Uh given that Uber was the most recent autonomous car to kill someone, let me be a little skeptical that Uber is ready.

And, I suspect that give a 100 minute drive route now, if self-driving cars lower the bar of being in traffic, that the same commutes will actually get longer with even more traffic.

I think the parent poster was suggesting that a human driven uber was here now - not an autonomous one (hence the "chat buddy"/driver)

Oh, it seems so on re-reading the comment, that was my mistake in interpretation. Thanks for the check.

> The real answer is not being in that position to begin with.

That to me is the crux of the issue. Self-driving cars are a poor solution to an entirely self-inflicted problem. The only viable long term solution is to reduce commuting.

You're arguing that in order to solve world hunger, we should have fewer people that need feeding, instead of automating farming for higher output.

It's not an either/or argument. It's an 'and' argument of autonomous cars are great, AND many believe do not solve the problems that many proponents of autonomous cars think they will.

In regards to world hunger - many of this planet's woes, would be helped by advancements in science, agriculture AND not endlessly having children.

I actually think even autonomous cars that can safely handle "highway" (for some definition of highway) driving in "good" weather (for some definition of good) is a huge win in and of itself. Both for safety and freeing up human time.

What it doesn't do is satisfy the fantasy of those who live in dense cities that they'll never need to own a car or even learn to drive. But hitting the point where a car can reliably drive itself around a chaotic urban landscape in all sorts of weather conditions by itself is almost certainly a much harder problem.

Exactly. Hopefully, it can help reduce the cost of goods and highway road safety. There’s going to be a lot of edge cases in Manhattan traffic.