To a certain degree, the whole thing about autonomous vehicles seems to be a very surprising new development, as trial balloons, are floated all of the time, of various futuristic items and things, of which, many do not even come close to anything other than the most basic of outlines, a theory, or a design, whereas on the other hand, driverless cars are actually here, and actually happening right now, in which states such as Florida, have passed legislation permitting true driverless cars on their public roads, that is to say, that there is no requirement whatsoever that a physical driver be at the control of the wheel, which is rather amazing.
America is both a litigious society as well as seemingly covered with endless reams of red tape and paperwork, but here in the case of driverless cars, significant progress has been made and not really been held back too much by activist judges or closed-minded legislatures. This feat is rather mind boggling, because not only are there an incredible amount of vehicles on the public roads to begin with, but there are all sorts of rules, restrictions, and regulations for those vehicles. That is to say, in order to operate a vehicle, you must both be a licensed driver and you must have insurance, for accidents happen all of the time, and the liability of such, are litigated and/or settled by insurance companies on a daily basis for a lot of money.
Then, and this is just scratching the very surface of autonomous vehicles on public roads, you have a myriad of things to consider about such vehicles being on the road, such as: what directive has been given to driverless cars in regards to when pedestrians, vehicles, and other obstructions when a collision of some sort cannot be avoided; what protections are there for driverless cars that the functioning of such won't be compromised by some outside force; what happens when one of the driverless cars functions or fails unexpectedly; or what happens with driverless vehicles in extreme weather conditions, and so on and so forth. That said, there is another very important factor to consider when it comes to driverless vehicles, which is, that driverless vehicles are sharing the road with vehicles that have drivers, and human beings are not machines, and therefore don't always do what logically they should do, in fact, you can expect the unexpected from humans, so that driverless cars may not act "illogically" in situations in which that would actually be their best maneuver.
Additionally, it is important to consider that autonomous vehicles are in the industry of car manufacturing, car repair, and car insurance, that is absolutely massive on a global scale, so anything that helps to boost sales, or increases the velocity of turnover of vehicles is beneficial for such an industry. Also, car manufacturers and hi-technology companies are working together to create these driverless vehicles, so that, if you were to take the sheer size of the players in the field of driverless vehicles, which includes some of the biggest multi-national corporations in the world such as General Motors, Ford, Daimler, Baidu, Intel, Bosch, Delphi, Huawei, and Microsoft, to mention just some of them, their influence that they are able to exert upon legislatures of all stripes is tremendous, especially when it comes to the lure of additional tax revenues or jobs.
This means that the narrative of driverless vehicles undoubtedly supports a fairly aggressive unrolling of such, because there is money to be made, as well as opportunities to grow, to wit, driverless cars are already here, and their presence is scheduled to increase substantially in the next few years, of which the picture being painted is that doing such will provide public benefits such as safer roads, fuel efficiency, and more freed up personal time, but the downside, and there are always downsides, are basically marginalized and dismissed as unprogressive thinking.