[cr0sh]

> Because people aren't going to trust self-driving cars unless they're drastically better than humans are.

I believe that people aren't ever going to trust self-driving cars, unless they are "perfect". Even ten 9s of reliability (no driving errors or accidents) would probably be too imperfect for people to accept (and I don't believe humans have ever made anything that close to perfection).

I believe the reason this is probably so has to do with assignment of blame and guilt. Something easily done with human drivers, less so (or maybe impossible) for self-driving vehicles.

[freehunter]

Eventually I think they will, as the generations who drove their own car age out and new generations who grew up reliant on self-driving technology comes of age.

You see it with automatic transmissions, some people don't trust the computer to shift gears for them because they think they can do it better. As time went on and automatic gearboxes became more reliable and more popular, those complaints slowed down. (speaking from an American standpoint here)

You see it with anti-lock brakes (ABS). My grandparents still don't trust ABS even with studies showing ABS stops quicker than humans pumping the brakes, because it takes a level of control away from them. But that's not a common complaint these days.

You see it with electric cars, where any fire make national news but no one seems to care about the thousands of ICE cars that burn to the ground every year.

You even see it with seatbelts, people who claim it's safer to be thrown from the car in an accident.

But eventually those complaints lose their novelty and people just accept it as normal.