OK, now I am kind of panicking. Next 911 might not have manual option

[Cookie Monster]

+1

People could still take surface roads if they're scared of computer cars.

So people should be inconvenienced and take a longer, slower route if they want to still drive a car? :hammerhead

[GoCougs]

I can see in our lifetimes (well at least the young ones on here), a sort of mixture of self-driving cars with a driver having to be in the driver seat at all times.  Maybe similar to what airplanes have now.  There's autopilot but you still need a pilot at all times in the cockpit.  So I see a human getting in their car and putting in a destination in their GPS.  Then the human gets out of the parking lot and gets on the main road at which time they engage autopilot.  Once they near their destination, they have to disengage autopilot and park their car.  If something malfunctions during their ride, a warning buzzer and lights will alert the driver that they must disengage autopilot.  Accidents will still happen but at a greatly reduced rate.  100% is not possible with any engineered function.  A certain failure rate (whatever percentage) is always present in even the most automated tightly controlled mechanized processes.

Pilots that fly planes with autopilot (I'm guessing mostly military or commercial passenger) are highly selected, highly trained, highly paid, and highly regulated. The average American driver? Not so much, and asking them to rely on autopilot is asking them to be even worse.

If so many people hate driving or otherwise don't want to drive, well, there is deeper philosophical question to be answered; Do Americans even want the responsibility of self-determination?