[bazizbaziz]

I think in many ways this could be considered a feature and not a problem. Why does it matter if someone butts in front of you? The passengers in the car can relax and let the computer handle the task. Yes it's important to avoid deadlock while merging during congestion but aggressive drivers will always try to butt in front of likely looking candidates, autonomous or not, and this usually doesn't stop progress of the line in general, just maybe frustrates the non-driver?

[maxander]

The issue then is, again, humans- the rider of an autonomous car will feel slighted and helpless seeing the cars around them take advantage of their nice and polite driver-AI, and this will make owning driverless cars less appealing to a wide swath of the customer base.

You and I might still enjoy passively riding an altruistic vehicle, but an astonishing amount of the public id is absorbed in these sort of anonymous dominance games.

[jessaustin]

I thought the point of "autonomy" was being able to ignore the whole mess? If I'm constantly worried about how the car is driving, I might as well be a child with my mother driving. How would that be less silly than worrying about the performance of e.g. train engineers and airline pilots?

[neolefty]

I love this kind of discussion -- the danger of initial hiccups prejudicing people against the future potential of a tech.

If most cars are autonomous, then it seems pretty reasonable -- people will get used to them and I think we'll figure out standards of politeness. Like elevators: "Don't press all the elevator buttons, but it's okay to request your floor even though it slows down other peoples' trips."

But the tricky part is the transition period, where only a few cars are autonomous -- and I guess that's what this article is talking about. How can we help that transition?

[devoply]

We simply put up with the bullying. Mercedes chief is worried because his passengers are high social status individuals who will be very unhappy at being bullied despite driving powerful expensive cars that denote high status.

[technofiend]

Yes exactly. The most expensive car is the one most likely to be self driven. I have no doubt people in my hometown will gladly cut them off at every opportunity. Lol.