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Notes -
In 2010, the vibe (to me at least) was that self-driving cars had effectively been developed; by 2025, substantially all the cars on the roads of American cities would be fully autonomous (without requiring a human standing at-the-ready to take over in a crisis).
So what happened? Why, at least outside Silicon Valley, is my Uber cab still driven by a human? Do technical challenges remain in developing autonomous technologies? Is regulation / liability the major obstacle to adoption?
Some technical challenges still exist, but more importantly they are legible. Regulators (and voters) can point to specific deficiencies and failures, which are used to justify stronger regulations and delays.
If we said that a self-driving system would be treated equal to a human driver (mandatory insurance, pass a driving test, etc.), then I bet we would have several competing companies, all of which would pay lower insurance rates than average humans because they would crash less.
Instead, we have ridiculous debates like "should it swerve to hit one pedestrian, or brake to hit five jaywalkers" holding up the process.
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