自动驾驶的愿景与现实

科技公司空前一致地看好自动驾驶的前景，但科技的发展并不能只依靠热情和空想。自动驾驶面临着五个无法回避的问题。这些问题的存在让我们难以预测它的未来。

There are only a few things that everybody in Silicon Valley agrees upon, and one of them is that driverless cars are the future. Companies are rushing towards this great prize, and that has never been as clear as this month when the Valley was transfixed by a high-profile court case featuring Uber and Waymo.

Because of this unanimity of opinion, there is relatively little discussion of the obstacles that will stand in the way of self-driving cars. Between now and the day that they whizz around everywhere, what will go wrong?

I found myself thinking about this the other night when I was cycling home and met a self-driving car. It was doing just fine, until it saw me. It suddenly pulled to a halt about 20ft away, in the middle of the intersection. I looked at it, it looked at me. My bike lights flashed. Eventually, it moved on, perhaps because its human passenger took over.

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