As you say, humans manage to generate millions of accidents a year, and no-one, sadly, proposes taking cars off the road. I have long said that we should raise the minimum age for possessing a driver's licence to 25, for women. And 45 for men. But even one accident from an automated vehicle causes a storm of litigation that sets the whole industry back. I was given to believe that the safety record of automated systems was already better than humans, but it's hard to keep track because a meaningful comparison is never widely reported.

I remain convinced that this technology will arrive soon enough. The problem is that people, i.e. the press, do not have a realistic notion of how long technological projects take. I view another ten years as a historical eye-blink. I wouldn't be that surprised if it took another twenty years for self-driving to become an accepted norm. The computing power is already available, but tech projects require more than mere gigaflops to get into production. They are hard and complex and loaded with social aspects.