How would it get me where I want to go faster?
For one, the cars could be packed closer together. Since this could be done more safely you could raise the speed limit to much higher levels without causing greatly reducing the capacity of the road (although, it would take a while to redesign the roads to accommodate the higher speed limits). The fact that so many people speed on current roads actually increases the average amount of time it takes to make a trip. Traffic flow is actually really complicated, and having it managed centrally by traffic engineers would make things a lot more efficient.
Current GPS always takes the largest road possible (I.E. interstates),
Probably because the speed limits higher.
when I know of several faster routes almost anywhere.
Meh, anecdotal. Current technology calculates the shortest route, takes speed limits into consideration, and makes some (pretty primitive) adjustments for traffic (traffic has way more stochastic factors than the other things I mentioned).
And then there is the whole traffic thing. Since computers would more than likely take everyone along the same route, it eliminates the possibility to change, say, during construction.
One part of future optimization should be to randomly send people along routes of similar length in order to avoid the computer programs creating a traffic jam themselves.
Decrease fuel usage is nice, but that can be accomplished in other ways as well,
and you could combine those other ways with this.
and better drivers training, stricter license requirements, etc. would decrease fatalities.
And you could combine that with this. For one thing, automate driving
has the potential to make drunk driving less of a problem. I say has the potential, because the fact that the cars are automated is probably going to have the perverse effect that more drunk drivers will get behind the wheel (the automated driving will, for one thing, hide the obvious effects of drunk driving). If the systems aren't safe enough, the fact that there's no one to correct the computers mistakes could increase total fatalities. If they are safe enough, then it won't really matter. We could actually already be beyond that point in current technology, so my entire argument could be invalidated by technology already (I'm not working on it so I wouldn't know either way). If it, at the end of the day, reduces total fatalities, it's a good thing.
