> Consider it rationally. Driving is costly, but it engenders an entire host of benefits & pleasures I don't think you're even considering.
I am considering it entirely rationally. I believe that we should be investing more money into research that could save 30,000 lives every year. Never did I suggest in my initial post that human driving should be banned before self-driving cars are capable of replacing humans in this capacity. If done correctly, self-driving cars will have all the benefits of current automobiles, and then some.
As for the pleasures of driving - that's what a whole lot of people said about cigarettes, but look where we are now. And don't be silly - no one's personal "pleasures" override the safety of other people's lives.
Research? We've known for centuries how to get by without conveying ourselves everywhere in 4,000 pound steel cages. It's called population density, mass transit when a community exceeds a certain size, and having vital services (drugstores, groceries, maybe the odd pub) within walking distance of where people live. It's not a technical problem, it's a social problem.
it engenders an entire host of benefits & pleasures
what is this host of pleasures? I get that some people enjoy driving. I loved it when I was a teenager, now I hate it. Most of my driving is done in traffic and I'd much rather read a book or take a nap insted of micromanaging my 20km/hr commute.
Not only would autonomous cars give me back my 1.5hrs/day that is dead time... but the roads would be incredibly more safe.
And for people who like to drive... how about a racetrack?
The greatest pleasure I get from the roads - on my scooter :) - is from other traffic. Racetracks are a different kind of fun, for when you want to go fast and corner hard.
I get that you get pleasure from driving or riding and if it's anything like my experience (in my teens) a good part of it is the danger factor. I drove like a lunatic when I was 16 (just like most other 16 year olds) and it was great fun at the time. Now when I look back I can see what kind of an idiot I was for putting others and myself in that kind of mortal danger.
That's not to say that you can't enjoy driving responsibly. But there's so much unnecessary danger and tedium involved that it seems a no-brainer to move to a computer controlled future.
It's actually less danger factor than it is the pleasure of competence, doing something well and smoothly. I live in London, where there are a lot of powered two-wheelers, filtering is legal, and it's just about the best way of getting from A to B in the congested city. Sure, it gets slightly more dangerous if you get into a bit of a race with someone else - the adrenaline of competition can push you a bit, but you're mostly just a risk to yourself.
But being able to skip past long queues of stopped or slowly moving traffic, safely and efficiently almost as if the traffic didn't exist, feels really good.
Honestly, I think inner city scooters don't really factor into this debate. As you mention you pose a limited risk to others and your choice to risk your own well being is exactly that- your choice.
2000kg passenger cars travelling at 60-100km/hr are another story altogether. My guess is that there would be a tiny fraction (<1%) of all road fatalities caused by purely mechanical failure. That leaves 99% (stats pulled from my ass) caused, or largely contributed to, by human error. For a large class of these errors a computer would never cause the problem or safely navigate around it.
Saying "I want to keep driving 'cos its fun!!" isn't really good enough in that context.
FWIW, it's not really an inner-city scooter - at 300cc, top speed about 140km/h, it's well capable of touring, and I have toured on it.
But even if it was, it seems to me that you're assuming a boundary where none exists. There is no fixed point in the road where it's suddenly urban vs suburban vs rural; the most marked points are entry and exit to motorways, but they have lower per-mile risks already.
I'd be the first guy to say that 2000+kg cars ought to be move more safely and predictably; I'm a committed biker, and that would be safer for me too. But in the chaos of UK traffic, I don't really see how it's workable without converting everything - absolutely everything, pretty much overnight - to automated vehicles.
I mean the streets have one lane most of the time, but occasionally two or more lanes between certain traffic lights, junctions are not regular, roadworks at some point in your journey are statistically almost certain, pedestrians are always wandering out into the road, wobbly cyclists, etc. The only way I can see an automated vehicle working in that environment is one that moves unacceptably slowly to mitigate the risk of tort suits against the manufacturer; or an entirely separate road network, strictly for automated vehicles.
It would be interesting to know the injury/fatality stats for the kind of roads you're describing. If the rates are high (relatively speaking) then I would argue that yes a total conversion to computer controlled driving (when available) is the only socially acceptable thing to do. Public safety would trump your personal enjoyment of the act of riding.
Realistically speaking though truly autonomous driving in tricky (even for humans) conditions like you describe is probably a long way off, although within our lifetimes I would think. The other option is a total rethink of the city/suburb nightmare that we now live in. But that's a debate for another time :)
Consider it rationally. Driving is costly, but it engenders an entire host of benefits & pleasures I don't think you're even considering.
I'm not saying I'm happy driving is dangerous, but saying "Driving is dangerous, and yet we do it? WTF?" is ridiculous.