Originally Posted by
Walter S
What's missing from the thread is direct discussion of whether car companies are slowing progress because they don't really want driverless. That's TPs opening point which remains unsupported by anything other than his well know paranoia about conspiracies.
Just an opinion but I think the problem is there are far more hands involved than people think in turning self driving cars into reality. Even if the auto manufacturers wanted to they alone cannot solve all of the problems necessary to turn self driving cars into a reality. Nothing I have read indicates they, the manufacturers, are trying to slow the process . If anything there are some opportunities for increased sales because people that cannot drive today would be able to if the cars drove themselves. However there are program related issues that need to be addressed that will take companies outside of traditional automotive manufacturers. Computerization of the systems will take programmers and hardware developers from other industries to do their part as well. Reading from the union of concerned scientists there are ethical issues that will need to be programed into any class five self driving car that haven't as yet been addressed. Like how does the computer determine which human to save when an accident is unavoidable? Who is responsible if the computer freezes? I have both apple and Microsoft and there are programs that cause both to freeze or for a time become non responsive.
In reality we can be assured that whatever the topic of the OP was it was intended to digress into pavement and trees and living the life of a poor person to save the planet. IMHO