If I get to the place when I am no longer able to drive, this would be very welcome. But I bet it would come with a hefty price tag.

Almost all accidents are the result of human error. Eliminating the human component in driving would, theoretically, make roads safer for everyone.

I'm not sure I'm ready to place my life in the hands of a computer but I do find the technology interesting.

I've been waiting for self driven vehicles for years!

No. I wouldn't want it. What happens when it fails?

I would. When they fail they're supposed to slowly decelerate, I think. The latest I read said that relying on the passenger for emergency driving was a problem because people tend to fall asleep. They found that having them play games on a tablet or text or something kept them awake and alert enough. But elsewhere they had problems with people overreacting and insisting on grabbing control, and doing a much worse job of it than if they'd trusted the car. So those makers are moving toward a car that doesn't have controls for a human driver. I wouldn't like that so much. I'd rather have some kind of ability to switch it to manual, though not necessarily on the fly.

What they're also getting into is ethics in the algorithms. Should the car protect its passenger first and always? Remember the song The Cowboy Fireman? What if the choice is to plow into a kindergarten class or turn down a bank where the car could crash and the passenger be seriously injured? I think most people wouldn't think, they'd just haul over the wheel so as not to hit the kiddies. But what if it were ducklings? How much human injury is worth saving a flock of ducks? The self driving car will actually have fewer of these situations than people because they'll have much better sensors, but the unexpected still happens all the time. Kids, who couldn't be seen on the sidewalks, dart out between cars into roads and get killed with a devastating frequency.

I love to drive. I think a self-driving car would make me uneasy. Kind of like relinquishing control to an airline pilot at 20,000 ft. :-)

I find it hard to envision a vehicle that can automatically deal with all the nuances of the road, but I suppose when all the cars are self-driving it's possible none of them will do anything stupid to impact the others. But it could take decades to get to that point. Meanwhile, we'll still have drunks, stoners, and texters behind the wheels of many ordinary cars.

This isn't something to anticipate in the distant future time, it's now. Google has had dozens of self-driving cars roaming Silicon Valley and the Bay Area for several years. I see them in the Google neighborhood and elsewhere. Google is not alone in this effort, others are working on it too. There are many elements of sensor smarts that are available today as options in some cars - blind spot warning systems, pedestrian warning systems, the simple sonar for avoiding collisions when doing parking maneuvers, etc. BMW has an option that allows a car to parallel park itself, between two cars without hitting either.

Just as a proof of concept, Tesla has a feature where the car will park itself in the garage after you get out. And pull itself out when commanded to do so. It repeats a memorized trip that can include many turns and needn't be straight or short, it relies on sensors and memory of the trip. Teslas also have a limited self-drive feature on freeways.

I am still too nervous to use the automated parking feature on my new car!

When I think of self driving cars, I think about being able to be dropped off at the train station and then having the car drive itself home.

The fee for a parking space near the train is astronomical. Also, we don't have an option of buying a one day pass. The next town over does have this option, but the spaces are scarce.

I am not sure if i would feel comfortable trusting the car. I do appreciate my car's notifications of passing people or other vehicles. There are times when your sight line is obscured, so every bit helps when it comes to safety.

I never used cruise control. i don't even know if my car now has this feature,

I'm waiting for transporters, a la Star Trek. Maybe in my next incarnation!!

I am at the same time both eagerly awaiting their eventual arrival, and dreading it. Eagerly awaiting because there are many, many, many, many, many dangerously bad drivers on the roads: New teen drivers goofing with their friends. A soccer mom (or dad) dealing with arguing kids in the back seat. The inveterate road warrior commuter saving time by shaving or putting on makeup or checking their email while whizzing down the road. An aged driver like my great uncle Samuel who was too stiff and sore to look for a car in the next lane, so instead he'd just start easing over and listen for a car frantically honking (or his passengers shouting). A driver like my wife's aunt who is prone to frequent seizures, but swears she can always tell when one is coming on, except for the time she didn't and ended up crossing 5 lanes of traffic and driving into a lake. A repeat DUI offender like a local real estate agent who turned left in front of a car that was trying to pass him, and ended up killing that driver, and had a BAC of 0.18 at 8:15 A.M. Or the many who even though they know that texting and driving is both illegal and not-a-good-idea, still can't stop themselves from sending a quick response.

The others on the road would probably be much safer if all of these bad drivers were in autonomous vehicles.

