As the inevitable autonomy of everything looms just ahead, rock-star entrepreneur Elon Musk had this to say at a recent development conference: "You can't have a person driving a two-ton death machine. It's too dangerous." And that's to say the driverless car visionaries don't just want to offer you an autonomous vehicle, they'll insist on denying you even the choice of manual operation as part of a brave new safer (and boring) future that could arrive as soon as a decade from now. But according to a recent Timemagazine report, many industry experts peg the transition between 2035 and 2050. And even though Musk's Tesla has already pushed self-driving software to its S-model sedans, that time frame strikes me as credible.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/ownership/parachutes-vs-robot-airplanes