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by toast0 3339 days ago
Cell phones bypassing land lines makes sense because you can cover more customers with less cost. Self-driving cars may eventually be less costly than human driven cars, but for the near future, the costs you add (sensors, software, actuators, etc) are way more expensive than the costs you save (driver's attention, optimistically damage to persons and property reduced through collision avoidance), particularly in developing countries where a person's attention has less monetary value, but the raw materials for the car have similar costs. It's unlikely that you'd get much of the ancillary benefits of usability by unlicensed drivers either -- few people will be able to afford a driverless car to cart their kid around to school or wherever, anyway those people could just hire a driver and a normal car.