Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

I mean look at the GPS navigation systems? If that isn't meticulously updated, it tries to send you down exit ramps that no longer exist, through construction closures, sometimes it thinks that there is a road where one isn't, and on and on and on.

Are people still paying attention? Will they be held accountable if they strike a pedestrian? Or a construction worker? Or a traffic cop?

I think we should go back to riding horses

It's very expensive to build, expensive to operate, and not very useful over longer distances.  The French TGV operates only with massive subsidies, and government paid to build it.  We also in the US lack in intracity infrastructure to make it more attractive in most cases.  Uber is changing that.

I think autonomous EVs is going to make HSR obsolete, we may be glad we didn't build it.

so is the reason we take the fun in driving away from humans based on safety

and if so why not planes and trains

why not doctors in the operating room

With planes, we're doing so, more and more. I believe we're at the point where autopilot can handle pretty much takeoff-to-landing operations. Right now the main job of the pilot is to make sure the autopilot is ok lol...

Why are we allergic to high-speed rail?

Economics.

Even our little Cessna 172 had a nice autopilot.  You could set course using a VOR signal, a radio signal from a source, and altitude, and let'er rip.

One guy did this a while back and fell asleep and woke up out over the Gulf of Mexico without enough fuel to make land (not in our plane).

One company is working on electric taxiing, they use a small generator to provide the electricity and only fire up the jet engines when nearly ready to take off.

Jet engines are not very efficient at low speed.

Close to 90% of the thrust comes from uncombusted air in the engines.  The combustion is used to drive the "propellers", the turbine, that sucks outside air in and squirts it out the back.  Turbofan engines versus earlier turbojet engines, high bypass ratios.

An East Coast line could be cool. One from Boston down to DC, or whatever. 

Of course there are multiple AmTrak lines already running similar routes. 

ACELA runs now at speeds up to 110 mph, and it's popular and makes money.  Making it into a HSR line would be cost prohibitive, but they are looking at making some incremental improvements.  High speed is not that needed because distances are fairly short.

Eh. Once you get too many lawsuits from those who "give themselves over" and get hurt, you'll have issues.

This is one of those all or nothing things...

Yeah, you’ll have to hit the point where the system is good enough you’re actually driving down fatalities. And once that number is small enough, they’ll just take it. 

until then, leave enough driver control that liability can be shifted, throw in some warnings, let the process move slowly,