[skywhopper]

Ultimately, the right place for most carmakers to focus on at this point would be situational awareness and safety features, gradually improving the situations where the car can prevent a crash.

Put it this way: If a driverless car would be safer than human drivers, then that would imply that all the necessary technology would already exist to allow humans to be the driver while the car still keeps them out of deadly situations. If such tech is not possible to develop, then it seems unlikely that true driverless tech (which would need to combine that safety tech with a lot of other technology) will happen.