Have Autonomous Vehicles Hit a Roadblock?

March 18 marked a grim milestone for the automotive industry: That night in Tempe, Arizona, a pedestrian was struck and killed by a fully autonomous Uber test vehicle, the first such fatality in the United States. Less than a week later, a Tesla Model X driver crashed and died on California’s Bayshore Freeway while using the car’s semiautonomous Autopilot feature.

The incidents are causing trepidation among consumers who wonder what went wrong and whether autonomous and semiautonomous vehicles put people’s lives at risk.

The industry, however, remains undaunted. Several automakers and tech companies promise to have self-driving fleets of taxis on the road servicing consumers within the next couple of years. Others plan to have autonomous vehicles in production by the early 2020s. None are backing off in the wake of the accidents.

But in private, even industry insiders will tell you that the general public won’t be driving fully autonomous vehicles until sometime after 2030: These are startling confessions that reveal how much equity valuations and Wall Street adrenaline rather than dispassionate analysis are driving the tempo of the driverless agenda.

What Happened?

Not much is yet known about the Tesla crash. At first glance, it appears to mirror