All joking aside, that is probably one of the main selling points on something like this. But I would argue that distractions such as cell phones present a much bigger danger.

Apples and oranges.

I get your point about the number of cars being the same but I think you're missing one element. Driverless cars would be able to make traffic flow much more smoothly. No idiots who hold up traffic because they don't know how to hit the gas to get up to the flow of traffic. Or no idiots who are afraid to enter the roundabout.

Now, this is all assuming that the software is good and works well. My fear is that there are bugs in the software or that they are able to be hacked. Just think of the havoc one could wreak if all cars were driverless and they could be hacked. That's scary.

Uhhh......nope. The wear and tear on the roads (at least here in the midwest) has A LOT to do with salt on the roads in the winter.

Human error in general is the cause of 90%+ of car accidents.

Take the human out of the equation, and accidents go down substantially.

Check out Zoox.

I want one of those. That's going to be my next car if they come available.

Oh, I know that. I regularly see articles of crashes around the state of Kansas. One thing that stands out is how often someone goes off the road and then overcorrects which in turn causes them to lose control and crash.

I'm open to driverless cars. I really like the idea when it comes to all the idiots on the road these days. Though for me personally, I will probably stick to driving myself for now. ;)

Two things here. The first is that yes, there will probably always be a bug, or something capable of going wrong. People are going to have to get over it and realise that a random software bug is still far less of a chance of death than a random drunk driver or some idiot who runs a red light. We can't let perfection be the enemy of better than what we have.

The second is that the hacking thing is completely nonsensical and a boogeyman from movies and TV shows. Basically every car today sold is mainly powered by a computer. Most modern safety functions of a car like adaptive cruise control and brake detection warnings are already run by a computer. Is there a massive wave of mysterious deaths due to cars doing random things? Of course not. Why would these magical hackers not be causing mayhem right now when it's certainly easier to do it today than it will be in a likely very highly regulated and monitored system 20 years from now? It's because "hacking" as people think of in the movies doesn't exist in this context. No one can upload a virus to your car and turn it into a death machine or else scorned ex-lovers would clearly resort to that rather than burying a body in a field somewhere with evidence all around.

Sounds like you are on it and I understand your concern. Have you started driving slower? Do you carry an extra umbrella rider for those unforseen possiblities? I have been for years and the peace of mind seems worth it.

Funny thing, when driving our Prius, it just doesn't have the power to fly up the hills like a v8 car and I am not intentionally driving 5mph under the speed limit when ascending the hills, but the guys in their lifted F250 trucks do get a little impatient, to put it mildly. The other three are all v8s and it's never an issue.

I actually just don't drive much any more, other than a big annual business trip. But I kind of think about it now and try to be more attentive when I do drive.

I've got an umbrella policy on my homeowner's insurance. Would that cover a driving claim? I hadn't thought about it before, but it seems like it would.

I am fairly confident that it covers you, or at least I hope it does, under any circumstance you may be involved in.
I asked that very question to my agent and he told me ours did.
Might be worth a phone call?

Correct me if I am wrong, but I am pretty certain these driverless cars are networked (blue toothed, internet, whatever you want to call it), especially the cab company referenced in post 56 from San Francisco. I can not imagine any possibility of them turning a fleet of driverless cars loose without a central dispatch control.

Can you?

However, your normal consumer owned car, has a self contained, non networked computer. You would need to plug into it to hack it, similar to the service code reader.

Thus, the possibility of hacking driverless cars would be a very real possibility.

I bet it is. As I think about it, the umbrella policy isn't part of my homeowner coverage. It's a separate thing that's just billed on the same invoice each year.

It really is a shame that every single civic and city planning decision is made with cars as the first priority. Great cities plagued by surface parking lot after surface parking lot.