I've been acquainted with a number of engineers at various autonomous vehicle companies and they are some of the most reserved people when it comes to the reality of autonomous driving. Many of them going so far as to say they would never use one for themselves now or in the near future.

I think when domain experts speak up like this we should listen. The autonomous vehicle technology seems like it has a long way to go.

Production scale Level 5, full autonomous is still many years away. Most people will be happy with Level 3/4 regardless, and those are still better/safer than most of the distracted drivers on the road today.

bigger discussion ended up here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27076882