I have read "" drivers taking over in an emergency"" emergency is not defined or given the range of possible emergencies is just not definable. How can the driver of an automated car react in an emergency if the are reading a book, working on a laptop or fast asleep!

How can an autonomous car avoid a sudden emergency such as a car driving out in front of it. Does it ram on the anchors and still collide or has it the intelligence to swerve to avoid it assuming there is nothing else to collide with say another vehicle cyclist or pedestrian. Can it really think ahead and be smart enough to take on all the possible scenarios? Can it really be better than a human? I wonder and need convincing. Didn't an automatic vacuum cleaner escape its programme in an hotel and disappear out of the door!!

I think autonomous systems will come.

If the manufacturers are to be responsible for accidents then the ownership model will change because they will need a reward for the risk they take and that will change with the use profile of the vehicle. I suspect some rental / pay per mile scheme will be implemented.

I also think that once a very high percentage of vehicles are autonomous then they will be equipped to "talk to each other". Say a car needs to pull out of a side road on to a main road at rush hour.

Nowadays that can be dangerous.

Imagine that car, using a internet connection can poll all cars heading towards that junction and request that they create a gap to pull out in to - much safer. Of course a very high proportion of vehicles being autonomous would be required.

The same network could be used to split routes. If all the destinations are polled by the system along with current locations of vehicles, an overseeing traffic management system could route different vehicles via different routes to balance and even minimise road congestion.

Local councils would need to use standard signage for roadworks and even log the exact location on a central database to be accessed by cars.

Just as an aside, the modern safety systems saved me from a major crash. I was on a roundabout and a very fast Golf pulled on to the roundabout in front of me and whilst I reacted to break, the system took over and stopped the car before my foot could put enough pressure on the brake pedal.

As for AI, I'm not a computer bod, but a very good mate of mine is an electronics engineer and has shown me an AI product his firm is working on in the medical diagnosis field. The software / camera / laser system can scan cells and diagnose 24/7/365. It's in a field that there isn't a lot of human expertise and whilst not 100% accurate yet, it is already as accurate as the human experts are and doesn't take breaks. It requires huge amounts of computing power at the moment though.

The majority of road collisions are caused by driver error. If autinomous systems are better at avoiding collisions than humans, then I'd expect them to take over in good time.

There is, as suggested by others in this thread, research going on into vehicles talking to one another and therefore being able to change routes or to alter their behaviour on approach to junctions, allowing better traffic flow. Human drivers can't do this - or at least can't do this and drive at the same time.

It's reasonably clear that motorway driving, or the equivalent on dual carriageways, requires relatively simple decision making: keeping in lane, keeping distance, moving to overtake only when there's a gap, moving back in likewise. Given the right sensors, this could be managed. Indeed 'smart motorways' could become even smarter when cars can communicate with each other - the stranded vehicle would announce its presence and otehr cars would know about it and respond appropriately long before the human passengers were aware of the issue.

However busy streets, single track roads, unhelpful cattle and sheep on the road, things like that, must be harder to program as so many of them are unpredictable in their occurrence and their behaviour. That's why motorways have much better KSI records per passenger km than other roads.

The real benefits would only come when all cars are autonomous.

All well and good developing these systems as humans move forward. But there is a danger of putting all the eggs in one basket with some tech. The recent undersea volcano near Tonga severed the Internet connection and very recently there has been concern about the danger of foreign powers cutting undersea connection to these islands. I trust governments have contingencies for what could happen probably discussed over cheese and wine in a working party