Sebastian Thrun and Google's Driverless Car (video)

Whoever did sound editing/recording for this video needs to learn about levels and ... well, sound editing/recording. I couldn't watch it the sound was so bad.

This field of research is far more advanced than I thought, actually.

For instance, in the minute 25:12, they show a graph that compares how often the time to collision among a human driver (a professional one, actually) and the self-driving car. For small reaction times, the self-driving car outperforms the humans by far. It is of course expected, but it shows that driverless cars are not that distant in the future already.

The biggest issue is how to avoid those outlier situations, such as a plastic bag being interpreted as an obstacle and making a mess. Fixing these is a huge challenge.

One really nice measure is "how long between having the human take over."

A year ago it was every 100 miles. Now it's half a year. (See around 14:20.)

What did humanity do to get around before the 20th century?

I'm not sure that autophil is advocating eliminating cars and roads altogether. Maybe he is. But it seems legitimate to be concerned about removing one limiting factor of car use--the patience and stamina of the driver. A 90 minute each way commute would be possible for more drivers, which isn't necessarily a net benefit for humanity given the increased road use, increased construction further from urban areas, and increased energy use, even assuming these self-driving cars become entirely electric.

I'm as fascinated by self-driving cars as anyone and believe self-driving cars have a useful place, but it's good to question the consequences.

Concerned, sure. But also optimistic at the same time. That same 90 minute limiting factor you mention has also contributed to bad things, like the weakening/breaking of many social connections including but not limited to extended families. How many people would visit their several-hours-distant parent(s) more if it were as easy as sleeping in a self-driving bed-car to travel and waking up there Saturday morning for a weekend stay.

And if the increased energy usage is among the underlying concerns, then consider that a business person traveling for work, were they able to use the sleeper-car idea and arrive wherever the next morning (wasting no waking time with the traveling), will prefer that option in numerous plausible scenarios. So such cars can also reduce the amount of energy used on other forms of travel.