Self-driving cars are set to revolutionize transport systems the world over. If the hype is to be believed, entirely autonomous vehicles are about to hit the open road.
The truth is more complex. The most advanced self-driving technologies work only in an extremely limited set of environments and weather conditions. And while most new cars will have some form of driver assistance in the coming years, autonomous cars that drive in all conditions without human oversight are still many years away.
One of the main problems is that it is hard to train vehicles to cope in all situations. And the most challenging situations are often the rarest. There is a huge variety of tricky circumstances that drivers rarely come across: a child running into the road, a vehicle driving on the wrong side of the street, an accident immediately ahead, and so on.
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