> not an obvious need for autonomous vehicles

We've grown numb to it, but 40,000 US traffic fatalities is an obvious need.

I think that this approach could feasibly lead to something far safer than human drivers (from what I’ve seen they already are safer), so it would be human drivers that we would question the need for at that point

>That's true but there's also a separate element here which is there is an obvious need for aviation and not an obvious need for autonomous vehicles.

At least in America, the need for autonomous vehicles is much, MUCH more obvious than for aviation actually unless you're a 20 year old exclusively city person. In most of the country by area, and at least a good hundred million-ish people by population, being able to have [arbitrary point to point mechanized transportation] is a necessity for normal adult life & work. Right now that equates exclusively to having and being able to drive your own vehicle. There are no other options of any kind unless you are extremely wealthy to the point you can employee an exclusive human brain & body not your own for that role. There are no buses. There are no trains. There are no human driven taxis for that matter. Normal family, friends and neighbors can fill in on an occasional/emergency basis and that's a safety net, but you will be heavily restricted. And tens of millions of people, indeed eventually almost all of us, do not have the ability to safely drive themselves. They are either too young, too old, have some sort of disability preventing it, or have made some poor life choices that nonetheless are compounded upon by this.

Right now it can't be helped, it is what it is, our mechanical technological capability ran ahead of our information processing capability so the human brain and body was called upon to fill in and here we are. The law also reflects that, with far more generosity given to poor and dangerous driving because it's by necessity a quasi-right however much it's called a "privilege". But fully public road autonomous vehicles would change all that. Driving yourself would truly become a hobby practice, not a requirement. Major training could be demanded. If someone has any DUI infractions or the like boom, no more driving privilege. You could be 90 with failing eyesight and reflexes and physically incapable even during the day. And it'd all be ok with everyone still having near identical mobility because they could just fall back on having the car itself take them where they need or want to go on their schedule, same as someone driving today.

That'd be just wildly huge and will only get bigger as America follows the rest of the developed world in terms of aging demographics. This is putting aside all sorts of massive improvements in productivity, lives saved, urban/suburban/rural development, electrification, and probably more we haven't considered. Certainly there are pitfalls to be avoided but it blows my mind anyone could possibly not see all this. The car is one of the most important things in American society and consumes EONS of human time. Literally. An eon is a span of one billion years. Hundreds of millions of people have absolute spent a year or more of their lives behind a steering wheel. It adds up. Anything that shifts that is by definition enormous.

Of course they don't. Political labels don't cross national boundaries easily. Even right next door in Canada "conservative" means nothing like it does in the US.

Another non-US perspective - you can't tell them how to think about their weird political camps.

We saw this play out with Uber. The "progressive" side wants things to be more regulated and frames it in terms of protecting vulnerable people from unchecked corporate power. The "conservative" side does wants less regulation and more competition to keep things from stagnating economically.

The same thing is happening with AI, and with self driving cars.

It's sort of counterintuitive that on the surface, at least in this case, the "conservative" side is the one welcoming change and the "progressive" side rejects it.

You see this federally in the US. The "conservatives" want to tear down all the institutions, but they'll frame it as a return to traditional values like self sufficiency and freedom. The "progressives" want a return to the Biden era, in the name of people depending on these programs.

I guess I'm a bit more generous to them on this point. Ironically, what they are is actually conservatives (in the generic meaning of preserving the status quo, not the American political meaning). What they want is stability and freedom from risk. They have this idea that you should be able to get one job and work it for your entire career, and they often cite the post WWII period as an example of this.

Of course technological progress is anathema to this. Progress is chaos. It causes disruption of entire industries, which TBF does disrupt people's lives. So they enact policies to defend existing industries from competition and fence off who is allowed to do what job with useless credentials and certifications. Essentially trying to preserve the status quo forever. They trade long term progress for short term comfort. The practical economic effect of this is, in fact, a handout to incumbents, and there are plenty of grifters on board for this reason, but it isn't the driving force behind it.