...like the car replaced the horse? We need to bring back blacksmiths!!!
I wouldn’t worry too much :) The “self driving car” is still a long way from being viable (think lawsuits). When you see these demonstrations, remember, they’re just “demos”. They’re also often conducted in California, where the roads are great and the sky is usually clear. Now think of a Michigan winter; construction, potholes, snow, ice, etc. - I can barely see the lanes or figure out what I’m supposed to do sometimes. When a car can figure all that out - AND NEVER GET IT WRONG - then we’ll have something, my guess is that such a feature will need to be turned off half the time.
Remember the Prius accelerator issue? Now multiply that x1000 (in terms of technical issues) and consider the lawsuits the instant that somebody “thinks” the car was to blame. Good luck with that.
I think they will be here far faster than you think, and the snow states will get them first. Scanners for these cars can work in frequencies where water, snow, and dust are simply transparent. The sensors will see as well in a whiteout blizzard as on a sunny day. As for liability, I used to think that too, but it depends on who accepts the liability. If a trucking company is not liable for software mistakes, but is liable for a human driver's mistakes, then we will see a very rapid transition.
Both the development of self driving cars, and the cars themselves, will operate like a swarm. they can drive hundereds of cars at a time, and software learn from all of them in parallel. This cuts development time.
When they operate, they will act as a swarm as well, communicating with each other about road hazards they encounter . An individual driver will not have the amount of information the self driving cars will have.