Why most drivers don’t want autonomous cars

[Chan790]

68. Public support is the red herring of the discussion.

When self-driving cars come...it won't come because the public supports it, it'll come because the technology will have sufficiently advanced to the point that it's substantially-safer (for people) and less risky (for insurers) than human-controlled cars.

At that point, expect the insurance industry to bring an all-out blitzkrieg and rally every disparate ally they can find to restrict back usage of human-controlled cars on most rapid time-frame they can achieve combined with internal policy changes of the industry. ("We'll insure your Google Car for just $400/year...you want to be able to drive yourself, that'll be $10,000/year.&quot They've already had industry discussions on tactics for when the day comes; those talks started soon after Google started their self-driving car project.

It'll go a lot like the effort in the mid-1980s to change laws to mandate seat-belt usage...at the time, something like 9% of Americans supported those efforts. When they come for your privilege to drive...it'll be a bloodless coup that will be over before the public can so much as think they need to resist or have a say at-all in the matter.