Why is there a push for self-driving cars? I get monkeying around with technology - there are new things to discover, it’s fun and educational, and of course R&D leads to great products that make our lives easier.

But I am having such a hard time understanding why we need self-driving cars. Our cities and highways are not going away. After all, we’re too dumb to even stripe roads for bike lanes, which require the cheapest tech of all: paint applied by a guy in an orange vest. In this context, self-driving cars seems like a misuse (even abuse) of R&D funds.

To me, self-driving cars seems like the wrong answer to a very old problem: transportation and travel still require very old technologies - e.g., a system of crude roads and fragile highways. Why do we need self-driving cars considering that our cities and towns can barely fill pot holes?

 smartercities:

RobotCar is working with Nissan to find a way to make the Leaf EV drive itself for way less money than what Google pumps into its self-driving cars. How does it work?