What happens when drivers encounter autonomous vehicles on the highways?
Conventional wisdom is the roads will be carnage as logically thinking robots literally collide with irresponsible humans.
The Chief Executive of Mercedes-Benz America has a different take, it may be that humans quickly learn to bully safety conscious and law abiding autonomous vehicles on the road.
Speaking at a motoring conference in Las Vegas, Dietmar Exler suggested the immediate future will see aggressive drivers taking advantage of driverless vehicles programmed to avoid collisions and risky situations.
This raises an interesting question – will autonomous vehicles actually make the roads less safe in the earlier days despite being safer themselves?
How humans interact with new technologies is never a certain thing, and the idea that people will bully robots is a delicious, and plausible idea. It does raise though some interesting possibilities as robots become common in our lives.