I’m still not completely convinced people will be any more willing to give up the wheels of their cars than they are their guns, but development of driverless cars continues apace. From an article by Rick Montgomery at AP, some questions being asked as driving becomes increasingly automated:

“The question has sped beyond whether or not technology will ever let motorists read a magazine en route to work — which techies say is a reality nearer than you think.

Rather, society has begun to ask: Do we really want this?

Computer engineer Don Wunsch voices an emphatic yes.

‘The days of human drivers deserve to be numbered,’ said Wunsch, a professor at the Missouri University of Science & Technology in Rolla. ‘Humans are lousy drivers. It’s about time computers take over that job.’

Others note that the rush to make autos fully autonomous, and conceivably far safer, promises to run into huge societal bumps.

In a transportation center such as Kansas City, how many truckers won’t be needed in 2025? How will insurance companies react when hands-free accidents happen — and nobody disputes they will — or roadside sensors go awry?

Will systems navigating 21st-century vehicles reach obsolescence and need costly upgrades every few years, like today’s smartphones? And, perhaps the most critical question, who will make certain these innovations will make travel less deadly?

‘You have these brand new capabilities coming to the market at a time of grossly inadequate funding’ of federal safety regulators, said Clarence Ditlow of the Washington-based Center for Auto Safety, a watchdog group.

Only after risky ‘experimentation on the road,’ he said, will the public’s overall safety in a driverless world be known.”