Dear SteeleRedux,

I'm sure that in the distant future artificial
intelligence may well exceed the human capacity
but at present it is still in the developmental
stage with a potential of unpredictable malfunction
with possible drastic results. I for one would not
trust such a machine in today's world.
Not yet.

Suseonline : You said: "I was also wondering how expensive these cars would be to buy for the average person, and how much the insurance might cost."

Once they are mass produced they will not be much more expensive then today's vehicles- all that contributes to the unit cost is adding the sensors and computers, once the software is developed. The computers already are very cheap (they would only be a few hundred dollars at most) but the sensors are still quite expensive because at the moment they are not off the self components. However, the senors cost will plummet with mass production.

Regarding insurance, it is the other way round. It will be considerably more expensive to insure a human-driven car then a computer driven one, because cars like the google car are already better drivers than humans and they will only improve over the coming years. Insurance companies only consider the risk when pricing premiums and the less risk leads to cheaper insurance. In fact, insurance will possibly be one of the main reasons why people will be buy these cars. It may even be that within a couple of decades only very specialist insurance companies will insurance human drivers because there will be so few drivers that they will have to perform in depth research on each individual driver to properly access the risk- cause at that stage there are not enough general drivers to distribute the risk over.

"The car in the dust problem would cause both cars brakes to be applied
immediately because the radar can see through dust at that range.
The car pulling into the on coming lane would be detected and a
calculation done taking into account all three cars speed and a
decision made to accelerate or brake."

Does the radar also detect dust filled holes in the road?
The truck was straddling the crown of a narrow dirt road that was barely two lanes wide.
Suppose for a moment that both cars entered the dust and the one behind the truck pulled out 10 metres in front of my car; braking distance for both vehicles, say 40 metres in the dirt----BANG!!

Dear tomw,

You wrote;

“As for the self-learning capabilities of vehicles, these would be very much less than children. I think we are a long way from treating a machine as an ethical, independently thinking person.”

Wait a second, a self learning computer has recently beaten the world Go champion, something the NYT predicted in 1997 would take a hundred years, 4 games to one. AlphaGo's human competitor described the machine as having human-like intuition.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/03/the-invisible-opponent/475611/

Whilst the likelihood of a computer being able to act as a human being across a broad spectrum of situations is still a way off driving a car is a relatively simple task and the ethical decisions encompassing that task are not that complicated. I have little problem in thinking that within the narrow confines of controlling an AV a computer could be regarded as an ethical independent entity. I'm keen to hear your reasons you think this could not be the case.

To those who see GPS failings as reasons not to trust the technology please recognise what is being envisaged for AVs involves far more connectivity than a link to a satellite. There is already been some interesting approaches to handling intersections that should dramatically speed up traffic flow and decrease GHGs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pbAI40dK0A

http://www.rt.com/news/337009-autonomous-cars-slot-system/

A large number of the traffic jams on our roads can be attributed to inconsistent driver behaviour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Suugn-p5C1M

There is little doubt AVs would have a dramatic impact on road congestion meaning less pressure to build more capacity.

"....driving a car is a relatively simple task"

Not where there are kangaroos.

I have dents in the Statesman to prove it.

The first one I could have avoided by accelerating but neither I nor a computer could have foreseen that the roo would dive in front of the car as I braked nor could one foresee the one, that 20 kilometres further on suddenly dived out and crashed into my left rere mudguard and tore it partly off.

I have, in the past, successfully avoided 6 roos bent on self destruction at the same time.
I could not have done so had there been oncoming traffic.

A kangaroo, a goat, a pig or a deer can dive in front of a car within the minimum stopping distance at any speed above, say, 10 kph and where swerving is not an option then an impact is inevitable.

Is Mise, the inevitable is inevitable.
Re the dust problem, it might well be possible to detect the dust and
bring the car to a halt.
However a human driven car could still charge into the dust.
If both cars were computer driven they would both stop.