Driverless cars are only mildly succeeding right now because of Amercica's low standards when it comes safety.

(Spoiler: “no”.)

But at the same time, I’d never want to fly in a passenger plane without a pilot, because when emergency situations happen, autopilots usually can’t handle it and need intervention. When the engine on QF32 exploded, the pilots had to do checks and make judgements on something like 200 different error messages before they could land! Since so many of the plane’s systems were damaged by the explosion, a lot of this may not have been possible remotely.

And the stakes are much higher when an uncaught sensor error or something can mean flying into the ground from 30,000 feet - unlike a train (the only thing that actually has a good safety record running driverless so far) you can’t just stop in an emergency!