The only tangible reason I see for such disproportionate focus is some sense of false futurism; aka, driver-less cars have become the 'flying cars' of our times.
Some large boat systems have are also similarly "self-driving" and can navigate to way points and along various lanes without too much intervention. They need pilots and tugs for the small-nav stuff like canals and ports and so on, there's simply too many permutations of "things that can be hit and sunk" to rely on the automation. Smaller boats can also buy commercial "autonav" systems that link the engine, steering and such to GPS. However, the marine environment is hellish on equipment.
Trucking is being seriously looked at, with active test runs, but like big ships needs local pilots for the end-points and local nav. Again too many things in flux and too many things to hit.
Cars exist basically continuously at the terminal ends of the trucking problem and are trying to solve the local pilot problem. Humans, with our highly adaptive sensory-response systems can do it to various levels of skill, but even we have lots and lots of failure modes even without impairment.
On the flipside, the machinery isn't designed to operate for weeks on end without any engineering crew.
Which would probably make it much easier to hire drivers, too. Lately, long-haul trucking has had a hard time recruiting people into the profession, because the pay isn't that great and the lifestyle completely destroys any relationship you have. Local trucking doesn't have this problem: a driver can drive for the day and be home for dinner.
Sort of. The plane will continue to fly the pre-programmed route without pilot involvement, so the actual manipulation of the control surfaces is no longer their primary task. But there are systems to monitor, controllers to talk to, weather systems to navigate around, climbs/descents to find more favourable winds, fuel imbalances to correct, etc. And of course, baseball scores to pick up from ADF.
I'd liken it to how (most) software engineers are not writing in Assembly. Instead they're using higher-level languages and libraries to solve problems. Similarly a pilot is not hands-on flying for 7 hours over the Atlantic, but they're still operating the aircraft.
But even in built-up cities, Americans cling to their cars just like they cling to guns and religion. Look at all the uproar in Manhattan, NYC, where they're taking away street parking and putting in protected cycling lanes. People are upset at this "attack" on cars, and somehow think they deserve free places to put their personal vehicles. If you look at another highly built-up city for comparison, Tokyo, they don't have this problem. There is NO street parking; it's all paid lots that cost a fortune. In fact, you're not even allowed to buy a car there unless you can prove you have a place to park it! So most people get around with subways, trains, walking, cycling, and taxis.
The bottom line is that it's cultural: Americans just don't like public transit and don't want to fund it with their tax dollars, but they do want to subsidize car driving with their tax dollars.
The reason is a combination of two factors:
(1) Transit will probably always need buses. Rail and subway are great at certain specific things (very dense areas), but they are expensive to build and have trouble achieving good coverage of an entire city.
(2) Buses tend to be big and hold ~50 passengers. Why? Mostly, I believe, because bus drivers have to be paid a salary. You're pushed into choosing large vehicles to try to amortize that cost across more passengers.
What if you could take away that constraint by eliminating the bus driver? Some of those 50-passenger buses could each be replaced with (say) three 16-passenger buses. You'd have a choice. You'd no longer be forced to try to consolidate by reducing the number of routes or the frequency on the routes. Both of these things (long walk to a stop, long wait for a bus) are major reasons why many people don't like riding the bus.
And if you can make transit more convenient for people, you can get more of a critical mass of people using it.
But with cars, the price of the driver is actually pretty big, at least 50% of the cost of each ride, when taking a cab or Uber. So that can be a lot of money people are saving.
Plus the whole part where we might get rid of parking spaces in urban centers. This might actually change the way we build cities in the future.
However, if you look at Uber, if you removed driver labor cost from my fare, does each ride now become 60-80% cheaper?
Fixing that in a way that requires no lifestyle changes is an instant ticket to the Forbes 500, so it’s easy to get cofounders, investors, and media visibility.
I remember when Mythbuster did their episode on driving an airplane in emergencies like they do in movies, they came to the conclusion that if it was going to happen, the airplane autopilot would be used instead or a civilian that never flew one. That was in 2007.
> long-haul trucking
I'm pretty sure that's a long term goal of Tesla with their new semi. I have no doubt many are on that too. The challenges are similar to the one for a car.
There's no so much focus on automobile, it's just that we are talking about it more than the others one. Hell the airplane one was done more than a decade ago and you still don't know about it.