Driverless Cars and why my daughter, mastered the manual gear and left the algorithms behind!

It took 19 years and 2 months for my daughter to learn how to drive a manual car in the spaghetti‑like streets of Athens. Yet after two decades of global R&D, I still don’t see a single truly driverless car navigating the chaos of Athenian traffic.

And that contrast matters

Despite the hype, fully autonomous driving remains one of the most expensive, complex, and prolonged technology quests of our era. Google began its self‑driving project in 2009, later becoming Waymo, now backed by $27B+ in total capital raised and valued at $126B as of 2026. The company employs roughly 2,500 people and has logged 200 million autonomous miles, yet still faces safety investigations and limited‑area deployments.

Morover, the industry’s flagship Chief Safety Officer, Mauricio Peña, admitted in an early February 2026 U.S. Senate hearing that its “driverless” cars often rely on remote human assistance, including workers based in the Philippines, who provide real‑time guidance when the AI gets stuck in unusual situations. These “fleet response agents” don’t steer or brake, but the fact that a robotaxi must “phone a friend” thousands of miles away shows how far we still are from true autonomy.

China’s ecosystem is even larger: Baidu, Pony.ai, and WeRide operate across 19+ cities, supported by 32,000 km of designated AV testing roads and 16,000 issued test licenses. Still, most deployments require supervisors, and no company claims reliable autonomy in dense, unpredictable environments.

After billions invested and tens of thousands of engineer‑years, the industry has made remarkable progress, but not a product that can survive the real‑world entropy of Athens, Mumbai, or Mexico City.

True autonomy is on the horizon, but it’s stuck in the complexity traffic jam.

My 19-year-old daughter couldn’t wait for the future.

She’s already mastered the manual gear and left the algorithms behind.