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Five Reasons are provided by the U.K. DailyMail on why we won't be seeing autonomous cars take over any time soon.
SNOW AND WEATHER
[...] Heavy snow, rain, fog and sandstorms can obstruct the view of cameras. Light beams sent out by laser sensors can bounce off snowflakes and think they are obstacles.
Radar can see through the weather, but it doesn't show the shape of an object needed for computers to figure out what it is.
[...] PAVEMENT LINES AND CURBS
Across the globe, roadway marking lines are different, or they may not even exist. Lane lines aren't standardized, so vehicles have to learn how to drive differently in each city.
[...] DEALING WITH HUMAN DRIVERS
For many years, autonomous vehicles will have to deal with humans who don't always play by the rules.
[...] LEFT TURNS
Deciding when to turn left in front of oncoming traffic without a green arrow is one of the more difficult tasks for human drivers and one that causes many crashes. Autonomous vehicles have the same trouble.
[...] CONSUMER ACCEPTANCE
The fatal Uber crash near Phoenix last year did more than push the pause button on testing.
It also rattled consumers who someday will be asked to ride in self-driving vehicles.
Surveys taken after the Uber crash showed that drivers are reluctant to give up control to a computer.
I fully intend to spend my twilight years relaxing in relative safety while the car drives me around; I'm gonna be torqued if they take too long.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday February 05 2019, @12:54PM
The analysis never considers other societal trends, like surveillance, cheap comms for crowdsourcing, and economic decline.
We're not going to have an economy with enough work for everyone; there will be plenty of people no longer commuting because there's no jobs to commute to. The idea of having 19 copilots for my car is not too outlandish. Much like WWII bombers, you're not going to have 19 people on the controls (although thats possible) you're more likely to have 11 voting humans on the controls, some doing short term route planning (like 1 minute ahead), some doing long term route planning (at least for longer drives), maybe some regional specialists focusing on weather conditions, some regional specialists who pop in for special detour work, etc.
You only need make the car smart enough to come to a safe stop when commo is lost; not do the entire driving experience start to finish. Should be easier.
Cheap comms means having 19 human copilots for my car doing the driving is affordable, at least from a commo perspective.
Surveillance means you don't "really" need a car covered in sensors when the road and businesses along the road are covered in sensors. Which also has interesting traffic routing and optimization opportunities. An array of ultra super high def cameras on a skyscraper or cell tower is worth a lot more than a couple car mounted cams.
My guess is self-driving cars that operate shittily will get rolled out, then the "Upgrade" will be having 19 copilots on each car.
A more speculative idea, but possible, is drone support. No one has autonomously driven on this road in more than a couple days? Ask a separate corporate drone to fly the route, upload detailed scans, human analysis (possibly?), and download to a car, during the course of a car ride. I mean, if the "amazon drone delivery" is sitting there delivering nothing, may as well activate the cameras and earn some bucks scanning a new road or construction road or weird condition road.
In summary, the idea of 1:1 mapping of one driver (possibly silicon based) to exactly one car is kinda obsolete in the modern system era.
This is aside from the issue of no one can really explain why we need self driving cars; is everyone supporting self driving cars seriously a proponent of extreme border security cutting off the supply of foreign taxi drivers? Seriously, claiming every self driving enthusiast is a Trump supporter? Its not like we have a shortage of human brains or humans butts to sit in chairs for jobs.