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I think a lot of the commenters here are correct in pointing out that the problem John Deere have solved is very different from the problem that Google, Tesla,

by jfoster 11y ago

I think a lot of the commenters here are correct in pointing out that the problem John Deere have solved is very different from the problem that Google, Tesla, Uber are trying to solve. That said, I think there is a "human acceptance" piece necessary for autonomous vehicles to be allowed on roads. A lot of people are going to fear, dislike, or be otherwise opposed to sharing the road with autonomous vehicles. A lot of people simply don't believe that it is possible for an autonomous vehicle to handle certain driving situations. To be able to point to tractors driving themselves around fields for the past X years is valuable in getting humans to accept robotic cars.

aidos 11y ago
It's useful but I guess people will just raise that same reservation - just because they work in the field...blah blah blah. My guess is that insurance will force people's hands in the switch. Most accidents on the road are due to human error (I assume, or rather had there not been human involvement the situation could have been avoided). Let's assume that self driving technology reaches the safety level that most of us here believe it will. Insurers, hedging against risk will have to financially penalise manual driving, since it will carry a much higher risk. Hopefully that takes the irrational opposition out of the equation and let's the raw statistics take charge :)