It seems like a mistake to remove manual controls entirely, not necessarily because of safety concerns, but because there are a fair number of times when you need the car to go somewhere without having a route. I'm thinking of things like:
Moving your car ten feet so somebody else can get out of the driveway; handling double parking during alternate side parking hours; moving the car because you were waiting to pick someone up in a no-standing zone and a cop just pulled up behind you; moving the car to just the right spot so grandma doesn't have to walk any more steps than absolutely necessary; parking on a lawn for a party or concert; backing up to just the right spot so you can hitch up a trailer.
The list could go on forever, and that's the point -- you can surely automate away some of these tasks, but there is an infinite multiplicity of things that need to be done with a car, and having to point them out on a map in order to get the car to do them, or even use a joystick to do it, sounds like an obnoxious chore.
Edit: to those who disagree with me by pointing to a utopian future of car sharing for everyone and no one even being able to drive, that's fine I guess, but this seems to be suggesting that the very first generation of these will be without a steering wheel, when very few people will have these cars and all of the problems I listed will still exist. Even if your ultimate goal is for passengers to be completely dependent on the AI for navigation, that's just not going to be an option when these things roll off the lot as soon as 2016.
Moving your car ten feet so somebody else can get out of the driveway; handling double parking during alternate side parking hours; moving the car because you were waiting to pick someone up in a no-standing zone and a cop just pulled up behind you; moving the car to just the right spot so grandma doesn't have to walk any more steps than absolutely necessary; parking on a lawn for a party or concert; backing up to just the right spot so you can hitch up a trailer.
The list could go on forever, and that's the point -- you can surely automate away some of these tasks, but there is an infinite multiplicity of things that need to be done with a car, and having to point them out on a map in order to get the car to do them, or even use a joystick to do it, sounds like an obnoxious chore.
Edit: to those who disagree with me by pointing to a utopian future of car sharing for everyone and no one even being able to drive, that's fine I guess, but this seems to be suggesting that the very first generation of these will be without a steering wheel, when very few people will have these cars and all of the problems I listed will still exist. Even if your ultimate goal is for passengers to be completely dependent on the AI for navigation, that's just not going to be an option when these things roll off the lot as soon as 2016.