The drive for driverless cars [Reflections]

In the 1960s, the television show "Candid Camera" had several skits in which they faked driverless cars moving past unsuspecting people. It was funny because everyone knew that driverless cars were impossible. That was then, but now the great technical and social challenge of developing driverless cars has suddenly been opened up to us, as described in last month??s issue of IEEE Spectrum.