The barrier to entry here should be very, very high. These cars can’t just work most of the time or only under typical conditions. Human lives are on the line. When a typical car accident happens, sometimes we may blame the driver or assume that it was a perfect storm and that another driver may have fared differently. But these systems all operate identically, meaning any single failure is indicative of a widespread issue across the entire design in a way that just isn’t true of humans.

When things get frenetic, I think most people don’t want to be the one sitting in the back of a confused self-driving car. And let’s not forget that the only ones really benefitting are companies that no longer need to employ drivers. Personally, I am not willing to jeopardize public safety for a little bit of novelty, nor for companies to save money.