Repeating myself, as I often do, the self-driving car threat is that we are going to spend an immense amount of public money trying to prop up a huge investment in a non-proven technology that IMHO will *never work*, not in the Jetsons sense, and I suspect not even in an "all that much better than cruise control" sense. I mean, this will be useful for some people in some circumstances, I guess, but I suspect it'll end up just being mostly more trouble than it's worth. If it alarms you out of your nap once a year, maybe awesome, but if it requires your attention regularly it'll mostly be a nuisance. Cars are a symbol of American capitalism and individuality, for reasons I don't quite understand, and therefore roads are free. Sure we don't spend enough money on them, either (well, specifically, we don't spend enough money on the right things - repair and maintenance instead of new construction), but that's because we can't spend money on anything except freedom bombs. But if we need to protect the massive investments made in this Vaporware, we'll find the money to install sensors and guidance systems and whatever the hell everywhere, because capitalism. And it still won't work.
