Self driving is not real

Tesla, GM, Uber, Apple, Google are dumping tons of money into self driving cars. All of them are making great progress, however they will all fail.

It's easy to create a self driving system on a highway, assuming the road is mapped out with GPS systems ( which are getting more accurate each day ) . Sensors define the distance to other cars, keeping those variables constant ( with minor fluctuations ) is easy.

City driving is more difficult, with pedestrians and cyclists flying around. However using a self learning algorithm, which creates a huge database of events and responses can be created to give autonomous vehicles a high probability of making good decisions almost all of the time.

However once in a while anomalies happen. Cars going the wrong way, accidents in front of your car, roads closed by police, boulders falling from above, airplanes on the roadway, bridges collapsing, flooding on roads, downed trees, etc.

These are all anomalies with low probability of occurring. However in a big country the probably they don't occur is near zero. therefore they will happen.

Therefore there is a large class of events that can not be programmed into a computer system. One must assume a system with no information will make bad decisions ( like a child ). Hence self driving systems are prone to fail unless the government and corporations work together. 

Using a train car model with a human in the front car and in the back car has a higher probability of success by using information together. A human can lead a pack of 100+ cars. If a problem occurs he can shut down the cooperation, or close the road to all automated vehicles behind. Such a system is clearly superior to corporations working alone. However it still has problems, but those problems are more limited and easier to handle.

Overall corporations that claim self driving is around the corner are feeding investors nonsense. I would wager that the first truly autonomous car will be a total failure, unless they use a cooperation model.