Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected
I&#x27;ve been beating this drum for years (but I&#x27;m a nobody, so it&#x27;s like pissing in the wind):<p>1. Anything less than 100% FULL automation is MORE dangerous than manual driving, because the &quot;driver&quot; will almost certainly lack any situational awareness. When the need for manual intervention happen, it will be at the moments where you need maximum awareness and split second reflexes.<p>2. There are SO many edge cases and never-seen-before situations that happen when driving &quot;at scale&quot; that the automation features will fail unexpectedly and in strange ways.<p>3. G and Cruise might be exceptions, but most of the companies in this space are cowboys with reckless disregard for public safety and terrible &quot;iterate quickly&quot; coding practices.<p>4. At some point there will be an accident that kills a photogenic &quot;middle America&quot; person or people and at that point the government will crush this industry with regulation, with the financial backing of automakers, UAW, and other people who benefit from the status quo.<p>The only way 100% fully self driving cars will ever happen is for the infrastructure itself to be built to accommodate them. Mixing regular cars, parking, trucks, bicycles, scooters, pedestrians, dog walkers, hoverboards, etc all together on the same roads ensures that the problem is unsolvable.