Quote:
Originally Posted by Efthreeoh
It's not.
The term "auto pilot" comes from the aviation industry. Auto pilot works for commercial aircraft because commercial air transportation happens at very high altitudes with a low-dynamic traffic situation - i.e. little air traffic, 5-mile separation, and altitude separation. And the main point... air traffic is managed by humans and automation systems, so placement of each aircraft is monitored and controlled by a third (independent) party.
In the case of the Tesla incident, neither vehicle's placement was monitored nor controlled by a third, independent party. This is why autonomous automobile operation will never work without a vehicle traffic management system. I doubt such a system could be economically devised for ground automobile vehicular traffic. Even if it were able to happen then there is the issue of privacy rights...
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EXACTLY. And that's just one point of several against autonomous tech in U.S. private vehicles being a widespread reality within the next 20 years, much less five. Also consider:
1). The military still pilot drones; virtually none of them are fully automatic. Why? Because of governmental culpability for collateral damage if something goes wrong.
2). The aforementioned autopilot function in commercial aircraft -- already the most complex and systems-redundant vehicle on the planet short of a spacecraft. Yet pilots are still required to take off and land an airplane. Why? The same reasons as 1)., but the culpability falls on airlines and manufacturers instead of governments in most cases.
3). Insurance. Autonomous vehicles would shift the burden of insurance culpability -- for both property damage and bodily harm -- from operators to manufacturers. Tesla's Fatality #1, and the reaction to it, is direct evidence of this effect; most are blaming Tesla, not the operator, for the death. This is a paradigm shift in the industry that will take years upon years of political and institutional wrangling to achieve -- and for this reason, part of the purchase price of an autonomous vehicle could very well be an insurance 'premium' that will delay the technology being affordable for the masses. One thing can mitigate this: the government becoming involved, either by an aforementioned autonomous control grid or by subsidizing the insurance requirements -- and we all know how well the latter scenario flies in our country.
There are other reasons, but the above is enough. Self-driving cars will not happen in the U.S. for a long, long time.