Would You Want a Car that can Drive Itself?

With all the driving I've been doing recently I've been wondering when we get cars that can drive themselves. Now that the Global Positioning System can pinpoint your location to within a couple of feet and computers can read car number plates and road markings and stuff it can't be long before we get self driving cars.

Or will it?

It occurs to me that we may never get them. The car makers may never let them be built. How can they go on about the "smooth accelleration", "great driving experience", "fantastic roadholding" that their car gives if the human on board is not driving. When a car becomes just a tin box that automatically takes you where you want to go in the fastest and safest possible way, what will the difference be between the brands?

Comments

[./orta]

I can imagine that the car would become a lot more of a status symbol at that point. Which could be incentive for the mercedes and porsches of the world, but I couldn't see volvo or ford really pushing for it :)

[Willeth]

Bizarrely enough I remember seeing this being possible on Tomorrow's World maybe as long ago as a few years back. It was a fairly simple system - like the parallel parking sensor on some cars today - used to keep it far enough away from other cars etc. and was integrated with GPS to help guide it, of course.

However, to truly avoid accidents or whatever, it would have to become standard. Which would take a while.

[Simon Crowder]

Padded seats. Dangly dice as standard.