Pages and pages have been written about driverless vehicles, as if this is the quantum leap forward in transportation, but when you whittle it down to the core, driverless vehicles or self-automated driving vehicles, are not set to accomplish much of anything of real material progress; because firstly there is a gargantuan amount of added capital required in aggregate to equip these vehicles with the ability to safely navigate the roadways, and secondly these vehicles are fundamentally the same as they were, in the sense of still needing some sort of fuel, as in oil or electricity to transport themselves from here to there, as well as needing some sort of wheels in order to ride the road.
The point is that transportation with wheels utilizing an axle predate the time of Christ, with basically the only real changes being that the roads nowadays are smoother and more prevalent, and the horse has been replaced by the horseless carriage. In fact, the car today is not all that much different in its fundamental purpose and structure than the Model T was back when Henry Ford was the instigator and the leader of manufacturing vehicles at a price-point, which eventually led to cars becoming ubiquitous around the world.
If the smartest people in the world truly believe that driverless vehicles are the wave of the future, they aren't all that smart, because the quantum leap forward can only come from transportation that is deliberately envisioned and structured in a way in which wheels, and therefore the friction that wheels create upon a road is completely eradicated. One way, to do so, is to look at what Japan has accomplished with its maglev train, which uses electromagnets, to produce levitation upon the train, and hence that train is able to travel at, as reported by phys.org, "…at speeds over 310 mph."
There was a time when to cross the oceans and the seas, necessitated travel by ship or by boat, of which this still does occur, but such has being superseded at a fair price, by travelers that are all about getting to the destination sooner, as compared to later, and hence do so via airplane. So too, vehicles with wheels is a form of transportation that has its advantages as well as its disadvantages, but to believe that eliminating drivers, or providing drivers with the option of self-driving, will somehow make for a giant leap forward for mankind and society, is misguided and mistaken.
Rather, it is high time to recognize that true progress can only come about from those that are outside the massive industry as it is, and hence are not limited by that industry and are thereby clearly thinking freely outside of the box. The future of ground transportation in this world, does not involve wheels, but rather involves levitation, done through an electromagnetic field or similar, and the sooner that governments or institutions with very big pockets recognize this, the sooner mankind will benefit from a form of transportation, which will take us out of our current Luddite thinking, and into a bright and brave new world.