Volvo to trial driverless cars on open roads within three years

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They absolutely would tailgate. Autonomous cars would be able to drive within inches of each other as they'd communicate any need to brake instantly, saving a fortune in fuel on motorways and massively reducing congestion. Really, this can't happen soon enough.

That can only happen when ALL cars are autonomous and you're in a sort of I, Robot style world.

There is however a slightly more worrying thing about all this.
"Driverless" cars can't have accidents, they'll see obstacles and brake etc. Imagine the fun a cyclist, pedestrian or "manual car user" could have with swerving into the path of one knowing that it'll apply the brakes.

Obviously it's many years off yet but I can see a point where they have roads for autonomous cars only.

Although by then I should have a hoverbike. I distinctly remember Tomorrow's World telling me I could have a hoverbike. Or a jetpack.

Johnny Cab is closer to reality.

People are thinking of autonomous cars as a normal car, with a button so it drives itself.

I think its more likely, at least initially, that companies will run fleets of them on a pay-per-use, or monthly fee basis. No driving license required.

When i ran my old ragingbike commuting website and subscribers posted incidents, after white vans and taxis, Volvos were persistently the worst offenders.

Get yourself in the centre of the lane in front of a Volvo, but hope it is not driven by one of those Humans.

I can't wait for autonomous cars, frankly. They'll drive predictably, leave a (configurable) gap around any slower-moving object (cyclist, horse, pedestrian), won't make red-mist overtakes when they can see (by radar) a queue of traffic up ahead, etc.

My current car is the first I've had with cruise control on, and while it's useless in the South East, a few months ago I was in France and at one point drove over 100 miles on an autoroute without touching any of the pedals (you can't speed any more, so may as well chill...). I had to keep reminding myself to steer. If the car was taking care of that too I could have been reading the paper, playing Scrabble with the wife, etc...

I think that autonomous cars are inevitable. I imagine that your insurance will, at some point, become much cheaper if your car is autonomous.

I think it is pretty weird that trains are still driven by humans. They're in a much more controlled environment than the roads. If when we get autonomous cars driving on the roads we still have train drivers, it will look really daft.

I actually have a Volvo V60 - it's a soothing, safe and increasingly civilised alternative to my old Audis.

There are too many dangers to watch out for around town to make driving manually anything but a chore, so I'd welcome a system like this. Disclaimer: I am also a Pistonhead... but I realise that there *is* a place for this sort of thing.

My car already has an urban auto-brake function and all sorts of other safety tech. A word of warning though: when I drive my wife's car afterwards, I realise than I've lapsed a level of awareness because I assume the constant monitoring is still there (when it's not).

It'll be against someone's Human Rights not to let them drive a car how they want to!

'Company aims to have no-one killed or seriously injured in their cars by 2020' - do they have an aim for how many will be killed BY their cars?

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they've been able to do this for donkeys years and not just Volvo.

Really? The google car needs computers powerful enough to process nearly 1tb of data EVERY SECOND from all of the LIDAR, RADAR and camera sensors.

The only previous systems I'm aware of just followed wires in the road and such like, they weren't aware of the environment like the current systems.

I'm pretty sure the Vienna convention (from 1968) can be changed.

they've been able to do this for donkeys years and not just Volvo. The trouble they have is one of product liability and the Vienna Convention. If you drive a Volvo and kill someone, you're to blame or in the frame anyway. If the Car's driving itself then its Volvo in the frame. Or if there is a failure of any sort. Cars go on the road in their tens and hundreds of thousands and stay there for an average 12 years some for 25 to 30. Especially premium Marques like Volvos. Their system has to be failure free for that long.

The Vienna convention stops the vehicle from taking control until it's past the point of no return so to speak. A millisecond past is enough. That means that while technically they can avoid collisions the driver has to have failed to act in time and so collisions are only able to be mitigated.

And motorists have to buy them. Until now they have preferred in car safety and comfort and not shown any desire to pay to have their car made safer for those outside it.

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while four in ten state that they would never even consider driving one,

Because they'd have to stop at red lights, obey the speed limit, not tailgate and not do dangerous overtakes...

Progress, at least.

I like the idea of a car that drives off to find a parking space after you've gotten out. This would enable wider use of those funky compact storage facilities that don't allow for humans inside.