Self Driving Vehicles

As I understand it there are two types of self driving vehicles, one kind has drivers controls and one doesn't. Of course it will be cheaper to have one that a human cannot drive because dual sets of controls is more expensive. However, for me, in an emergency I would like to be in the front seat to take over when something went wrong.

Because a non-human driver isn't necessarily always a better driver because of software errors, and electronic malfunctions. The types of problems that could happen with software and hardware if a human life is at stake are in my view much scarier than any human driver would be unless intoxicated. So, for me at least, I don't ever plan to ride in one of these that I cannot drive in an emergency myself.

However, then the problem becomes: "When do you know you are in an emergency?" because often problems arrive in split seconds without warning. So, if you are looking at your smartphone and something comes up it's all over before you are aware of anything.

My thought is that if self driving vehicles were operated like a drone in the air that there would be more feedback and possibly more safety because someone would be monitoring what was actually going on with the vehicle in real time. However, more and more I'm starting to see people riding in self driving cars as victims more than anything else.

I don't see riders in cars that way now unless they have a really crazy taxi driver driving them.

However, most people might never have worked as a computer programmer like I have when I was young so they might not see the technical problems there like I do. A human driver is safer if well trained than a computer is going to be, and even if someone built a safer system than present systems presently are there are still a lot of things that could go wrong. I'd prefer a human driver any day.

The old software model still applies: "Garbage in Garbage out" and then there all the electro-mechanical things that can go wrong on top of this. And then there are things wearing out and how do you know when that happens. And what do you do when software corrupts over time?

I think it is going to be really sketchy regarding self driving cars for a long time until you see how ridiculous it will be the reasons people will die in them.

Of course even I have to admit that most people will die in self driving vehicles because of human drivers hitting them because the person driving the self driving vehicle is not a defensive human driver like I am who avoids other crazy drivers and puts distance between me and them anyway possible.

Nothing is better than an experienced human driver.