It might begin very soon

pnichols wrote:
Well ... as an example to all complex-technology trusters out there, here's a harmless failure mode that happened last night to my daughter's fairly modern "slightly high tech" Lexus SUV:

It was just sitting in the driveway in the dark outside of her home when an electrical equipment failure began. Every 2-3 minutes it's rear hatch would open and the interior lights would come on. After a few seconds the hatch would close and the lights would go out. This strange failure cycle lasted who knows how long into the night, as she had to get some sleep so she could use a borrowed vehicle to go into work today.

Self-driving technology only belongs in freight trains - not in airplanes or public road vehicles. Not all gadgets that work for the good of some work for the good of all.

It wasn't that many years ago that I refused to have a vehicle with power windows because they were so failure prone and expensive to fix. Now every vehicle that I have but one old beater pickup has them with no failures. Three of those have well over 100,000 miles on them. I could list several other technologies that have become reliable and affordable during that time frame. The benefits of self driving far exceed the benefits of power windows. Talk to Tesla drivers and you may find that self driving is not as new or unproven as you think.

New planes and larger boats without autopilot are getting few and far between. Almost all commercial flights are at least partially flown by autopilot.