A new survey in California (where else?) has found that one in five Americans would never drive again if they could get a car that drove itself.
And that's just the start.
Insurance actuaries estimate that insurance premiums for autonomous cars would be up to 80 percent cheaper than for cars driven by humans, partly because the majority of claims are directly traceable to human error, and partly because if a robot car did make a mistake and crash, the responsibility would probably rest with the manufacturer, not the owner.
A lot of the decrease in premiums, they say, could come simply because there would be far fewer collisions. And these are not forward-thinking science geeks, remember, these are hard-headed bean-counters whose job it is to be accurately pessimistic about the future.
When the survey put that scenario to 2000 American drivers, more than a third said they would be 'very likely' to buy an autonomous car, and 90 percent said they would at least consider the idea.
PROTECTING HUMANS FROM THEMSELVES
Cars that park themselves, navigate stop-go traffic and avert impending crashes no longer make headlines; they're out there on our roads doing their job, which is to protect humans from the consequences of their own actions.
Nissan has promised to put a car in your local showroom by 2020 with a computerised autopilot that can take over the driving under suitable conditions, such as cruising on a freeway. Autonomous cars are already street-legal in three American states - although, like teenagers, they still need to be accompanied by an adult.
A completely independent self-driving car is no longer a matter of if, but when - and that may eventually come down to a very human factor.
TRUST
Sixty-four percent of the drivers polled said computers were not capable of the same quality of decision-making that human drivers demonstrated.
Three out of four said they could drive a car better than a computer could.
(Whether that's true or not is irrelevant; trust is a perception, not an observation.)
And three out of four said they would not trust a driverless car to take their children to school.
OK, so who would you trust to build a Mom's Taxi that didn't need a mom?
Established car companies such Honda, Ford, or Toyota, said more than half (54 percent, be exact) of the respondents, while cutting-edge new-technology carmakers such as Tesla and Fisker got less than 20 percent of the vote, which suggests that electric cars still have a huge credibility gap to overcome.
Fifteen percent of the drivers would trust a software provider such as Google or Microsoft, 12 percent a consumer products manufacturer such as Apple or Samsung (RIM apparently didn't even rate a mention) - but only one driver in a hundred said he would trust his car in the hands of a cellphone service provider!
As we said, a very human factor.
What would you do while the car was doing the driving, the respondents were asked.
One in four (26 percent) said they would be online chatting or texting (very revealing, that; anecdotal evidence suggests that about the same proportion of drivers are doing that now while they're supposed to be driving!)
One in five (21 percent) said they catch up on reading, one in 10 would sleep (we'll believe that when we see it!), another one in 10 said they would watch the scenery and nine percent said "Hold on for dear life!".
Eight percent would use the extra time to watch movies, seven percent would work and seven percent would play electronic games - in other words, about the same as they would if they were a passenger in a conventional car being driven by another human.
Kitt, come and get me.