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"Ever" is a long time. Though I agree insofar as it's probably further out than a lot of people are assuming.

But, yes, it will be a long time before maps are sufficiently good across wide areas of the rural US (much less the world as a whole) to enable self-driving. The situation when you start talking about unpaved roads becomes even more problematic.

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Isn't it just a matter of the car paying attention to the road and if it doesn't match up to the map's version, picking an alternate route?

Autonomous vehicles today are highly dependent on having accurate high-resolution road maps. Without them, you don't have a self-driving car. And, when you talk about unpaved rural roads, there often aren't any alternative routes.

Presumably if/when we get such vehicles, they'll only be approved to drive some subset of roads and, if they encounter an unknown condition, they'll have to stop and have a human driver take over in some manner.

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