self driving sooner than we think!

maillemaker wrote:
You will know the turning point has been reached when they start altering road construction and signage to accommodate autonomous vehicles. When they start embedding things in the roadway, or special stripes on the roadway, or special visual or RF beacons on the roadside, that serve no purpose but to help AI vehicles navigate the roads, then you will know that the turning point has come.

Today, everything you see on and around roadways is to enable human drivers. Soon, there will be things there to enable AI drivers.

I think this is a big factor that remains unknown in all of this. Many adaptive/assist systems currently exist, but they are far from bulletproof, and many rely on systems that can become readily problematic in real world conditions. Five minutes on an icy, salt covered, road and my F150 spits out a warning that the pre-collision system can't operate. The sensors become covered in sludge and can't see anything.

I'm sure there can and will be solutions to all of this, but I think some of it is likely to boil down to infrastructure that is not yet in place. We will continue to move in that direction, but there are still some major hurdles to overcome.