So I had an idea for a story tonight, after dealing with the weather and driving in it.
I've heard about self-driving automobiles for years, General Motors being one manufacturer that pushed the idea as far back as the 1939 World's Fair. This little musical number dates from 1956, and jumps ahead 20 years to find our travelling family heading through the desert southwest to Chicago, via GM's Arizona test track in their spiffy Firebird II sedan. The setting is a limited access road, with a special inner roadway for auto-drive, and the method for getting into it seems an awful lot like distracted driving.
I was 1 year old when this was produced. Sixty two years later, I don't feel that we are any closer to this, let alone a fully autonomous car. I've encountered clusters of potholes that would screw up any cables and/or magnets for guidance, and piles of dirty slush that would obscure the best thermoplastic pavement markings from fancy optical sensors. Lots of manual override conditions, though you might get some use out of that lidar setup to maintain a safe interval. It just ain't ready for prime time in this retired traffic engineer's opinion, and that's my FP.
What's your's?