What are the advantages and disadvantages of self-driving cars?

The cost and the long transition fall on the people who travel

Question: What are the advantages and disadvantages of self-driving cars?
Position‹2 of 2: Disadvantages of self-driving cars include cost, and safety concerns from hacking
Argument‹2 of 2: The cost and the long transition fall on the people who travel

The argument

The second disadvantage claimed is economic and practical. The sensing, computing and testing a self-driving vehicle requires are expensive, and proponents of this position argue that the expense does not disappear as the technology matures so much as it is redistributed: into the price of the vehicle, into the fares charged for using one, into the infrastructure that has to be maintained to the standard the vehicles rely on, and into insurance arrangements nobody has yet settled. Where liability for a collision is unresolved between owner, manufacturer and software supplier, the cost of that uncertainty is carried by whoever is travelling. The transition is argued to be the harder part. For a long period the roads will carry automated and human-driven vehicles together, along with cyclists and pedestrians who behave in ways no specification anticipates, and proponents argue that the mixed condition is the one in which the technology performs worst and in which its benefits are least available. Meanwhile driving is a livelihood for a great many people, and a technology that displaces it does so faster than those affected can retrain. Proponents add a distributional point. The benefits arrive first for those who can afford a new vehicle or who live where a service operates, which tends to mean wealthier and denser areas, while the costs of a half-converted road system are shared by everyone, including those who go on driving older cars because that is what they have. On this account the disadvantages are not merely the price of the hardware but the length and the unevenness of the changeover.

Premises

[P1]The sensing, computing and testing required are expensive, and the expense is redistributed into vehicle prices, fares, maintained infrastructure and unsettled insurance rather than disappearing. [P2] Liability between owner, manufacturer and software supplier is unresolved, so the cost of that uncertainty falls on whoever is travelling in the vehicle. [P3] The roads will carry automated and human-driven traffic together for a long period, which is the condition in which the technology performs worst, while driving as a livelihood is displaced faster than those who do it can retrain. [C] Therefore cost and the transition are disadvantages of self-driving cars.

Counter-arguments

Critics answer that each of these costs is a feature of an early technology rather than of the technology itself. Sensing hardware has fallen in price as it has been produced in volume, liability is a question legislatures routinely settle for new activities, and the mixed-traffic period is a reason to deploy gradually where the vehicles perform best rather than a permanent condition. They add that the distributional argument proves too much, since the same could be said of any improvement that arrives first where it is affordable, including seat belts and automatic braking, and that the relevant comparison is with the costs already borne on the roads in collisions, congestion and the exclusion of people who cannot drive.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Sensing and computing costs have fallen as production has scaled, which is the ordinary path of a new technology rather than a permanent charge on travellers. [Rejecting P2] Liability for new activities is routinely settled by legislation and insurance practice, so an unresolved question is a transitional gap rather than a disadvantage of the vehicles. [Rejecting P3] A mixed period argues for gradual deployment where the technology performs best, and displacement of work accompanies many technologies rather than being a property of this one. [Rejecting C] At most it follows that the changeover needs managing, not that cost and transition are disadvantages inherent to self-driving cars.