Us Luddites are not so sure these utopian dreams will prove to be anything but a living nightmare.

I'm in no hurry to see driverless cars, but compare with trains - they don't stop for jaywalkers.

We might well end up with transport on the roads that we just have to learn to keep out of the way of, as we do with trains. Physically separated lorry lanes on motorways?

When they do find out the reason for the fatality then they should be able to modify the software to make sure that fault never happens again. That is where the autonomous vehicle is better than the human driver. We can improve the software but cannot improve human drivers. We all know that there are a great many human drivers out there who could do with a software upgrade!

Where there is a driver in control of a vehicle you have someone that is responsible.

The thorny issue of responsibility, so far, always rests with the driver, if you have automated braking or steering (as appears to be fitted to cars now, not mine matey) that interferes and causes an accident instead of preventing one, the driver is still responsible...oh and if you drive a lorry and after experiencing false harsh braking for no reason and turn the systems off you will be disciplined harshly and more than likely sacked.

The legalities of all of this need sorting soonest.

Why are you sure the robotised vehicle will be better?, the autonomous vehicle will never be able to monitor assimilate and react to visual aural and seat of pants feel the huge amount of information that the good human driver does, and gradually removing driving skills from drivers of all sorts of vehicles as is now underway is lowering the driving skill level at an alarming rate as it is...ie we have people behind the wheel who cannot perform a hill start, let alone actually control a vehicle on a slippery road without the electronics.

.. but cannot improve human drivers....

I disagree. We could bring in mandatory top-up training every few years. It has always seemed daft to me that we do not.

How crazy that I can pass my test at 17 and never have to do another day of training, ever. And I only give up driving when I self-declare that I'm past it?

This should not be a reason for the luddites to try and derail driverless transport it is not a case of if, but when!

... not a case of if, or when, but why? A 'perfect' driverless car depends on software designers having dreamt up every possible scenario the vehicle may need to respond to. I suggest that is a very tall order. The Uber accident had a human on board as well - what was he/she doing?

won`t matter what they were doing, as the cars system possibly(not known yet) did not see the pedestrian, the person in it for emergency reasons, would not have been able to react fast enough anyway, so I cannot see the point of having a stand by driver?

and I agree it is a very tall order and has too many scenarios including possible ghosts in the machine

This should not be a reason for the luddites to try and derail driverless transport it is not a case of if, but when!

... not a case of if, or when, but why? A 'perfect' driverless car depends on software designers having dreamt up every possible scenario the vehicle may need to respond to. I suggest that is a very tall order.

In the UK surely it would be particularly difficult given our old and complicated road systems through most villages and towns. If it was to work at all, maybe better in new towns like Milton Keynes.

If there is someone on board, and something goes wrong, how much time do they have to react before they realise? That's one scenario where I would have thought humans were not suitable at all, sitting there with nothing to do and getting bored and tired.

The objective cannot be the perfect driverless car. It is unachievable. Human drivers are far from perfect, self-driving cars only need to be demonstrably better.

It's not surprising that the human minder failed to catch any error. The error had probably been made by then, instead of being avoided, or ideally of the situation that made the error more likely would have been avoided.

Human minders will in any case lose their driving skills if they cease driving themselves. Not just the vehicle control skils but observation, prediction, reaction, decision-making.

It has happened with aviation. Look up flight AF447 to read about how the pilots flew a perfectly serviceable aircraft into the sea from 30,000 feet when the autopilot disconnected itself (as it was designed to do) when the airpseed indicators briefly iced up. 228 people died. There are other examples. But notwithstanding, flying is still much safer than it was before the current levels of automation were commonplace.

Bad as humans are we are far more sophisticated than machines at present. When artificial intelligence is perfected that will be the time to make cars driverless.

Do you set the car to brave mode or cautious mode? If the latter it will never pull out into a stream of traffic in this country when you consider how closely cars folow each other!

Of course it will work fine if all of the sensors keep working perfectly and conscientious drivers clean all of the cameras and sensors every day or immediately they or the screen in front of it gets covered in muck.

Can't see it working as things stand but when they perfect a robot that behaves like a human it will be feasible in my view-we just aren't quite there yet.

While we are at it, why not let's all stay in bed all day and let the robots have all the fun?

We need to understand why the accident happened before jumping to conclusions - eg: if the pedestrian was incapacitated by drink or drugs and walked into the road without looking the outcome may have been the same irrespective of whether the car was driven by homo sapien or computer. Driverless technology will not eliminate accidents.

Assessing driverless technology needs care and obejectivity, not judge it on the basis of how it may umpact us personally (wishful thinking), History is full of new technologies which displace jobs and change behaviours. Competitive pressure will lead to its implementation, denial will change nothing.

The only question is when, not if.

<< computers can only work on info received, >>

But just imagine all the hacking possibilities. Naughty people used to just capture the remote codes from the transponder. Now the sky is the limit - if you can handle a drone .... It'll be more fun than playing Star Wars.