Self-Driving Cars: Too Many Unanswered Questions?

During the last few months we brought you a number of stories about self-driving cars. From the city in Sweden where over 100 self-driving cars will be tested on city roads, to the Google Self-Driving Car Project to the efforts on the part of major automakers to develop autonomous driving features.

A new report from Fool.com included thoughts from some of the heavy hitters in retail automotive about where they see the future of self-driving technology. For example, Mark Fields, the newest CEO at Ford told fool.com, “But I do think, as we go forward, there will be fully autonomous vehicles on the road. There will be a certain portion of customers that will want that, but there’ll be a large portion of customers that still will want to drive their vehicles but have those semi-autonomous features to make them safer drivers.”

This thinking on the part of Fields seems to fall in line with what other industry insiders have said. Some consumers will want the latest and greatest technology, even if that means giving control over to a computer system. Speaking on that vein was long-time automotive insider John O’Dell, senior editor at Edmunds.com. O’Dell told DrivingSales News in February, “There are very smart people in the automotive world today who say that at point X in the future the idea of the privately owned personal vehicle is going to be pretty much a thing of the past.” O’Dell spoke generally about the personally owned and thus personally, non-robotically operated vehicle, a concept that some consumers may never be comfortable with.

Dan Ammann, the President of GM, told fool.com his organization is working to help consumers be comfortable with the self-driving car concept. Ammann said in during the aforementioned interview, “So we’re investing significantly in these technologies. We think we need to bring the customers along on the journey with us. It’s not just having the technology out there, but it’s bringing the customer acceptance along with that. We think it’s something that will evolve over time, and we’re investing a lot.”

Part of that investment will surely involve looking into the legal and safety ramifications of fully self-driving cars. There are questions that must be answered such as who is at fault during a self-driving car crash, how will this technology impact insurance rates and how will computer systems mimic human decision making and discretion. How GM and other automakers respond to the natural curiosity surrounding self-driving cars could mean the difference between creating a bold you new technology and one that fails to gain consumer confidence and approval.