> It would save lives, time, and money for everyone

I'll give you "lives" and "money," but not necessarily time.

I live in a place where self-driving vehicles can be spotted fairly regularly. Once a week or so. You can tell by the special license plates. They are always very ponderous, careful drivers. It's fascinating to see them gently slow to a stop for a red light, then take off like a jackrabbit when it turns green.

Perhaps as the technology matures, they'll start to keep pace with traffic better.

I'm actually looking forward to self-driving cars. It's all the personal time benefits of mass transit (book reading, meditating, general mental health), without worrying about accidentally sitting in someone else's pee.

I am pretty sure that is because they have to account for all the non-self-driving cars. If all cars were self driving, they could co-ordinate and go a lot faster.

They'll still have to allow for pedestrians and bikes, for the foreseeable future.

We'll just outlaw that. Compare: Jaywalking, avenues.

"Machine kills human because human violated traffic law" will never fly.

I think it will. The above poster's reference to how 'jaywalking' became a crime after motor vehicles associations conducted heavy PR campaigns to banish pedestrians from what once were shared streets is instructive.

From stories I've heard of how joggers and cyclists are treated sometimes in the US, I wouldn't be so sure.

It would have to be a child being killed.

I interpreted the alternative to that being locally run AI, which is not implicitly spying on you and capable of doing nefarious things (e.g. not allowing you to navigate until you pay this month’s upgrade fee).

I assumed the same, too. A self-driving car should be able to navigate itself without an Internet connection; any permanent ties to the cloud are just anticonsumer business strategy.