I'm all for progress, but I have to draw a distinction with what you say here:
Is this "permission" a limit? Why up to 100,000 annually? Why not allow more than this?
You quoted the reason why in your post:
The House voted Wednesday to speed the introduction of self-driving cars by giving the federal government authority to exempt automakers from safety standards not applicable to the technology, and to permit deployment of up to 100,000 of the vehicles annually over the next several years.
We can't start ignoring public safety in our zeal to introduce self driving cars. All the testing has shown that these cars aren't ready to handle the beaten-up and haphazard roads that exist across the nation.
The truth is that we should support the improvement and standardization of our roads and highways so that self-driving cars can become feasible. We shouldn't, however, discard our safety standards and common sense so that corporations can try to rush their risky automatons onto our pubic roads and put our lives at risk for their profits.
Yeah but it's safer than human drivers. Car is never 100% safe.
Only the average human driver. I am absolutely positive I am in the top couple of % of human drivers.
I am not convinced these will be safer for me, but they will be safer for me if the other crappy drivers, like the one who ran a stop sign while typing on her cell phone and t-boned my Bike, are using them.
None of this is a disagreement with what you said, just sorta thinking out loud here.
Potentially safer. Its all about the implementation. You should have no doubt that the corporations eager to flood the roads with these self-driving cars and their servants in government would gladly sacrifice the safety of citizens if it earned them an extra nickle.