Next year we may see the first models without a
steering wheel or a brake pedal—there goes the
option of asking the driver (passenger?) to take
over.
This is bad news for everyone. This is the network effect exploitatively writ large, such that, surely you can prevent yourself from being inside such a thing, but as a lone individual, without laws in place to ban such a thing, you, your children, your family, your friends are all endangered by a blameless force that everyone can simply shrug at, and point to statistics claiming that there is even just an incremental improvement over ordinary human performance.
You can stop yourself from posting selfies on social media, under your real name. You cannot stop other people from taking pictures, which your acquaintances discover and tag with your real name.
This is kind of horrific. At least as horrific, or moreso than, current traffic statistics, because the moral hazard in play is abysmally worse.
There was an effective arms race that took shape with SUVs and road rage in the late 1990's. I think something similar will take shape, as self driving cars ramp up. It may surprise some, to find that a self driving incident won't be accepted as blameless, glitchy software errors. Owners may see themselves villified directly, for things a car they chose to own, had subsequently carried out.
I think there are three turns of consequence to a botched self driving car deployment.
One: some will choose harm the legal owner as an individual, lawfully or lawlessly.
Two: others will harm dealerships, mostly through sabotage.
Three: overt action against the manufacturers. At all levels, and not limited to ordinary civil disobedience.
These consequences are nothing to be sniffed at. Aviation shows us that spotty disasters don't result in civil unrest, but with a human in the loop survival was incentivized. Automotive deployments like this will be a fire and forget scenario, and the corporations loosing the reigns, have a demostrable history of neglect. I wonder if they anticipate, in the rush to market, just how severely the general public might react to finding their roads on the receiving end of software glitches that kill their firends and relatives like deer?