> I don't see computers as being good enough at general driving to make it work.
Why not? It's a fairly mechanical operation, and 360 degree range-finders can do a far better job of detecting obstacles than rather limited human vision.
Driving itself is straightforward, but the inputs are messy and noisy. Computers aren't good at that.
Consider the wide variety of different road surfaces and cambers, the ever-changing appearances of obstacles according to conditions and the seasons, the limited accuracy of road maps, and the constant changing of the road network in minor ways. I expect a lot of driverless cars to be flummoxed by potholes, confused by temporary roadworks, utterly bamboozled by temporary diversions - and they won't be able to find my road in the first place. (I don't live in the middle of nowhere.)
As a simple matter - how will the car reliably know how fast to go? You can't rely on map data, as the legal limit can change, and nobody will think to tell the map people. You can't rely on the car spotting speed limit signs, as people can (and do) graffiti over them, or twist them so they're not straight any more. I don't think people will be so keen on "driverless" cars after they're held up by a whole train of them going 30mph on a 60mph limit road, or after they're in an accident with one going 60mph in a 20mph residential area.
Perhaps I'm being overly cautious, but I just don't think this will work very well. I can think of two outcomes. The first will never happen, because it involves simply letting the computers kill and main and cause accidents, under the assumption that the overall accident rate will be lower. But then who will be to blame for each accident? People need somebody to blame, so they can be taken to court and maybe sent to prison.
The second option is that you require a human to be in attendance all the time, ready to take over the controls when the computer gets confused. Which means it's not driverless. Which makes the whole exercise a totally pointless waste of money. If you need a driver... well, it's not driverless. You might as well class it as an amazing high-tech set of astounding driving aids. That is probably what we'll end up with, I suspect.
I expect that self-driving will become a safety mechanism before it becomes a full driver replacement. It will probably keep track of cars around you as you're driving manually, and if you get close to a collision, it will take over and move you away.
As the data improves, the road information becomes better curated, and so on, I expect that it will become a driving aid, as you describe.
And I expect that within a couple of decades, fully driverless cars (with nobody behind the wheel) will become commonplace.
Human drivers are terrible. Is it so hard to imagine computers doing significantly better? Why do computers need to be 100% safe when the humans they are replacing are nowhere near that?
Why not? It's a fairly mechanical operation, and 360 degree range-finders can do a far better job of detecting obstacles than rather limited human vision.