[ExI] Will robot cars be TOO good?

[spike]

>...On Behalf Of ddraig


>...I'm an extremely good high-speed driver. He has never driven a car,
ever...Eventually I had to slow down as I realised I was about to give him a
heart attack...I can just see *me* feeling like that one day, with some
super-efficient robot piloting my personal commuter jet.  Errr, car...Dwayne
--
  

This is how that will look to you.  Your granddaughter has a specially
equipped car, this being required for any vehicle within four miles of city
center.  If you didn't have that, you would be required to take alternate
transportation.  When you get to the perimeter, a pleasant female voice
comments, "Traffic-Star taking control of your vehicle now."  Your
granddaughter takes her hands off the wheel, gas and brake, for they do not
respond to her commands.  The car speeds up, on a crowded street.  There is
no foot traffic here.  It zips you through an intersection with other
traffic going every direction.  Your car misses other cross-traffic by an
arm span, at which time you respond "JAYSUS!  Did you see that?"  Your
teenage granddaughter didn't, or didn't notice, for she had her face in her
Nintendo.  

She suggests you take a nap for the next ten minutes, for the experience can
be scary for those who are not accustomed to trusting the system, which came
online just when she got her driver's license.  You swoosh right through one
intersection after another, and each time it appears to you as a miracle of
survival, each one a near-death experience, since traffic is going through
in all directions at high speeds, barely missing each other, but always
missing each other as they swoosh past with an tactile whomp from the
compressed air wave passing so close.  Apparently the older occupants of
these specially-equipped cars are a deeply religious group, for during the
trip through the city they are heard early and often shrieking the name of
their favorite deity and in some cases his mother as well.  

spike