Autonomous cars and you

I recently read that while the incidence of teen drunk driving has halved in the past five years, the number of teens (and older drivers) texting while driving has skyrocketed and is now the leading cause of teen death's and injury while driving. I've lost friends to both drunk and distracted drivers and totally believe this to be true.

If you search for "Autonomous cars" in Wikipedia you will find that Google is a leading player in the development of autonomous (or self-driving) cars. They already claim their autonomous cars are safer than human-driven cars as they have racked up a total of 700,000 accident free miles. Both California and Nevada have amended their laws to allow for testing of autonomous cars on public streets and highways. Michigan and Florida are looking into similar changes.

The legislatures of both states are also looking at laws that would help establish liability in the case of accidents involving autonomous cars. One day soon we will be able to buy autonomous cars although they will be expensive at first. Google estimates they add $150,000 worth of equipment to a car to make it autonomous - about half of which is the radar array.

Although autonomous cars might be available within five years it might be fifteen years before I can afford one. But eventually driving your own car may be something only rich eccentrics do. If 99% of all traffic accidents are caused by the 10% of cars being driven by humans, the cost of insuring a human driven car will become more that even the most die-hard individualist can tolerate.

So if your car is doing the driving, you can text and drink as much as you want and I and all my cycling friends can ride safely knowing your car will respect our safety more than you ever did.

My only question is - will they invent self riding bicycles? What would they look like? Would I want one? If I can say I want everyone to drive autonomous cars, do I have the right to say I still want to ride my bicycle?