Just explained to a kid at the bar why self driving cars will never work by making him fold a napkin in half as many times as he could. He got to 7. "Ok, you only need to do that 34 more times until it reaches the moon."
I will be your drunken anticapitalist science educator for the evening.
@jwz Self-driving cars are an all or nothing solution since driving is complex and for self driving cars to work an unpredictable human can't be behind the wheel in any other vehicle on the road with it.
You know what can work though, self-driving trains. Since trains are on rails which are controlled by track switching devices, the train engine itself really only needs to accelerate, decelerate, and brake.
So it's not inconceivable to think this could be somewhat automated in the future.
@Draconic_NEO @jwz there's a bunch for trains already, varying amounts of automation:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_driverless_train_systems
