> however I'll be amazed if I see driverless Ubers

I won't. Uber knows exactly where you want to start and end, time of day, the route to take, and the historical performance of that route (eg speeds, accident rates, variability). Consequently even if the driverless cars are only good for 1% of routes, they would be able to use them. Soon 1% becomes 2% etc.

Why not have the passenger be the one in the driver's seat ready to take over in an emergency?

If you need to have someone with a driver's license in the driver's seat at all times this seems more like a replacement for zipcar, not uber.

That might be another option, but then you risk the car getting stuck on its way to the customer. Also, I want to be able to Uber home from a bar drunk like an idiot, or take an uber because I can't drive.

I definitely see a place for share pool cars that deliver themselves to you when you need them and return autonomously when you are done, but maybe not Uber?

Would this mean that the "driver" seat is an open seat (intentionally leaving the accessible the controls)? This seems interesting, but legally would this be problematic? Who is at fault when the malfunctions and the user tries to help yet the accidental is most likely unavoidable given the disconnect between being the driver and being the stand-by driver? I would think that your reflexes and lack of actually controlling the car would be harmful to reaction time.

Because people taking Ubers typically either aren't licensed or indisposed for some reason (attention, drunk, etc)

You answered it yourself: and will eventually be remote operators.

If the cars need a human 50% of the time, and you move the operators to a call center, you can get away with fewer drivers (probably quite a bit more than half the number because of queueing theory). You also need to pay drivers less if they can work from home (they won’t lose working hours driving empty cars) You will also, likely, use less fuel, especially if you make your cars smaller.