The Core

> I don't understand how the general population isn't freaking

The general population consists of mouth-breathers, LM.

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>>what about trucks

>Mercedes has one in the works.  THIS is where we're going to see the rubber hit the road first, IMO.  The scenario, at first, will be for large robotic convoys to travel between hubs located along our interstates. Travel will be in off-peak hours and accompanied by a human engineer and conductor in case of an emergency.

A fleet of trucks just drove themselves across Europe

"About a dozen trucks from major manufacturers like Volvo and Daimler just completed a week of largely autonomous driving across Europe, the first such major exercise on the continent."

http://qz.com/656104/a-fleet-of-trucks-just-drove-themselves-across-europe/

I'm not sure I like the sound of this: huge columns of even more trucks on the roads.  Roads are expensive to build and maintain (if we bother to maintain them) and require massive subsidies.  I'd rather see more goods transported in the US by rail and then via truck the last 100 miles.

Personally, the whole idea of self driving cars creeps me out unless I get too old to drive myself safely, and even then the automated car probably won't let me keep the turn signal on all the time.   

<time warp>
Going down that slippery slope to traindom.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a21510/sweden-builds-the-worlds-first-electric-highway/