News reports say that the robot cars use much different technologies with much different capabilities. Waymo has insisted that they would not have killed that pedestrian in Arizona that was killed by an Uber robot car. Whatever guidelines the government decides on must specify some minimum safety levels for these robot cars and each company must demonstrate that their technology can meet these requirements. Right now, we seem to have a free-for-all that is only regulated by civil liability (families of the victims sue the companies after each fatality).

I trust these cars about 1000 times more than your average texting, distracted, sleepy, drunk driver.

We should really outlaw these in Mountain View. Our streets are much too busy. Go start with some desert town and perfect things there first. This is insanity. Of course, no one will listen.

They're new and scary to me so I want them banned. LOL, JK!

I like the fact that they have been driving around MV for years and years now with only a few accidents in all those years, and I'm not sure any of them were proven to be the fault of the auto-driver, maybe 1, early on, maybe(?). This is something the press would scream about as well, so it's not like they have been covering up accidents. They love to report it.

Now, contrast that with how many people have LITERALLY been KILLED by non-autonomous cars and you will have the LOGICAL answer on what/who should be banned from the roads, but only if you're primary motivation for banning certain road users is public safety.

Heck, if people were *really* serious about making the roadways safer, they'd increase the minimum driving age to 25.

The average teen driver is considerably more dangerous than one of Waymo's vehicles.

What I want to know is whether we will be aware if there is a person in a car or if it is devoid of human life.

The reason being is say if there is a fiery crash somewhere, does someone have to put their life in danger to rescue the occupant of a car which is empty?

This is a serious question particularly in light of the Tesla crash on 101/85 recently.

Thank you Siegal for alerting what you can! I am not against the further development of self driving cars. However I don't see the benefit of all the companies condensed in one area?

I live right by the 101 where the deadly tesla accident occurred. I also lost a father too early thanks to America's original capitalist deadly write off (tobacco). Mountain view keeps getting worse with this denial they call innovation. It's just like watching a car accident itself... I am personally trying to save anything to forever leave this town. Please don't take this as a negative but the only self interested endeavours of "nerds" is pervasive and has destroyed what character mountain view has left. And to the very scared I prefer autonomous drivers...good to know driving is not one of your talents. I feel safer in my boyfriend's 1973 dart.. However when it comes to me opening the door of the built to last mobile with out the help of an angry working class man...thats a different story lol!

There's one aspect which no-one has really talked about. When human drivers know there are driverless vehicles, they will be aware that the vehicle must drive conservatively and obey traffic laws. There will be no human driver to upset, so they'll take more risks in cutting off that car, tailgating it, etc. knowing the vehicle will not retaliate. For example, why would a driver wait in a long line of driverless cars (or one with a driverless car up front) in a turn lane when they can just zoom ahead in the other lane and cut the cars off, jumping in the lane at the last minute? Nobody's going to get upset, right? The driverless car will have to let him in, right? So why not? They'll exploit that.

This is going to cause accidents with driverless vehicles or innocent drivers that are close to the two cars.

We're not going to have the safest driving until we have all driverless vehicles that all play by the rules and there are no jerks left on the road.

@Frank

I've read that people are already "testing" the self-driving cars that are on the road. It's something they should already be programmed to handle safely.