It's not a particularly interesting question as it's just random guesswork and gutfeeling until self-driving cars see actual widespread availability and rollout.

If at some point all new cars have full self-driving capabilities with widely accepted performance, then it's not impossible that after a decade of that as status quo, cars end up shipping with manual driving only being an override for specific maneuvering, and eventually having regular licenses lose rights to manual driving on public roads.

I neither own nor really like cars, but I think a ban within the next 50 years is super unlikely, and anyone that disagrees is delusional :P

Just consider vintage cars: These are vastly more dangerous for both occupants and pedestrians/cyclists than existing cars and also pollute more. They have not been banned in the last century and no ban seems to be coming anytime soon.

If you are not gonna ban vintage cars, why would you ever ban manual driving (which is much less harmful in multiple ways)?

Once adoption picks up, a ban becomes useless anyway because the fraction of problematic cars decreases (and no longer really matters), while any decisive legislative action towards bans gets tons of pushback from enthusiasts (and no real political gain, because the average voter does not give a shit about single digit traffic accident rate reduction anyway).

Have they banned horses yet? My money is on never. This technology doesn’t need a ban to succeed. It just needs to be allowed.

Horse accidents aren't a leading cause of death though. Seems like it'll depend on how thoroughly self-driving becomes a thing of the past on its own.

They were a leading cause of death when they were a common mode of transport.

Riding a horse is very dangerous. Its just regarded as an acceptable risk (its something many people encourage kids to do) for cultural and social reasons. A British government scientific advisor was fired for pointing out that riding a horse carries about 30 times the risk of a "serious adverse effect" as taking ecstasy.

>A British government scientific advisor was fired for pointing out that riding a horse carries about 30 times the risk of a "serious adverse effect" as taking ecstasy.

Could we have a link for this one please?

> Horse accidents aren't a leading cause of death though.

Sure, not now. Because cars replaced them.

> Seems like it'll depend on how thoroughly self-driving becomes a thing of the past on its own.

Based on my experience with Waymo if they come to Seattle in the next two years I won’t buy another car.

Change the question to "highways" then. (at least in most European countries, AFAIK horses are banned from them)

That’s a completely different question though. Horses were banned from railroads too.

You tried to establish self driving cars as a threat to human driven cars using horses as an example.

Highways were invented for cars. Horses were never allowed there.

There’s no comparable proposal for self driving cars.

This comment shows exactly why I like this question.

Lot of related topics to branch out to! I actually wasn't ever interested in the "cut off date", but all these side topics, and why some people think differently about what the trajectory looks like today.

It's no more of a brain picker than "how many beans are there in this black jar that you can't lift or shake?".

It's just saying something without any information.

A change like this is entirely unpredictable from here, because it would be driven (pun intended) far more by political processes than any objective safety consideration.