Honda introduces self-driving car

Road traffic accidents kill more than 5000 people a year in Japan. I really think this technology has the potential to get that somewhere close to zero. People think computer systems fail all the time because their Windows PC happens to crash all the time. In actual fact developing safe, reliable self-driving cars (or at least many times safer than humans) is totally achievable.

Why not just be hooked up to the internet and fed through tubes like in The Matrix. No need to travel.

California law permits the Google driver-watching-but-hands-off-wheel cars, don't know about the totally driverless cars. They're planning to test the driverless cars on the NASA base next door but the employees union there is complaining about being used as guinea pigs without proper experimentation protocols (not riding in the cars but sharing the road with them).

All this driverless car development. Honestly I would not totally trust it, would take several years of data to prove reliable and safe. Until then I prefer to drive.

And what if a systems failure occurs and the habit is to do work and text the whole commute. How safe could one drive after a few years of only the car paying attention to the road?