[lwat]

The USA has very strict liability laws. Any mistake is likely to mean massive lawsuits in the USA even if the system is significantly safer than human drivers. All these tests are happening in the EU, and the EU is already getting ready to implement these systems.

[jerf]

For what it's worth, it flows the other way too. If computer drivers are safer under some circumstances, lawsuits will be filed about how the computer wasn't driving the car.

My father works in the car industry. When I was young (though I heard about this later so the memory is fresher than that), he was called as an industry witness in a lawsuit in which his company was being sued for not putting antilock brakes on this particular car, "resulting" (for some value thereof) in a fatal accident. At the time of the accident, antilock brakes were actually an option on the car... an $X,000 option in mid-1980s money. The idea of putting antilock brakes on all the cars was an economic absurdity.

The car company lost.

I know the cynical answer is to say computer will face major legal barriers but I'm not sure it's that simple. One can look at the lawsuit-happy USA and readily see a world in which licensing restrictions are actually significantly tightened and it becomes illegal to drive a car under most circumstances using the exact same logic. Conclusion? Beats me.