Why self-driving cars are not going to happen

Very good points. Liability is an issue that has not been played out yet in any meaningful way.

I think driving cars will happen soon simple because the ROI is too great to ignore.

It doesn't have to happen on a grand scale. It could start with small things like pizza delivery or package delivery.

Human drivers can feel safe around other cars because of mutually assured destruction. You are both afraid of dying if you make a significant mistake.

Self-driving cars will never have this fear holding them back from making mistakes. You could argue there is actually an incentive to let them crash once in awhile, because the valuable real world data will be phoned home and used to improve the product for the small price of a human life.

Once corruption sets in down the road, cars with autopilot capabilities will enable easy kidnapping and assassination. Simply activate backdoor remote piloting and crash the target's car (or the self-driving taxi they're in) into a tree at 70 mph, or lock the doors and drive to a pickup location to complete the kidnapping.

Driving in a traditional car wouldn't protect the target, because a group with ubiquitous optional remote control over self-driving cars could also force surrounding cars to enter kamikaze mode and ram the target off the road.

Governments will demand some kind of backdoor like this at some point, and then we have to trust they'll never abuse it (lol) and that no third parties will ever be able to hack it remotely.

Even if you think the government is your friend, the first worm using a remote code execution exploit that hops from car to car via Bluetooth and activates its payload on a specific date will be able to kill tens of millions of people.

I am a human driver. I do not feel safe around other cars.

And this new article, about self-driving trucks next week in Ohio has been posted to HN http://www.cbsnews.com/news/self-driving-trucks-will-hit-the...

I feel like issue number one is being given the naturalistic fallacy treatment. If animals can react to falling objects, so can computer models. There's nothing magical about instincts.