Yep. It already happens with airliners, where pilots do errors specifically because they are too used to automation and fall prey to boredom induced sleepiness.
If there are sufficiently few special case, we could have the car stopping before it switches to manual mode. The goal being that the human would take control at leisure, and not in the midst of motion.
Or, switch to a semi manual mode, where safeties are still on. Even when lost, the car can still see nearby obstacles, sense weather the tires stick to the road etc.
We could also keep a fully manual (and unsafe!) mode, which is activated only by a pull on a lever followed by a push on a red button beneath the lever. Hopefully that should eliminate most "context switching" errors. (And the human could be blamed, and the car insurance may not activate etc… making you think thrice before you actually switch).
Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley: How Robot Cars Are Near
WHEN: 19 December 2012 07:30:00PM (-0500)
WHERE: Berkeley, CA
Location and time for this Wednesday's meetup are confirmed! It will be at 7:30pm (not 7pm) at Zendo. I will not be there, but Michael Keenan will be giving a talk about robot cars.
Michael Keenan is an entrepreneur, activist and futurist who works with The Seasteading Institute and the Center For Applied Rationality. His talk, How Robot Cars Are Near, describes how robot cars will save millions of lives, billions of hours and trillions of dollars.
Michael will also be speaking at the Extreme Futurist Fest on December 22.
For directions to Zendo, see the mailing list:
http://groups.google.com/group/bayarealesswrong
or call me at:
http://i.imgur.com/Vcafy.png
Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley: How Robot Cars Are Near