Is that said metro attached to rails -- or does it take you along "lines" where you have to get out at a designated station and then walk 2 miles to you house -- or does it pick you up and take you directly to the market.

Your comment is bullshit comparison if youre talking about comparing freaking rails with vehicles whos routes are 100% random per rider.

> Person gets into the driverless car way too intoxicated and passes out/overdoses/dies in the car -- need physical help?

> So now we have driverless cars effectively classified as emergency ambulances - so assuming the CARNOC is paying attention, they then drive the car to the hospital - and have to have a mechanism to contact said hospital

> Imagine the healthcare implications where if someone hasa seizure, ODs, cardiac, etc... what is the response time from the CARNOC, and getting them to a hospital ==> then what types of lawsuits will these companies see? what type of insurance will they require?

The comparison is useful because all of the above scenarios are possible in the Danish rail system.

There would be several bystanders in a typical Copenhagen rail car; they would be able to call for help. This wouldn't necessarily be the case in a driverless car; if the only passenger has a medical emergency, it would be up to the vehicle to detect that and take appropriate action.

Not necessarily in the scenario they presented. While I haven't been in Copenhagen specifically, I've been in plenty of train cars late at night (think last few trains before service closes) where I'm the only person in the car.

Just like a random onlooker could see you from the platform, someone in another car could see you in your driverless one and call emergency services. The two scenarios are very similar in the end. It's just that the train car has a higher (but far from 100%) chance that you will be noticed more quickly.

The Copenhagen Metro runs all day and all night, so it's pretty easy to find an empty or almost empty train -- near the end of a line at 3am on Tuesday should work.

The scenario certainly also works for trains in general -- perhaps even more so, since an older, manually driven train is less likely to be filled with CCTV cameras linked to a control room. (The metro has this, but it seems they're only monitored once someone presses the emergency button.)

Ok - thank you for that explaination, however, the danish rail system is probably a model which any and all of the driverless car companies shall fail to emulate in that regard because they are going to fail at having a top notch NOC as they hire a bunch of people who don’t understand or value that type of service level.

But thank you for clarifying.

Mentioning rails and "100% random" turn up an interesting point - people are comfortable with autonomous vehicles when they behave in predictable, understandable and widely known ways. And it looks like the Waymo cars and other autocars in general will do just that. Once people learn to recognize an autonomous driving style, whether they'll be concerned or bored depends on how predictable the style is, not the fact that it's autonomous.

hmmm - should we require all autonomous vehicles to be "micro buses-on-deman"d until they are trusted - and follow beaconed bus lines rather than random routes for a while until trusted?