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That is a wild guess, compare the number of mid-air collisions with the total number of flights to the number of car-to-car crashes to the total number of car journeys and you may be shocked. If you also take into account the number of deaths then you may find that you are less likely to die in a single car journey than a single flight in an aircraft. You'd also be amazed how often a pilot has to take avoidance actions.

The reason that the number of mid-air collisions has fallen over the years is because of computers, not the quality of pilots. The regulations have been put in place to compel the pilot to use computer systems father than fly by the seat of their pants.



I'd love to see a pigeon shooter fire at a super-sonic missile or aircraft, these days systems can even fire down shells. Many systems are way faster than humans and that is why they are computer controlled.



And highlights the problem with humans, they over-optimistically assess risk based on other factors eg I'm in a rush to get somewhere, what is more a computer would probably detect it was going faulty long before a human would. You think you were driving safely with a known broken power steering system that potentially could have yanked the wheel sideways (which I have had happen). Fairly obviously a computer would be programmed to stop if a critical system is detected to be faulty.

Most electric power steering units fail on the sensor which detects what the driver is doing, its a lot less common for the actuator side to fail - but these aren't designed as autonomous fail-safe systems because when the actuator fails the driver still has control.

Autonomous cars will never be safe, but neither is anything else, they will become safer than humans. Humans don't need a fly on the windscreen or a child running out, they choose to have accidents of their own free will eg speeding, letting themselves be distracted, over-estimating their capability, over-estimating the car's capability or just being stupid.

There are many drivers out there that think they have a right of passage from wherever they are to wherever they want to be. A good thing that could come out autonomous vehicles is that they may be able to report other's ridiculous driving.

I used to drive stupidly for many years, because it appeared to be the norm. It is only by incredible luck that I never killed anyone else. I don't claim to be a perfect driver now but I am very conscientious about other people's lives which selfishly I didn't do in the past - computers don't do selfish, impatience etc, they are human traits.

Look at formula 1 drivers, a lot of time is spent comparing what the driver did against what the computer works out would have been optimum, a lot of time is spent training the driver to try and match the computer. Obviously the regulations restrict what is allowed to be done by computer during a race but its virtually being done by proxy. Even so, a computer is limiting the driver as to what he is allowed to do, very few F1 drivers would not destroy their cars if the the limits were switched off, humans gamble with luck.

Transportation and driving should be segregated, if you want to drive do it on a track, if you want transportation, let a machine take you there.

Fairly obviously a computer would be programmed to stop if a critical system is detected to be faulty.

There is such a thing as 'progressive failure' which involves the mechanism that detects failure failing before the main mechanism fails. Building systems with this sort of thinking in mind is HARD, and software makes it MORE difficult not less.

'Fairly obviously' you declare, the vehicle would stop as soon as a failure was detected. But what if this were on a motorway in the fast lane with traffic all around you? I suggest that once again your glib solution is a lot more complicated than you think.

And once again you have 'solved' the problem once it has been pointed out to you. This is a lot easier to happen than thinking up the possibility of it happening, and there are billions of possible events, many of which you would not dream of. The problem is not one of finding a solution. It is finding ALL POSSIBLE EVENTS and establishing a database of what should be done. I don't believe this is possible. The alternative is to have sufficient intelligence to cater for unpredictability, and we are a million miles from this. If you read Penrose's "The Emperor's New Mind", he presents a very cogent and plausible argument that we never will.

Shooting down a shell is not difficult. They are predictable, have long transit times and don't go very fast. Proximity fuses ease the problem considerably.

A reasonable clay pigeon player will manage over 90% hits when he has under second to aim and pull the trigger.

As I've never been a petrol head, I have little interest in cars or F1 drivers and dislike speed, but it seems to me that examining a computer analysis to 'improve' their performance is a very different kettle of fish from designing a robot that could beat them on the track. Footballers examine their tactics for the same reason and might well use a computer to help them in this, but does it help them in designing a robot striker? I've seen robot football matches, and pathetic is a wholly inadequate description of it.

By your own argument, humans do things like getting drunk or suicidal or irrational and do crazy things. Fortunately other drivers can recognise this and take appropriate action, but I wonder how you propose handling all this in software?

The idea of autonomous vehicles mixed with impatient or deranged drivers is ludicrous. The only way would be to trash all our cars and redesign all our roads so a computer could handle the problem. It is not going to happen. Dream on my friend.

I don't need to dream its happened.

One statistic that has cropped up is the difficulty of the handover from autonomous mode to driver control, mainly to do with foot controls.

On computer games, you don't bother analysing whether the randomly moving computer opponent is drunk, irrational, young old or suicidal, you react to the stimulus - adding emotional analysis unnecessarily complicates issues and is yet another self-distraction where human drivers fail.

I think that's about my lot - look forward to the next subject, cheers!

There were similar forecasts about battery cars which have been wrong too.

Statistically, you would need billions of road miles to be able to decide whether autonomous cars are safer than human drivers or not. So far, there are none. We have a few prototype vehicles with human drivers ready to take over if they screw up, and some sensors have been installed such as radars which apply brakes or enable parking in optimal circumstances, but thats about it.

Just don't get a Tesla. Look at the way it swerves into oncoming traffic!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrwxEX8qOxA