I was being imprecise. Sorry about that. I don't think that we will see totally autonomous cars _in_our_lifetime. "Never" is not a useful timescale.

  You have to have a truly limited imagination to think we
  will never get there.

40 years ago people did the same sorts of extrapolations on air-travel and figured that 15-20 years later all commercial air travel would be supersonic. And why wouldn't they? Orville Wright was still alive when the first supersonic flight took place. We went from not being able to fly heavier-than-air machines to breaking the sound barrier in 43 years. But of course, that didn't happen.

And in just the past few years we've gone backwards. There is currently no supersonic passenger jet in service.

A lot of domains appear to exhibit the same asymptotic behavior. Space travel, medicine, AI etc. Domains where initial speed causes undue optimism and where we later suffer regressions. (No regressions in medicine you say? Well, how about the crazy anti-vaccination people and the re-emergence of diseases that were practically eradicated?)

I build stuff, I program stuff, I occasionally build and race cars. I don't think my skepticism stems from _lack_ of imagination -- I think it has more to do with an abundance of imagination.

  The argument about airplane maintenance also doesn't hold water. Result of a
  malfunctioning plane: plunge 30,000ft and hundreds dead. Result of a
  malfunctioning car: coast to a gentle stop. See any difference?

I'm sorry, but that is pure nonsense and many, many, many people pay the ultimate price to prove you wrong every day.