Dreading it because, to me, it seems inevitable that even though they may be safer than average drivers they'll bring a new set of risks and dangers to driving, like when the program crashes so do you, or the various clever ways hackers will find to lead them astray, or just the algorithm deciding running into me is a less-bad option as compared to hitting a kid that ran into the road. Furthermore it also seems inevitable to me that after they achieve a certain level of commonness on the roads, they will become mandatory.

My car isn't self driving, but it does have some features similar to a self driving car. It has a cruise control that will speed up and slow down the vehicle, to a full stop if necessary, when traffic ahead slows down. It also will accelerate/stop the car in bumper to bumper traffic so you don't have to keep moving from the brake to the gas just to inch up a few feet with traffic. It will turn the steering wheel if you start to drift into the median or off the side of the road. It will also parallel park itself.

The first few times I tried these features, it was very nerve wracking, especially as the car in front of me hit its brakes pretty hard, I was worried my car wouldn't stop, but it sure enough did. They are fun things to play with and the stop-and-go traffic feature is handy but ultimately, I enjoy driving so a self driving vehicle would be too boring for me.

Stick shift/manual transmission all the way! I would NOT want a self-driving car. Now that I've driven for many years.

Some day after we are all long gone, self driving cars will take over, and people will be horrified at the thought that way-back-when we actually got behind the wheel of a ton of steel and drove it at high speed.

I am hearing impaired, and my vision requires glasses. Eventually my declining hearing and vision may force me to stop driving for safety reasons.

I live near a high school, and while I'm sure most of the students are good responsible people, the fact is that they have not yet had the experience of many years of driving. The combination of their inexperience and my declining hearing/vision might eventually put both myself and them in danger. I think for some seniors, a self driven car would make everyone safer.

I do have some concerns a la Volkswagen, where a car company may indulge in some hanky panky, and depending on what the companies are hiding, the car may not be safe. But those concerns are not confined to just self driving cars.

People eat while driving, text, read books and newspapers, look under the dash for a cigarette they dropped....they need a driver.

For three years, I used to work a 12 hour shift then drive 90 miles one way to get home. To stay awake I'd eat sunflower seeds, pump a hand weight, blast rock n' roll. Some days half way home the highway would be closed due to an accident or snow storm. I could have used a self driven car back then...why not now!!!

It certainly would take care of the texting while driving problem. We have planes that fly on automatic pilot, I guess cars are the next thing. Even when they come out with them, it will be a long time before all the cars on the road are replaced. Don't think I'll be here for that.

A friend of mine has a self parking car. So I would imagine self driving car is next.

Ontario is allowing them to operate on our roads as of ... the first of this year?

A nearby small city, Stratford, where they do a lot of Shakespeare, has a number of auto parts manufacturers and has wi-fi coverage over their whole city, so they expect that some of the preliminary testing will be done there.

Hi, again, jazzy,

Would you consider adding "trouble-free" to the subject line above?

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Living 25 kilometres (16 miles) from the city, I've been saying that I can stay out on the farm as long as I can drive ... but a couple of weeks ago came up with the brainwave that maybe I can stay there some longer, when I can get a car that'll drive itself.

But ... can you imagine independent-minded ole joyful being willing to sit in the back seat ... reading a book (or whatever), while the car is taking him (safely) along a prescribed route??

And landlord, who's tall, bent down and looked me in the eye, with his face about a foot from mine ... and asked whether I had any idea what the price on them would be!?

I told him that I'd have to be sure to drive myself for several more years, for I'd have to wait until I could buy one used ... as I haven't bought a new car in 40 years.

There'd be a problem, I figure ... with road markings obscured by blown snow, as today, would they provide a shovel so that the car could dig itself down to find them? ... snowplough, I guess, that could operate while it was moving.

By the way ... does anyone have any idea what the cost will be to repair their computers when they go on the fritz? Will they guarantee that all of the computer-related hardware and software needed to operate the car will last throughout the life of the car?

ole joyful

Autonomous cars don't need or use a Wifi signal.

But ... can you imagine independent-minded ole joyful being willing to
sit in the back seat ... reading a book (or whatever), while the car is
taking him (safely) along a prescribed route??

Yep! My father always told me about the ice man. There was an ice man in one of my favorite picture books when I was very small. My father took me to the ice house to buy blocks of ice, too, and told me about the ice man. The ice man would bring blocks of ice to the house in his wagon. He'd carry one up to the kitchen to put in the ice box, and while he was doing it, the horse would pull the wagon to his next stop. The horse knew the round and he did his part. And if the ice man dozed off on the way home, that was okay too, because the horse knew the way.