one thing: I do NOT like the idea of riding in a self-driven car when the majority of other cars are driven by humans. That doesn't seem ideal to me. I worry about a self-driving car driving exactly the speed limit and not being able to speed up whenever you need to, to either keep up with the traffic, or when someone is tailgating you. Especially at night, when you are driving and tired people drive straight up to you and don't slow down until the last second. I want to speed up in those instances.
I think a solution for this would be to have the "self driving" speed limit be 10-15mph faster then the normal limit on highways. Since driverless cars can react faster this wouldn't cause more accidents and it would allow driverless cars to keep up with traffic. Plus, if traffic slows there's nothing stopping the driverless car from slowing down as well.
Or even better, just set speed limits at realistic levels (around the 85th percentile of natural traffic flow) for everyone. That said, I assume the driverless vehicles would at least be programmed to exceed the speed limit if necessary for an emergency maneuver.
Why speeding up when being tailgated? I usually just lift my foot from the gas pedal. If you think I'm too slow, then fucking pass, don't try to bully me into driving faster.
When you're driving at like 3 am and there's someone that's approaching you, it's usually not because they're bullying you. It's that they're driving around 70mph and they're tired and their reflexes are slow when they're tired.
On the contrary, this is the kind of situation a self-driving car can (eventually) handle quite smoothly, by closely monitoring the speed of all the vehicles approaching from behind, estimate how likely each driver is paying attention (by drawing a graph of speed/position in, say, 15 seconds), and if collision is likely, either accelerate away or flash break light rapidly to warn the driver behind.
All these things are near impossible to an average human driver, but there's no reason why an AI would have more trouble looking behind than forward.
* If there are enough self-driving cars, it will also (hopefully) teach those drivers who feel entitled to go 90mph at 3am that tailgating is no longer a working strategy.
There's no reason for a self-driving car to prioritise adhering to the speed limit over avoiding a collision though.
Any sufficiently advanced self-driving AI will try to avoid being rear-ended like that. Even better, when a collision is unavoidable, an AI has a much better chance at making the 'right' decision as to how to crash.
"The central zones of $CITY are self-driving only". You could still use your normal car to get to parking lot near the city and switch to public transport but if you want to get INSIDE the zone then you need to be self-driving.
(On sidenote, you could have self-driving electric taxis that ONLY serve inside the zone as well as zone-only buses)
