The First Self-Driving Car? Will You Be First in Line?

No thanks. The safety risk is way too high. Current unpredictable electrical control issues with all makes and models of vehicles dictate the same will be true of self-driving cars. One would have to be insane to purchase the first run production units of these types of transportation. Who will be liable for the accident? The owner? Or the controls manufacturer? Or the car manufacturer when things go awry?

Trying again to post the mercedes video.. the link above went blank

It seems to me the first autonomous cars will be Uber or Lyft vehicles...cheap, liability free transportation for the masses...take away the car payments, the liability issues, insurance, maintenance and fuel expenses, and pay just for needed transportation....

http://www.wired.com/2016/01/gm-and-lyft-are-building-a-network-of-self-driving-cars/

Hyundai driverless test

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEZhGKi5F3g

Exactly. With self-driving cars, you won't have to own one. All you need is an appointment and a PayPal account!

When I was a teen a guy I knew from the neighborhood called me asking for a lift to the bank. He said he would give me $20 as he needed to cash a check before it closed. Little did I know he was actually robbing the bank.

A week or more had passed and a police car came to my parents home for unknown reasons. When I saw my "friend" in the back seat of the squad my eye's about popped out. It was quite the show with the dog barking and the neighbors looking on while my mother watched her youngest carted off.

After a short wait behind bars I was fed a cold cheeseburger and led to interrogation. As it turned out the girl working the drive through window at the bank(which I drove him through) was his accomplice. She had been cashing his bad or stolen checks. She lost her job and they were both charged with defrauding a bank or some such charge. Maybe they are still behind bars?

I do remember the check he cashed was only for around a hundred plus dollars and I felt bad that he was giving me twenty. I had my own job and would have been happy to just do the favor. ...After the trip to the pokey I was glad I got the $20 and the dry cheeseburger.

After that experience it took awhile to trust people who wanted a lift to the bank, convenience store or, jeweler's row.

..That's my experience being a Lyft driver and it was Uber bad.

Still behind bars or behind bars again ?

YES!

I will try to get as far ahead of them as I can.

Heck, I don't even like automatic transmission. The answer is no!

I guess I'm still wondering, if a child runs out in the street in front of it, what happens then? Hopefully there is a subroutine in the software to call 911.

Dispatcher, "911, What's your emergency?"

Self-Driving car to dispatcher, "There's a child running in the streets..." Slight pause, "Oops!"

This'll be really cool. Two driverless cars will be approaching head-on. They will do some handshake that agrees on port-to-port passing, jink 1/2 car width plus 1/2 inch to the right, and scream by each other with an inch to spare. The white-knuckled passengers will get a great thrill. Ooh, I can't wait!!

Someone served in the Navy or some dealings with ocean going rules of the road.

Exactly how does one test 'drive' and autonomous vehicle? Does one need a mouse, a cell phone app, push the start button, or does the car test 'drive' the occupants trust and nerves?

My job is to design and sometimes even help build control circuits for industrial process machines. I see a lot of testing and tweaking to get things to run as they are supposed too. I also see cases of - it worked perfectly during testing, but it isn't working here on site.

A self driving car is going to be many times more complex than my machines, with many more tiers of sub-level controls. I'll wait for all these potential "gremlins" to be found and redesigned.