It's quite the achievement [slashdot.org] turning an April Fool's joke into an actual product.

We'll make a trade: the police can insist that I follow their speed limits if those speed limits are set to the maximum speed that a well-maintained, maneuverable car can be driven safely under optimum conditions by a competent and alert driver.

This [slashdot.org] is [slashdot.org] hardly [slashdot.org] a [slashdot.org] new [slashdot.org] story. [slashdot.org]

You seem to imply that having autonomous cars removes human error from the equation. You are ignoring that:
A) Not all cars will be autonomous; those that aren't are obviously susceptible to human error.
B) The algorithms these cars use are still made by humans, and are thus susceptible to human error.
C) Not all cars would be on the same level of communication. It's up to humans to devise a standard, which is susceptible to human error.
D) There are always going to be humans not in cars on or around the streets, who are susceptible to human error.

except they aren't highly efficient.

I mean, yeah getting the polluters of the road is mart of an evil master scheme.

twit.

So when a less-than-alert driver driving a less-than-well-maintained car is driving over the ridiculously low speed limit in less-than-optimal conditions on the less-than optimally maintained road on which you also happen to be driving doesn't end up killing you: is that worth anything?

Did people suddenly forget all of the news regarding Google self-driving car technology? Did people honestly think a company would be publicly spending millions of dollars doing something like this and not patent it?

https://www.google.com/search?q=google+self+driving+car&tbm=nws

Here is a bunch more "news" about google's self-driving cars.

That's really disappointing, given the number of auto manufacturers who could and should be given the opportunity to pursue driverless cars without a by-your-leave from Google. I mean the idea has long been around in sci-fi, look at Arnie's Johnny cab in Total Recall. And it is just an idea at this point. It would be like patenting horseless carriages or something.

Human error will be removed from the equation not long after humans are removed from the equation.

Not all roads are limited access super-highways. I do most of my driving on surface streets. There is sufficiently little pedestrian traffic that one tends not to think about them, and just enough pedestrian traffic that forgetting about them becomes a big problem. Until you make it illegal for pedestrians to enter the roadway, there will be humans and human errors as parts of the equation.

Science isn't art. Please stop trying to minimize what you don't understand.

" I am a technician myself,
we got a bad ass over here!

" I mean, who else but us arrogant humans can come up with the idea that we understand "laws of nature"? "
The laws of natures are scientific laws based on current daa and understanding. Things that have been tested many, many times.

" I think it's ok not to know it all, "
Yes, nothing as warm as the blanket of ignorance.

And just so you know, human error is being removed already. many flights happen every day with no pilot interaction. Computer respond to incident much fast then people.

Because right now, the real April Fool's day joke is the entire U.S. Patent Office, and they seem to think April first lasts all year.

It's sad that I thought of that as gallows humor at first, but quickly came to the conclusion that it's roughly congruent with my actual opinion about all these legal entities girding their loins for patent wars. The system was meant to foster invention by protecting the private rewards of individual ingenuity, and the will to bring a product to market (not necessarily by the inventor). Patents were never intended to be stockpiled in this fashion. The system is being abused, and the USPTO is legally bound to obey laws desperately in need of legislative review and reform. Maybe it's Congress that is the joke here.

Of course, Google's leadership is smart enough that it's just possible they're trying to demonstrate how broken this is, by hastening its collapse. No CEO or board can possibly like the escalating Mutual Assured Destruction environment that is brewing in corporate conglomerate patent holdings. It's extremely volatile, and an unstable way to do business.

Obviously that's not to say that these accidents will NEVER happen, but I'm confident that the statistic will drop by multiple orders of magnitude.