"Even if certain technologies encroach on our freedoms, the rational question is whether the freedoms compromised is not offset by concomitant benefits. Here, I'd argue that the benefits greatly outweigh the costs."

Very troubling statement. What if I were to tell you we could clothe all the people of the world, feed the entire population, house the entire population, no more wars, no more violence. The only catch is you would have to give up individualism and live like a lab rat in an automated system in which you wouldn't have to lift a finger. Many people esp. socialists would accept the trade off, but people like me will rightly argue that in this example the entire point of living in the first place has been stripped away. There is always a way to make something comparatively safer and efficient but that doesn't make it a good idea. In my example of an automated transit system, there would be no trade off to our rights we enjoy daily.

In automating cars, and the move to do so there are too many ways in which we will be screwed as far as our rights are concerned. I will list a few, companies involved will lobby government to place restrictions on human driving over and over again until essentially most human driving will essentially be outlawed in most cases; with new restrictions to human driving there will be new taxes on driving/mileage/toll roads..etc; driverless vehicle manufacturers will move towards a leasing system in which ownership for cars will eventually cease to exist in favor of making people rent their vehicle; due to the leasing model many more jobs will be lost for example car sales... I could go on and on.

Also this machines are infallible and safer drivers argument is just an assumption. There are always oversights, there are always malfunctions/failures, and as yet machines don't have the ability to reason. Improvements will be made but I would love to see a driverless vehicle be in a situation where it is driving in a two lane one way road, it is on the left going 40 mph with a car behind it tailgating It less than a foot away, meanwhile the car on the right hand land less than 15 feet ahead of it takes a hard left right in front of it.

When it can avoid that type of accident then I will revisit this and rethink my argument but until then I will just shake my head at the stupidity that anyone would willingly give up rights, freedom of movement, vehicle ownership..etc in favor of being more lazy. There is another argument here for me to pursue as well which is the degradation of the human brain due to more and more automation and being used less and less. It is unhealthy.