electronics in the vehicle from it's rightful place. If any of these things are happening you might just have about 1000 or more dead people and a real mess of wrecked vehicles on a freeway somewhere.

Sort of like the missing Malaysian jetliner?