rofl @ all posts of theizzardking! Sorry.. too much info to absorb, but so much fun to lurk...

Nope, I wouldnt get on a plane without a pilot, I won get in a car without a driver, if you don't want to drive take a cab. Dispite computers great reaction time and all, they can't comprehend road conditions, deers, tight roads, what to do in an emergency situation where you need to pick whether you hit that deer or slam in that ditch or tree. The computer won't ever be able to make that desicion and won't ever be able to, the best computer is no match for good experienced drivers.

John, people are not even able to make those choices correctly every time, what your talking about is accidents they are bound to happen no matter what.

No system is completely safe and never will be, even humans have heart attacks, black out and make poor decisions.
The real advantage of computers comes from the fact you can program the choices from the best of us say like the stig or pro race guy and sensors that are accurate far far beyond human perception.
Look at a faro laser tracker if we improve the adm features on that it can easily track a deer coming from the woods or any object for that matter and react with greater accuracy then you or I could hope for.
Also check out photogammatry if moores law continues we could also intergrate a live version of that and compensate ..you can compute mass based on alot of these readings


Another thing to look at is the modern airliner they already fly on auto pilot 90% of the time and the crew relies on instruments for basically everything ...ever noticed how small those windows are? Lol

Point is your life is already being flown around by a computer with a human babysitter and I can easily see a point where drivers are no longer needed the real question is will it be in 5-10-20 or maybe another 100 years from now? I cannot say and don’t think anyone can really say.

And I know how you feel man it is kind of scary but imagine being around when planes or cars where first invented lots of people probably said them becoming mainstream would never happen and who were just out right scared of getting in a 10k lbs tin can flying 10k ft off the ground doing 100's of miles an hour...think about it..doesn't sound very smart does it,

For me that's the amazement and wonder that is mankind, truly I'm blown away every day when I look around and find another cool thing we have done, I mean look at what we're doing in physics alone and it'll blow your mind.
I think given enough time and money into development we can figure this out as well.

Well, the idea sounds good but I don't think it will be safe enough, at least in the near future.