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I was a part of the GPS map revolution, which is a much simpler technical problem. The first working nav system was the Etak developed in the 85. But the hard technical problem was good digital turn-by-turn road maps. But after the industry worked on them for 30 years, and had engineers even as brilliant as me helping, there is no way to even get the map data to be 100% reliable over all the area one may drive so that it is safe to trust not to suggest something unsafe.

But happily for maps you don't have to trust them 100%. You have a driver who is supposed to use common sense.

The self driving stuff will keep improving over the next decades I am sure. But getting them to the point they can safely be driver-less in 20 years seems about as likely as flying cars being common in the year 2000 (which didn't happen btw). My guess is we will get more enhanced breaking/cruise control/driver supplemental type stuff over the next 20 years.

I don't bet against technology...just saying what it produces and when it produces it will frustrate intuition. The devil is in the details.

>The self driving stuff will keep improving over the next decades I am sure. But getting them to the point they can safely be driver-less in 20 years seems about as likely as flying cars being common in the year 2000 (which didn’t happen btw). My guess is we will get more enhanced breaking/cruise control/driver supplemental type stuff over the next 20 years.

Have you seen the Telsa autopilot? It’s pretty amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yCAZWdqX_Y

...The self driving stuff will keep improving over the next decades I am sure. But getting them to the point they can safely be driver-less in 20 years seems about as likely as flying cars being common in the year 2000 (which didn't happen btw). My guess is we will get more enhanced breaking/cruise control/driver supplemental type stuff over the next 20 years....

I'm not so sure... when I left Michigan in 1973 the aerospace company I worked for built a test track for driverless cars - back in those days (four decades ago!!) the technology was buried wires in the road for cars to follow.

The whole silicon revolution since, with small cameras (from cell phone technology), advanced GPS (the govt. let civilians get more accuracy), faster computer hardware (from better computer games?) and advanced scene recognition (again, gaming technology).

These all were unheard of in the 70’s and are here now, with the possible weak link being software good enough to bet peoples lives on. I give it less than a decade to get fully driverless, and maybe sooner with enough players competing for the goal.

I would buy one so I can drink more than one IPA when I go out in the evenings...:^)

PS. The test track from 1973 is gone along with the aerospace company. The site is now the location of the U of Michigan's “M City” for testing driverless cars in simulated city environments.