In 1843, Patent Office Commissioner Henry Ellsworth made a report to Congress in which he said, “the advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end.”
So I don't put a lot of faith in the predictions of bureaucrats.
But I do agree that in the best possible scenario, a human will be a co-pilot. No software can come up with a solution to a problem it is not coded for, and there are nearly an infinite number possible scenarios when driving in public.
However, a joint venture of both the road infrastructure engineers and the automotive autonomy engineers will come up with a near fault-free solution if virtually all the variables can be known. Cars that relay their intended future path to other cars in the area in conjunction with controlled access pipelines, can reduce the risk to near zero.
The problem is not the future, the problem is today. We do not have an integrated solution, we do not manage risk, we do not have controlled access to each lane except in a small fraction of roadways. Today, a drunk or texter can hop in a car with Adaptive Cruise Control and Lane Keep technology, and ignore their responsibility to control the car in an emergency situation.
We are just a single Class Action lawsuit away from setting back advanced driver's aids another 10 years.