>> Google's self-driving car accident statistics say otherwise.

That's an experiment that's been running in a tiny part of one state in one country for a very limited time. I wouldn't count on them and in any case, see what I say above: the state of the art is not there yet, for fully autonomous driving better than humans'.

>> Yeah. Weirdest part was, she actually thought she was a GOOD driver. Mostly because of all the times she was able to apply makeup while driving and didn't cause an accident.

:snorts coffee:

>That's an experiment that's been running in a tiny part of one state in one country for a very limited time.

It's driven over 1 million miles. That's the equivalent of 75 years of driving for the average human. Plenty of data to draw a conclusion from. In all that time, it's been responsible for a single accident. That's way better than human drivers.

Hours driven are one dimension, that is indeed important. However, there is also the geographical aspect that I point out and that may be more important in practice. I mentioned off-road driving. There's also driving in busy roads. The Google car project has not driven for 1 million miles in a busy city, like NY or SF or whatever, neither in heavy traffic conditions.

Then there's the fact that human drivers have to drive in all sorts of weather conditions with all sorts of different vehicles and so on. Google car- not so much.

But my point is very simple: AI in general is nowhere near producing autonomous robots, yet. Why would Google car (or a similar project) be the exception? What makes cars and driving so different that autonomy is easier to attain?