Once you trust a self-driving car with your life, you pretty much will trust Artificial Intelligence with anything--Dave Waters. Keith Kirkpatrick is the author of an interesting CACM article on self-driving cars. It is titled "Still Waiting For Self-Driving Cars" and appears in the news section of this month's issue. Today we discuss why it has been so difficult to get self-driving cars started. Over the past decade, technology and automotive pundits have predicted the "imminent" arrival of fully autonomous vehicles that can drive on public roads without any active monitoring or input from a human driver.

Over the past decade, technology and automotive pundits have predicted the "imminent" arrival of fully autonomous vehicles that can drive on public roads without any active monitoring or input from a human driver. Elon Musk has predicted his company Tesla would deliver fully autonomous vehicles by the end of 2021, but he made similar predictions in 2020, 2019, and 2017. Each prediction has fallen flat, largely due to real-world safety concerns, particularly related to how self-driving cars perform in adverse conditions or situations. Despite such proclamations from Tesla, which released its optimistically named Full Self Driving capability for AutoPilot in October 2021, fully automated self-driving cars have not yet arrived. Instead, most manufacturers are offering systems that feature capabilities that generally fall within the first three of the six levels of autonomy defined by the Society of Automotive Engineering (SAE), which range from Level 0 (no driving automation) to Level 5 (full self-driving capabilities under all conditions).

Gridsmart Technologies and Denso demonstrate new technology which will move traffic more efficiently and make roadways safer for drivers and pedestrians, at Gridsmart Technologies in Knoxville on Thursday, Oct. 27, 2016. A car with a short range 5.9 gigahertz radio system inside, which allows communication between itself and a traffic signal with camera attached, pulls up to an intersection as part of a demonstration Oct. 27, 2016, by Denso and Gridsmart Technologies on Hardin Valley Rd. outside of Gridsmart Technologies in Knoxville. The technology can be used to move traffic more efficiently and make roadways safer for drivers and pedestrians. It might be hard to imagine an highway full of self-driving cars, but before we know it, the entire traffic system will be interconnected. We're living in the dawn of autonomous vehicles, Bill Malkes, CEO and co-founder of GRIDSMART Technologies, Inc., said.

On Monday, the nascent self-driving vehicle sector reached an unfortunate milestone when, for the first time, a self-driving car killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona. This also means robot drivers are becoming more like their human predecessors--who kill thousands of pedestrians every year. And that number has risen dramatically in the past several years. In 2016, cars hit and killed nearly 6,000 pedestrians. The Great Recession explains some of the fluctuation.

Imagine a driverless vehicle capable of using a variety of emojis, honks and signs to communicate its intentions to nearby drivers and pedestrians. Drive.ai, a new entrant in the autonomous vehicle race, has begun testing a fleet of such vehicles near its home base in Mountain View, Calif. The company, staffed by researchers from Stanford University's artificial intelligence laboratory, is getting an assist from Steve Girsky, a former General Motors executive who has been named to the Drive.ai Girsky stepped down from GM's board in June after holding several posts at the automaker, including vice chairman of GM and chairman of its Adam Opel subsidiary. "We all know that the automotive industry is in the midst of a foundational shift," Girsky said in a statement.