I'll be more inclined to start believing that self driving / autonomous vehicles are actually "coming soon" when the federal government decrees it is illegal to wear clothing with certain markings/colors. No red octogons, no reflective red and white parts, no yellow vertical stripes, etc.

I don't think that "cause an air to fail to stop" is the correct threat to address, I think "making AI stop and therefore cause traffic" is.

Wake me up when I can have any two arbitrary addresses as start and end points and a machine or computer can drive me between them, 24/7/365 - barring road closures or whatever.

My prediction is that it will happen with 50% confidence before/after 2029. Or 50% confidence that it will be between 2026 and 2031.

Basically they need to improve their driving software some 10 000x times. From driving 100km before safety critical disengagement to 1 million kilometers. 1 - 2 million milles is benchmark presented by CJ Moore, Tesla’s director of autopilot software to California Department of Motor Vehicles.

> “Tesla is at Level 2 currently. The ratio of driver interaction would need to be in the magnitude of 1 or 2 million miles per driver interaction to move into higher levels of automation. Tesla indicated that Elon is extrapolating on the rates of improvement when speaking about L5 capabilities. Tesla couldn’t say if the rate of improvement would make it to L5 by end of calendar year.”

If they manage to keep on doubling distance driven every 6 months then we should be there in:

log2(10000) * 6 months = 8 years

You can make your own predictions here: https://www.metaculus.com/questions/5304/widely-available-te...

If I really had to choose, would rather have freedom of expression than AI cars. But maybe that's just me.