Requiring a human to watch implies a means for the human to intervene and take over. Having a human second-guess the machine will increase accidents. And having the controls available for the human to do so will increase complexity and decrease reliability.

Driverless cars will probably not be magic pods that whisk you around. It's still a vehicle that needs to navigate terrain. And roads are not perfect everywhere.

Yes. I regularly fly in planes, which I have no control over, and which spend most of their time on autopilot. I also regularly deal with machines that do their jobs far better than I could, and I feel no desire to take over and do those jobs worse. Why should that answer change when the stakes get higher and the cost of a mistake goes up?

(That doesn't mean I want to beta-test an experimental driverless car; it does mean I'm eager for a non-experimental one.)

> But people will still want to intervene when it doing something dumb like driving into a pond, or gets stuck on a median and cannot figure out how to get off.

A vehicle that did any of those things would be considered broken in a deadly way. The solution isn't to hand people broken vehicles that they sometimes need to take over from; the solution is to not call a car driverless until it handles those situations (generally by not getting into such situations in the first place).

> Driverless cars will probably not be magic pods that whisk you around.

Yet.

Aircraft operate in essentially empty space, and barring major mechanical failure the pilots typically have tens of seconds up to many minutes to act to avoid disaster. In a car you often have less than a second to react, and certainly never more than 4-5.

Aircraft hardware and software is tested, retested, tested again, and certified. Auto hardware and software is pushed out the door with reckless disregard for reliability.

There is really no comparison.

Those planes with their auto-pilot system still have a means for the pilots to intervene. That's not quite the same as being in a vehicle for which no human has the possibility of intervening. (It's also a bit disingenuous to imply that it is.)

Some accidents also occur specifically when pilots ignore/override the automatic systems; I'd be interested to see statistics on that, too, but I haven't found any.

"What's it doing now?" is a common question in the industry, and the subject of this excellent American Airlines training seminar video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN41LvuSz10&t=21m41s

(The whole video is good, but that's the specific automation confusion question.)

Yes, it would almost definitely be safer than a lot of drivers I've been in the car with, if not all of them. And it's be far less nerve-wracking than with some drivers.

Do you ever ride in taxis? Or as a passenger in any car? How is that situation any different?

edit: source that I haven't read, but there are numerous sources from a simple web-search: http://www.illinoisherald.com/articles/2014/q4/chicago-red-l...

They also save pedestrian and motorist lives.