[123456qwerty]

That last paragraph is the real important one to me, concerning automation in general, be that IoT, self-driving cars, or other kinds of connected devices that do jobs previously done by more humans with fewer.

Case in point: Someone snips the wrong cable and a system that has replaced human operators who would route in-field nurse calls goes down. This is a small system for now with low volume, so an improvised manual process is in place in a matter of minutes. But what if this system was serving 100x more users? This process would not be scalable, and said provider would not have the infrastructure or man-power in place to handle that situation.

Similarly with the idea that in the near-term self driving cars will reduce the need for drivers, not eliminate them completely. It's like some fallacy of averages. What about that week with so shitty visibility that the sensor-suites are blind? Does the world completely stop for a few days?