As Roy Amara’s eponymous law famously states, “we tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”

That is where we are today. People are overestimating how quickly level-5 autonomy will come and overestimating how widespread level-4 autonomy will become in the near future. They see only the technical possibilities, not the resistance that will come when autonomous agents invade human spaces, be they too rude or overly deferential.

Certainly this new way of driving will eventually come. It will creep up on us, finally reducing manual driving to a recreation confined to specialized entertainment zones. The day of the robocar is inevitable, but that day will not come soon.
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