Dr Damon, since you turned up on this forum, you’ve made much of your knowledge when it comes to the development of autonomous vehicles, but in all that time the only information you can come up with is one small article on a tech website.
I was in Italy last week and was talking to somebody who is working on autonomous car project, he’s is still required to be in the test vehicle to take over when the computer system can’t cope and this is on a test track.
I’ve no doubt automation will come, but it won’t be overnight, but build up through stages and there is still a lot of testing to go through and during the first stages the vehicles will still require a driver to take over, either when the vehicle comes out of the environment, road or weather, it can cope with or to intervene in the case of something unexpected happening, however these are probably the worst operating conditions for a human.
Then of course we have the social impact of automation, something that none of the companies developing the systems or politicians who are so keen on investing tax payers money into it seem willing to comment on.
Finally when the systems are up to level 5, they’ll be able to work without a rest, not lose concentration and won’t need a pay packet, but they also won’t buy any of the goods they are delivering.