Would you be happy to abandon the controls of your car on the motorway, and rely on a wireless connection to a "master" lead vehicle, with your car as one of a convoy of "slaves", mimicking exactly the lead vehicle's actions?

Of course, maybe if you're born in 2112 you'd possibly take this entirely for granted, and possibly the concept of "self drive" might have become a footnote in history, so the question is perhaps a bit unfair. And of course for years we've already had unmanned trains etc., none of which have yet crashed.

OTOH the most widespread use of unmanned vehicles is of course pleasure rides, and plenty of them do come to grief, albeit very few in percentage terms. But I get on a rollercoaster FOR the 'fear factpr' - knowing it's really safe doesn't seem to affect the automatic physical thrill reaction"; I'm not sure I want that on a 2 hour run from Yorkshire to London!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18248841

"The eventual aim of the project is to have lots of cars "slaved" to a lead vehicle and travelling at high speed along specific routes on motorways."

You'd think that, sooner or later, there is bound to be a high speed multiple vehicle pile up. Is that safe bet a reason against? A very interesting concept, and very clever too as it requires zero hardware fitted to the roads. But I'm wondering if the risks are too great?

And if you want people to be compelled to travel in some sort of a train - why not make them board an actual, say, train?

Would you be happy to abandon the controls of your car on the motorway, and rely on a wireless connection to a "master" lead vehicle, with your car as one of a convoy of "slaves", mimicking exactly the lead vehicle's actions?

Of course, maybe if you're born in 2112 you'd possibly take this entirely for granted, and possibly the concept of "self drive" might have become a footnote in history, so the question is perhaps a bit unfair. And of course for years we've already had unmanned trains etc., none of which have yet crashed.

OTOH the most widespread use of unmanned vehicles is of course pleasure rides, and plenty of them do come to grief, albeit very few in percentage terms. But I get on a rollercoaster FOR the 'fear factpr' - knowing it's really safe doesn't seem to affect the automatic physical thrill reaction"; I'm not sure I want that on a 2 hour run from Yorkshire to London!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18248841

"The eventual aim of the project is to have lots of cars "slaved" to a lead vehicle and travelling at high speed along specific routes on motorways."

You'd think that, sooner or later, there is bound to be a high speed multiple vehicle pile up. Is that safe bet a reason against? A very interesting concept, and very clever too as it requires zero hardware fitted to the roads. But I'm wondering if the risks are too great?

And if you want people to be compelled to travel in some sort of a train - why not make them board an actual, say, train?