Originally Posted by dougmc

But their owners do.

I can see people taking advantage of the perfectly behaved computer drivers -- cutting in front of them knowing that the computer will do the right thing every time, for example. Do that enough times and the driver may become enraged and take manual control (if it's still an option, though I imagine it would be at least for a while.)

Of course, even if they took manual control, the computer would probably still be recording their every move so that might temper their actions to a large degree.

I would not expect these systems to stop road rage ... in fact, in some cases they may increase it as cars under manual control (and hacked/modded computers?) and cyclists and pedestrians "take advantage" of cars that they know will do the safe thing. The advantage lies in that computer controlled cars will make far, far fewer mistakes than humans do. Injuries and fatalities will drop to near zero, with the exceptions being cars that are under manual control for whatever reason and very rare malfunctions. Once the laws catch up, drunks will be able to safely get in their cars and have their car take them home. People will be able to own fewer cars -- have cars drive without a person in them to where somebody else needs them -- which makes taxi/car share service cheaper and more practical. A possible bad side effect is that people will forgo parking and instead have their car drive around by itself.

Either way, this is exciting stuff.