At the moment it seems legal problems are the real obstacle (at least in many countries) since the old trafficl laws were made with drivers in mind, and driverless cars don't fit.
I was going to say that, but you beat me to it.
Ravenous lawyers are circling autonomous cars like a school of sharks, salivating at the thought of class-action lawsuits against deep-pocket defendants. (What do law firms typically get in class action suits, 30% of the award?) Imagine if that award is multiple billions... It could fuel a whole new legal industry, like we saw with asbestos litigation.
I believe that's one reason why the rumors have it that Ford and Alphabet (Google) are planning to spin their new joint venture off as a legally separate company, in hopes of reducing their legal vulnerability.
The most basic example of the problem is this:
Old version: Man driven car kills pedestrian. The prime suspect is the driver, he must defend or will be found guilty.
Newversion : Autonomous car kills pedestrian.
Problem: Who is guilty?
- The person in the car? Which one if there are several? If they all were on the back seat?
- The maker of the car?
- The maker of the software?
- Someone else?
The California (where I live) Department of Motor Vehicles just recently unveiled draft autonomous car vehicle regulations. They seem to me to have been written by the lawyers. The proposed new regs are getting lots of push-back from autonomous car developers because the car developers perceive that they are designed to quash the industry.
In a nutshell: If the proposed regulations are approved, in order to be street legal in California, an autonomous car must have a steering wheel and conventional controls, and a licensed driver at that wheel during autonomous operation ready to take over if anything goes wrong. (That's basically the same rule as currently applies to experimental autonomous cars currently.) What's more, manufacturers won't be allowed to sell fully autonomous cars directly to the public, but must lease them to customers instead.
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/c...64eaa1ff/AVRegulationsSummary.pdf?MOD=AJPERES
Very tricky questions. In countries where car holders need to have an insurance (e.g. Germany) in order to be allowed to drive a car, insurances will not offer contracts for autonomous cars until these legal questions are solved. And without insurance, the car must not be on the road.
That's how it is in the United States too. I'm sure that the insurance companies are very concerned about precisely the problems you referred to. My impression is that evolving policy in California is being strongly influenced by insurance company representatives.
I've heard rumors that Alphabet(Google) has been thinking about starting its own auto-insurance subsidiary to insure its own autonomous cars if the existing auto insurance companies are reluctant to do it.
I believe that Alphabet's plan is not to sell their cars direct to the public anyway (thus conforming to that part of the California regs), but instead to use them in an Uber-like service, where people summon an autonomous car with a cell-phone app, tell it where they want to go, after which the car becomes available for new calls. (I expect that taxi companies are fighting that like the fought Uber in France.) Requiring licensed drivers behind the wheel kind of defeats that vision.
Perhaps the almost-inevitable future of self-driving vehicles isn't destined to happen here in highly paternalistic California. After taking the forefront in developing them, Silicon Valley may be a laggard in allowing their use. Nevada has already tried to make itself appealing to the industry with favorable vehicle testing regulations and I can foresee self-driving cars enjoying their initial public adoption somewhere outside California, whether in other American states or internationally.
But yes, I feel that we may be entering a period where the biggest remaining hurdles aren't engineering challenges so much as they are legal and regulatory problems.