A scam that kills people
Having watched these autonomous cars trying to drive up and down the freeways on the Peninsula for the last decade (both the 280 and the 101) and seen first hand how they totally screw up traffic when the freeway is nt completely empty I'm just waiting for the first class action lawsuit to be brought against one of the players when I will gladly file an expert witness amicus for the class action plaintiffs. The software stacks are little more that hacked grad student projects, riddled with bugs, and which make the most egregious and simplistic assumption as to environmental condition. In fact, typical grad student project code. They work 99% of the time. And the other 1% they will (and already have) kill people.
The software and hardware should be held to the same regulatory standards as avionics. Only then should it be allowed on the open road. Otherwise keep it purely to closed circuits, which is the only place is actually belongs.
But the dirty little secret of the whole autonomous car scam is that everyone with any real technical understanding of both the problems and the current (and likely practical) solutions know that autonomous car hardware and software could never ever reach even the most basic quality standards laid down for avionics. Both technical and operational. Its all just hand-waving and very very contrived demos in very controlled environments. In the real world it not only fails but fails often.
Its just a matter of how many people it kills before the whole farrago is stopped. Given how much money the VC's have put into play in the current hype phase it will probably need at least a dozen or two dead bodies before they are put out of business. Although a couple of dead children, which will eventually happen, should bring it to a conclusion quicker.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
