Originally Posted by
Herod
Errr...on what do you base that? A pilot is thinking and acting (or at least monitoring) in 4 dimensions (the conventional 3 plus time). A car driver is only in 2. In fact, if you accept that a car is following a road, he is only in 1; straight ahead.
One thing you could say is - if airspace is totally controlled - the advantage in autonomous flying is all the aircraft are under the same control system, going to a small number of known destinations on a coordinated and published schedule. Commercial aircraft can be relied upon to obey the rules of the road so to speak. The challenge in cars is blending autonomous cars, that will presumably be (an big if!) acting rationally, mixed in with drunk texting yahoos taking selfies, sheep wandering across the road, etc etc.
Off the two, autonomous aircraft will be "easier" to develop, but the consequences of failure are more severe. In cars you could be right 99% of the time and still be much safer than what we have. In aircraft your threshold is much higher because you start with a much higher bar. The public seems to accept carnage on the road, but not in the air.
In the end I very much doubt it will be worth getting rid of pilots for all sorts of reasons, public acceptance being the biggest. I can think of a lot of good reasons to get rid of drivers! I personally think fully autonomous vehicles will be limited to well defined infrastructure.
20driver