A "digital rail" with centralized traffic control is much safer and much more practical.
Autonomous is a dead end. People make the mistake of looking at early progress (starting at 0 base line) and thinking it will not stop till it is perfect.
It is like when we went from 100mhz to 1Ghz chips and people were saying "in 10 years we will have 10Ghz chips" but in reality we never will.
Sure, but that means separated roads without pedestrians, cyclists and non-autonomous vehicles. Not really politically possible. And it's an incompatible system, so you don't have any benefits until you've sunk a huge ton of money - a total non-starter in most countries.
Autonomous is a dead end. People make the mistake of looking at early progress (starting at 0 base line) and thinking it will not stop till it is perfect.
It is like when we went from 100mhz to 1Ghz chips and people were saying "in 10 years we will have 10Ghz chips" but in reality we never will.